Gratuitous nude gallery of Natalia A here.
This item made me fascinated; not in a totally snarky way, but in a ‘I wonder who their samples were, what populations they asked, etc.’ because that would actually give me some useful data. Sex and attraction studies are oft cited for generalizations in media because they’re supposedly backed by a reliable data set. I’m always the (ahem) “activist” sex writer who wants to know what’s behind the curtains. Yeah, I might have been the asshole on the porn panel again last weekend at the Cybernet expo. Whatever. So what if I was wearing my “This ain’t no smash and grab: it’s a revolution” t-shirt to talk about sex writing for the porn business, who have historically simultaneously hated and loved me? The article that got me started: Men agree on what’s hot in the opposite sex (but girls do not), snip:
Men agree on what is attractive in the opposite sex far more than women do, says a study. The survey of 4,000 adults found that most men liked women who were thin and posing seductively.
Women, in contrast, were enticed by a far wider range of male characteristics. The results could explain why women feel pressured to conform to a narrow view of attractiveness, and suffer more eating disorders, the scientists said.
Participants in the study rated photographs of men and women aged 18 to 25 for attractiveness.Men’s judgments of women were based primarily around physical features, with a preference for the thin.
As a group, the women rating men showed some preference for thin, muscular subjects, but disagreed on how attractive many men in the study were. Some gave high ratings to men that other women said were not attractive at all. The study by U.S psychologists appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
One of the authors, psychologist Dustin Wood said: ‘The study helps explain why women experience stronger norms than men to obtain or maintain certain physical characteristics.
katie priceQueen of the seductive pose: Katie Price ticks the boxes for men as she is thin and confident
‘Men agree a lot more about who they find attractive and unattractive than women agree about who they find attractive and unattractive. (…read more, dailymail.co.uk)
Fuck! Bitches are so mysterious and confusing! So like a woman; can’t make up their minds… we’re just as mysterious as our orgasms… Being a sex nerd and occasional jerk about this stuff, I found the cited source online, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and found no such study. Where did it go? Instead, I found the even nerdier-fascinatingly titled, Interacting with sexist men triggers social identity threat among female engineers.
Me, I like ’em hot, bitter, nerdy, dark, funny and a reckless. The rest (clothes, hair, willingness to get/give a good spanking, willful brattiness, bad reputation, nice ass) usually matches my criteria.
Hmmm…I’d have to see the whole writeup of the original b/c I’m curious about how much got lost in translation from peer-reviewed journal article and the splashy media headline/slant. I’m suspicious of the news article because it probably oversimplifies the authors’ findings and leaves out the many many qualifiers that good researchers add to make sure that their work stays in context.
I suspect that this idea that “men agree on what is attractive” is more an outgrowth of the very strong social pressure to adhere to the narrow confines of masculinity and that certainly includes the realm of sex and attraction. Straight men have to stay in a very small box to avoid being called “gay” and that includes knowing that when one is asked, he should claim to love those Barbie babes that are put out there as the “ideal.” Many men actually choose their mates over a larger range of looks and other qualities, just like women do. In all social research, there is a disconnect between what people SAY they like and what they SAY they do, and their personal reality. Women have more play in their sexuality and their preferences and feel more free to voice their personal preferences, which as in the case of just about every human trait or proclivity, vary over a very very wide distribution.
As my Nana always said, “Every pot finds a lid”. :)
Chris — thanks for this! however, I did see that. but I (unlike the Daily Mail) differentiated between “attractiveness” and “finding a mate [ostensibly seeking procreation characteristics, rather than “attraction” which I believe is different sex and long-term or pair mating criteria]. not disagreeing, just sayin’. highly likely that Daily Mail is skewing the results to mean attractiveness (lust) for pageviews and oversimplifying/justifying male/female stereotypes, rather than report on a study that’s actually about characteristics sought in hetero sets for mating/breeding.
Your commentary is really interesting since the Daily Mail article doesn’t have a “citation” in it. However, if you search for Dustin Wood at the website of the Journal, you can easily find this article:
Wood D & Brumbaugh C. (2009). Using revealed mate preferences to evaluate market force and differential preference explanations for mate selection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(6), 1226-1244.
This is clearly the study referred to.
Ahh, the Daily Mail – bastion of all that is proper in middle class British life. An interesting article to see from them, given the reaction to Filament not too long ago:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1190425/Filament-A-new-erotic-magazine-women-believes-images-like-turn-Hardly.html