Sex Appeal & Hormones  − 27 May, 2008

So this weekend I had sometime to muse on the interesting bits of my life experience. It was a UKC show at a local park where I showed Kiri, earning her Championship, but in between classes and shows, I watched and ruminated.

One of the things I thought about was “SA” – Sex Appeal. Some people have a lot of it, some don’t. As an Animal Behaviorist first, I wondered about it – was it physical, hormonal, what?

I thought about men I found sexy that were perhaps not the “ideal” image of beauty. By ideal image of beauty, I am referring to the mathematical diagram the Greeks came up with years ago - which seems to hold true across the racial and cultural board – symmetry, harmony and a little feminine, actually.

I sort of go the other way. Perhaps it’s because my own father is very masculine looking (the whole Oedipal theory says I likely modeled my ideal mate off of my father) I tend to like very masculine, rugged men. On the flip side, I find beautiful women aesthetically pleasing as well. I like looking at beautiful things – or what I perceive as beautiful.

One thing I think also influences attractiveness is hormones. Higher amounts of estrogen feminize features and testosterone masculinizes them, so if you look at a feminine woman or masculine man, you know, biologically, they are producing higher amounts of successful hormones. That is said to make the women appear more fertile and the men better providers.

I think we are also “animal” enough to recognize the actual hormonal cues as well. Women who live together tend to cycle together, and, interestingly, women can “sniff” out genetic diversity in male sweat.

So, when I look at a man who has SA (in my opinion – I recognize that what I find sexy other women may not, though Sam Elliot seems to be an exception to that rule… he is undeniably hot) I see rugged features, but there is also that undeniable OOZE. On film (I have never met Sam Elliot in person, for instance) perhaps it’s the gravelly voice, the swagger – I don’t know – but it is a beacon. And it seems to be attractive to both genders. The men find a “man’s man” like that to be charismatic. They all want to be his friend (hey, he might have rejects/leftovers they can scoop up, right? Evolutionarily brilliant strategy).

And in women – look at Angelina Jolie – she is undeniably sexy – even to women. Or an earthy nymph like Britain’s Nigella Lawson – fuller-figured and sexy as hell. I want to be her friend, too. Maybe I will look more attractive to men in her company? Maybe some of her estrogen will rub off on me and make me more attractive than I really am? And find a good provider?

Across the board, it seems the “Nefertiti” look is attractive – the lower half of the face being narrower than the upper, full lips, big eyes and a small nose. These also seem a little infantile to me – meaning features of an infant – cute, meant to be attractive to adults. Perhaps that is why there are pedophiles – a short circuit in sexual attraction synapses hard-wired by Mother Nature.

On an interesting note, I didn’t end up marrying a man who was terribly “maculine” in his features. He is cute, but certainly not in a testosterone-y way… perhaps we women are hard-wired to want the manly men, but end up forming monogamous relationships with the less-manly men. Similar “sexual selection strategies” are seen in the animal world – certain species of birds are known to have pairbonded to a male, but a different male sneaks in, mates with her and flies away. The resultant chicks are raised by the pairbonded male, who apparently has no clue wifey cheated on him.

The more I looked, the more I found – a study indicating that women, at certain times in their cycle, prefer more masculine men, and rate them for “short-term” relationships, while the more feminized men are better “long-term” partners. Very intriguing – and true. I know at certain points in my cycle (and I am on birth control hormones, so I am not fertile, perhaps it would be a stronger response if I was?) I am more interested in the opposite sex.

It is also interesting to me that I possess a lot of the “estrogenized” features attractive to men (and there is some theory that my features were even more influenced by estrogen while in utero, given my genetic background) like big eyes, small chin, full lips. I am petite and have a curvy derriere (these were all marked as extremely attractive to men and cues of high estrogen content). I find it interesting that I possess cues that say I am good genetic material, even though I was born with a congenital malformation of my hip joints and should not have children (for my own health and so that it is not passed on). Did Mother Nature provide for me by ensuring that I would find a mate to care for me despite the fact that I could not add to the gene pool or is it unrelated? Or just pure luck on my part?

Or if I didn’t develop the hip issue, would I have been a fertile female like my mother? All interesting questions. These things make me want to go back to school and become a scientist to study these things. I want to know how the world works. I want to know all these tricks Mother Nature has hidden in her scheme of things. And I want to market a hormone-based cologne to attract the men like moths to a flame… J Love Potion No. 10.