Why Women Have Sex (16 page)

It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.

—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)

 

During the show, the bachelor goes on a series of dates with the women, sometimes singly and sometimes in pairs or groups. At the end
of each episode, women are eliminated from contention. At the end of the series, as tensions mount, the bachelor chooses a winner and (sometimes) proposes marriage. Along the way, the sexual competition becomes increasingly vicious. In addition to verbally disparaging rivals to the sought-after bachelor behind their fellow contestants’ backs, the women become increasingly sexual in appearance and conduct, though no sex is actually depicted on the show. As one viewer commented, “The women always succeed in making themselves look like low class high school girls by the end of the season.” The show has sometimes been reviled as crass, unrealistic, insulting to women, exploitative, superficial, fake, deplorable, and pathetic. Still, it draws roughly 11 million viewers, mostly women according to the Nielsen ratings, who get caught up in the drama of watching sexual competition. (The first season of the spinoff show
The Bachelorette
let one of the “jilted” women from
The Bachelor
select among twenty-five eligible men.)

When we think of competing for mates, many of us conjure images of men battling one another, or the scenes from nature documentaries in which two stags interlock their antlers in a ritualized fight for dominance. Across human cultures, men more than women do compete with each other in violent physical fights. They scuffle for status on the playing field, whether in the ancient Aztec
ulama
court—where the difference between winning and losing was equated with that between fertility and drought—or in the contemporary NBA mega-arena. Historically men also competed with each other in the realm of hunting for calorie-rich meat to outdo their rivals; in modern societies most men display their status and resources in more symbolic ways, such as in prestige possessions. As one of the cofounders of the support group Dating a Banker Anonymous put it, “It’s that he’s an alpha male, he’s aggressive, he’s a go-getter, he doesn’t take no for an answer, he’s confident, people respect him and that creates the whole mystique of who he is.”

In fact, male-male competition is so overt and ostentatious that it probably led Charles Darwin and many scientists after him to overlook what we now know is a powerful evolutionary and psychological force: female-female sexual competition. In our study, women described being motivated to have sex in order to beat out rivals:

My boyfriend loves attention, and early in our relationship [he] began another non-serious relationship with another girl behind my back. When I first found out about it, I was devastated, but eventually made it my goal to make him realize that I’m the only one he wants. While I was happy to have sex with him, I realize now that I was also doing it in hopes that I could prove myself better than the other girl.

—heterosexual woman, age 18

Despite this blind spot among generations of researchers, almost everyone would agree that women compete sexually just as much as men do.

From an evolutionary perspective, the reason is straightforward: Men differ dramatically from each other in their desirability to women, or, as the cliché goes, a good man is hard to find. So it’s not an understatement to say that each and every woman alive today is an evolutionary success story—and it’s worth pausing to consider why.

In our evolutionary past, women who prevailed over other women by gaining sexual access to the most desirable men could gain access to a variety of reproductive benefits—access to better genes, an increased likelihood of producing successful sons and daughters, access to superior resources, and a boost in social status. All of these benefits would have translated in ancestral environments into increased reproductive success—directly in the form of having more children survive and indirectly in the form of having numerous grandchildren because those children were healthier and more sexually desirable. Each living woman has descended from a long and literally unbroken line of ancestral mothers who succeeded in sexual competition.

There is healthy debate among psychologists about how much such evolutionary imperatives shape women’s contemporary motivations and behaviors and the degree to which individuals’ own, conscious explanations of their behaviors should take precedence over scientifically documented processes that may influence individuals’ behaviors without their knowledge. Sometimes, there’s a happy match between the two. We found close correspondence in our study between evolutionary hypotheses about women’s sexual competition and women’s expressed motivations for having sex.

In some ways, women’s sexual competition appears to have intensified in recent decades, perhaps because there is so much celebrity media coverage of presumed sexual rivalries, from Debbie Reynolds versus Elizabeth Taylor to Jennifer Aniston versus Angelina Jolie. With the amount of attention given to celebrities and the cultural acceptance of sexually tinged popular entertainment, people are now also liable to consider these very high status individuals as sexual competitors—even if a sexual partner would not have a chance to meet a movie star, let alone find one in a real bed. Rather than simply trying to beat out a rival who lives a few doors down, women (and men) can instead find themselves worrying about whether a sexual partner is imagining having sex with a celebrity—and decide to win sexual commitment by using a variety of tactics.

