Decoding Love - Andrew Trees [69]
Most of the women reading this book are not lap dancers, but researchers have found that fertility has a number of similar effects on women in general. For example, men looked at pictures of the same women when they were ovulating and when they were not ovulating and rated them as more attractive during their ovulation. As with Miller’s study, researchers are not entirely sure why this is the case. They think that men are responding to subtle cues related to things like lip color, pupil dilation, and skin tone. A woman’s fertility cycle also appears to alter her behavior. For example, researchers have found that women dress more provocatively and wear more jewelry during ovulation. Another study revealed that ovulating women send out more signals to attract men than their nonovulating counterparts. Ovulation even appears to influence a woman’s voice. In a recent study, men and women listened to recordings of women’s voices at different periods in their fertility cycles, and researchers found that women at their peak fertility were judged to have the most attractive voices. So, it turns out that women who want to get pregnant are not the only ones who should keep track of their ovulation cycle. Any woman who wants to meet a man should do the same and, at the very least, try to schedule dates during her days of peak fertility. One other piece of advice if you are a lap dancer or just trying to meet someone: being on the pill comes with a cost. According to the study, lap dancers on the pill averaged only thirty-seven dollars an hour (hardly different from menstruating women), while women not on the pill averaged fifty-three dollars. With a difference that stark, you can be sure that the pill has a similar effect on the appeal of women in general.
LADIES’ NIGHT
Even if most of us aren’t lap dancers, virtually all of us have spent some time in the belly of the beast: the bar scene, which has been the site of far more research than you might imagine. That’s right. Even the humble bar is a site of scientific interest—seedbed of bad pickup lines, drunken one-night stands, and even the occasional long-term romance. But not as far removed from the earlier chapters in this book as you might imagine. Think all the way back to the section on the precious egg and the profligate sperm. The same logic still applies, which means, for all of you astute evolutionary psychologists out there, that women are far more in control in this arena than it might appear. So, you can jettison all those cultural stereotypes about men being the aggressors and women being their passive playthings. Because, according to the research, it’s ladies first or, as biologists have dubbed it, female proceptivity.
However, women can’t simply walk up to a man, slap him on the back, and offer to buy him a drink. Studies show that women who are seen as taking the initiative with men are perceived negatively. This seems to be a paradox. Remember, though, the mating dance is not a simple, straightforward matter of ask and answer. It’s all about subtle (usually nonverbal) signals and cues.
Let’s start with a fairly simple demonstration of this principle at work. Many women have at one time or another found themselves attracted to a man but uncertain about how to get him to approach her. The answer is quite simple: eye contact, especially combined with a smile. Okay, you say, but how much eye contact? Again, the answer is simple: a lot—probably far more than most women are comfortable with! In a 1985 study, researchers set up a simple test. They had an attractive woman target a man roughly ten feet away and then see what it took to get him to approach her within ten minutes. They tried several variations: eye contact once or several times and either alone or paired with