The Red Queen_ Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - Matt Ridley [148]
Likewise, the same scientists video-taped an actor in two simulated interviews, in one of which he sat meekly with head bowed in a chair near the door nodding at the interviewer, while in the other he was relaxed, leaning back and gesturing confidently. When shown the videos women found the more dominant (male) actor more desirable as a date and more sexually attractive, whereas men did not when the actor was female. Body language matters for male sexiness.31
If women select mates on the basis of personality more than men do, this correlates with the fact noted in Chapter 8, and well known to many couples, that women are better judges of character. Good female judges of character left more descendants than bad. Good male judges did no better than bad male judges.
The importance of character may explain why Hollywood directors believe that the perfect box-office draw is a familiar, popular male star and a little known female beauty (and pay them accordingly). Male stars, like Sean Connery or Mel Gibson, build their reputations gradually. Female stars, like Julia Roberts or Sharon Stone, rocket to fame in a single movie. The recipe of the James Bond films was perfect: a new girl every time, but the same old Bond. (Man, though less than some male mammals, exhibits the ‘Coolidge effect’: a new female refreshes his libido. The effect is named after the famous story of President Calvin Coolidge and his wife being shown around a farm. Learning that a cockerel could have sex dozens of times a day, Mrs Coolidge said: ‘Please tell that to the president.’ On being told, Mr Coolidge asked, ‘Same hen every time?’ ‘Oh no, Mr President, a different one each time.’ The president continued: ‘Tell that to Mrs Coolidge.’32)
The evidence that women do use direct clues of male status is overwhelming. American men who marry in a given year earn about one and a half times as much as men of the same age who do not. In a survey of two hundred tribal societies, two scientists confirmed that the handsomeness of a man depends on his skills and prowess rather than his appearance. Dominance in a man is universally considered attractive by women. In Buss’s study of thirty-seven societies, women put more value on men’s financial prospects than vice versa. All in all, as Bruce Ellis put it in a recent review, ‘status and economic achievement are highly relevant barometers of male attractiveness, more so than physical attributes.’33
What are the clues to status? Ellis suggests that clothes and ornaments provide one set of clues: an Armani suit, a Rolex watch and a BMW are as blatantly revealing of rank as any admiral’s sleeve stripes or Sioux chief’s head-dress. In a book that chronicled how fashion has until recently always been a matter of class emulation, Quentin Bell wrote: ‘The history of fashionable dress is tied to the competition between classes, in the first place the emulation of the aristocracy by the bourgeoisie and then the more extended competition which results from the ability of the proletariat to compete with the middle classes … Implicit in the whole is a system of sartorial morality dependent upon pecuniary standards of value.’34
Bobbi Low has surveyed hundreds of societies and come to the conclusion that male ornaments almost always relate to rank and status – maturity, seniority, physical prowess, ferocity, or ability to indulge in conspicuous consumption – whereas female ornaments tend to signal marital or pubertal status and sometimes husband’s wealth. Certainly, a Victorian duchess was emphasizing not her own wealth but her husband’s in the class distinctions of her clothes. This applies as