This chapter explores how women’s rivalries play out in the competition for desirable short-term sexual partners, committed long-term mates, and sexual domination over rivals themselves. We examine a particular version called mate poaching, which involves going after a sexual partner who is already in a relationship. We begin by looking at two of the major strategies by which women compete for desirable sex partners: through enhancing their sexual attractiveness and influencing the sexual reputations of their rivals.

It is no secret that men prize appearance in sexual partners, be they casual or committed. But contrary to what social scientists have been saying for decades, this emphasis is not limited to the United States, Western societies, or cultures saturated with modern visual media. The premium men place on appearance, for better or for worse, is a human universal.

The logic of sexual selection dictates that the mate preferences of each sex define in large part the domains of competition in the other sex. Just as men compete in trying to embody what women want sexually, women compete to embody what men want. And just as men stumble over each other to achieve status, secure resources, and display humor, intelligence, and athletic prowess because these are qualities women find sexually attractive, women compete with each other to develop and
display the qualities that men find sexually attractive. High among these qualities is physical beauty.

Harvard psychologist Nancy Etcoff notes that Americans spend more money on enhancing their beauty than they do on education or social services. Within the United States, Americans purchase some 2,136,960 tubes of lipstick and 2,959,200 jars of skin care products every day. Roughly three hundred thousand American women undergo breast augmentation surgical procedures each year. The Buss Evolutionary Psychology Lab interviewed women to find out the most common and effective tactics they use to attract mates—and many centered on a woman’s physical appearance:

•   learning how to apply makeup;

•   wearing facial makeup;

•   dieting to improve her figure;

•   wearing stylish clothing;

•   keeping well groomed;

•   getting a new and interesting hairstyle;

•   spending more than one hour on making her appearance pleasant;

•   grooming her hair carefully;

•   lying out in the sun to get a tan; and

•   wearing earrings, necklaces, or other jewelry to enhance her appearance.

Not surprisingly, women report using makeup to enhance their looks significantly more often than men (some men do wear makeup these days). Women are twice as likely as men to spend more than an hour per day on their appearance, and are 50 percent more likely than men to lie in the sun or sit under a tanning lamp to achieve a healthy-looking, albeit ultimately skin-damaging, glow. Although men are increasingly devoting money and effort to enhancing their sexual attractiveness, a tremendous imbalance remains—women spend nearly ten times as much on appearance-enhancement products as men do.

Consciously or not, women historically have been consumers of fashion and beauty products that signal attractiveness to men. Women
wear heels that make them appear taller and slimmer (as did men for centuries), don clothing that accentuates or creates a low (and attractive) waist-to-hip ratio, use hair products that condition a lustrous, healthy mane, and pad their clothing in fertility-mimicking curves. All of these enhancements aim to make women appear young, free of irregularities such as scars and blemishes, and flushed with good health—in other words, sexually desirable.

Researchers who followed women at singles bars found that “many women said that they went home from work before going out to the bars to do a ‘whole revamping’: often, they would take a bath, wash their hair, put on fresh makeup and go through three changes of outfits before they went out to the bars—‘primping for us counts more than for guys—they don’t have to worry about their looks as much.’ ” Appearance enhancement evokes overtures from a wider pool of potential prospects, giving women a greater pool of mates to choose from.

Whether women are seeking a short-term sex partner or a long-term mate matters a great deal. Indeed, the tactic of appearance enhancement proves to be more effective for women in attracting casual sex partners than it does in attracting long-term mates, undoubtedly because in the long run, men also value other attributes, including intelligence, personality, honesty, and fidelity. Women seeking casual sex partners are far more likely to sexualize their appearance, wearing tight outfits, low-cut blouses that reveal cleavage, shirts that expose bare shoulders or backs, and short skirts that show a lot of leg. Sexualizing appearance is a tactic that often works for women seeking sex partners. Sending sexual behavioral signals also hyperactivates men’s sexual psychology: arching the back to enhance breasts, leaning over to show a bit more cleavage, holding eye contact for a split second longer than average, exaggerating the hip swivel while walking, and licking lips seductively. All these tactics stir passions in more men, widening the array of possibilities from which women can exercise sexual choice.