Men are supposedly pretty shallow. That’s what we’re told, anyway. The idea of being attracted to someone who conforms to the traditional standard of beauty is considered oppressive and wrongheaded, and since that’s what most men like, we’re shallow beings.
However, Newsweek reports that a study found that women and gay men have their own preferences: money and a muscled physique.
The study took a look at data from a website called Tube Crush, which consists of anonymous photos taken on the London subway. Comments on the photos focused primarily on upper body muscles. Writes study author Adrienne Evans:
From smart-suited city workers to toned gym-goers flashing their flesh, the men featured in the photographs on Tube Crush show that as a culture we still celebrate masculinity in the form of money and muscle.
“As a culture”.
The fact is that man as a creature of our current society is just a blip in the history of our species. For much of our time, humanity has been engaged in a near constant struggle for survival — and for women, survival often meant selecting the correct mate. The male who could protect them from attack as well as provide sufficient food, clothing, and shelter for both them and their young.
So ancient women looked at two things: wealth and physical prowess.
Wealth represented a man’s ability to provide, his ability to secure sustenance for the woman and her offspring. Physical prowess represented a man’s ability to physically protect his family from predators, whether they walked on two legs or four.
It’s not about “culture.” You can’t just switch it off. It’s DNA.
For goodness’ sake, I can prove it — men are bigger and stronger than women. Why?
Today, while most women don’t really need to worry about survival, what they look for in a man is encoded within them, so they look at the same thing their prehistoric ancestors did.
That doesn’t mean they won’t be happy with someone who has none of those things, mind you, but it does influence their preferences. It’s also why an unattractive professional male athlete will draw beautiful women who would never give him the time of day if he were a janitor. It’s not that the women are shallow — at least, not intentionally. It means they’re subject to the same tendencies women have been driven by for generations: survival.
Yet this doesn’t matter to Social Justice Warriors, you see. Despite the fact that women have always been attracted to wealth and physical prowess, it’s now considered problematic.
“This celebration of masculine capital is achieved through humor and the knowing wink, but the outcome is a reaffirmation of men’s position in society,” Evans argued. She added that “although it appears as though we have moved forward, our desires are still mostly about money and strength.”
Yes, and they always will be. Pretending otherwise is to deny science.
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