Up Front: Newsflash: Women Have Eyes
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My apologies for even the merest suggestion that Megan is anything other than ravishing.
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Hi Suraya - I have no opinion on near-nekkid men, but I can say that Panasonic definitely make hi-fi headphones that are too small for a man-sized head. I have such a head and the damn things don't fit!
(Good luck with the mag too)
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3410,
... but I can say that Panasonic definitely make hi-fi headphones that are too small for a man-sized head.
As do Technics.
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Intelligence is far and away the sexiest thing ever, especially the way it can light up in someone's eyes. I've been known to go completely gooey for the kind of eyes that are all pensive one moment and sparking with devilment the next.
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What about men in suits?
A well-cut suit can do wonders for a man's 50 Lire region. Nummy.
I also like, however (and I'm not quite sure how to describe this) a sense in either a man or a woman that they've largely dressed to please themselves, that they have some individuality and flair in what they wear. That could well be a confidence thing too.
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Aephestus was supposedly very ugly indeed
Typical. Always ragging on the engineers for their hideous deformities and lack of success with teh wimminz.
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Always ragging on the engineers for their hideous deformities and lack of success with teh wimminz.
Er... you know whom he was married to, right?
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What about men in suits?
Depends entirely on how he's wearing the suit. If he's feeling good and having fun with his suit wearing then it is hottt but if he's looking all itchy and restricted and like he wants to race home and put on something, anything, else then it's not so sexy (though it could be endearing and endearing can definitely work with the ladies).
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for it is my belief that the most attractive thing about a woman is an air of confidence.
yeah right
So the same eye movement studies Emma mentioned show that those who like women like the hourglass proportion. Size make little difference and neither does an air of confidence, if she has that ratio of bust to waist to hips a women will get looked at. Which is interesting when you consider that models almost never have that ratio.
After that you may well be right, the things that make you want to keep talking to her and noticing she has eyes as well will be things like confidence and the ability to use words with more than two syllables. But the initial "attractiveness" is dependent on that damn ratio, oh and of course youth which is all about reproductive ability.
Pretty much the same is true for guys. The things linked to probable reproductive performance are right up there in initial attractiveness, shoulders, buttocks (as my mother informed me while she "watched" ice skaters), not too much fat although no fat at all isn't good either. Oh and indicators of power.
However as we get past reproductive concerns it may well be true that we look for different things. It would be really interesting to do the same eye movement studies with people in their 40s and 60s and see if we become more interested in indicators of people we might like to talk to and live with rather than just those with which we want to reproduce.
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for it is my belief that the most attractive thing about a woman is an air of confidence.
yeah right
Oh yes, please, if I get to have this conversation one more time I think I'm due to win a motorboat.
You veer dangerously towards the evolutionary biologist's view of what makes people attractive, which may have some generic and general speculative validity but doesn't speak for all of us. So if somebody tells you they are turned on by intelligence or an air of confidence, hey, probably pays to believe them, until you get proof to the contrary. I can certainly think of a lot of people I know, men and women, whose modest conventional attractiveness was greatly supplemented by their personality, intelligence, dress sense and savoir faire. It doesn't mean that the drop dead gorgeous of both sexes will be left biting the dust, but we all have to play with the hand that we are dealt.
(Another cliche and the motorboat gets a minibar.)
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Er... you know whom he was married to, right?
Arranged marriage.
And that didn't stop her sneaking off with that beefcake Ares behind his back.
See, women tell you they want a thinker, and someone who's good around the house, but then they're off making eyes at some well-chisled murdering munter in a nicely-tailored uniform.
I kid, I kid.
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Arranged marriage.
Hey, it just came back to me: Oliver Reed and Uma Thurman! Boy, was that a genius piece of casting, or what?
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Er... you know whom he was married to, right?
Indeed, a woman who was not averse to a bit of take-out.
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That's extremely reductionist, Bart.
I absolutely believe that when a large group is sampled, these tendencies in preference emerge. But how strong is that preference? What is the deviation in the range of preferences? I suspect that any given person's preferences are likely to differ from these statistical averages substantially.
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I can certainly think of a lot of people I know, men and women, whose modest conventional attractiveness was greatly supplemented by their personality, intelligence, dress sense and savoir faire.
Consider, people who are not attractive in photographs, but in person always attract attention and never appear to be 'short of options'.
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See, women tell you they want a thinker, and someone who's good around the house, but then they're off making eyes at some well-chisled murdering munter in a nicely-tailored uniform.
Okay, now see, that's hardly fair when in one's head Ares looks like this.
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It would be really interesting to do the same eye movement studies with people in their 40s and 60s and see if we become more interested in indicators of people we might like to talk to and live with rather than just those with which we want to reproduce.
Or, y'know, gay people.
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Sorry Gio didn't realise you'd had this conversation before.
At the risk of arguing semantics what I was referring to was the initial attractiveness, if you like ... "the made you look" factor. So I'm happy to stand by the studies that show regardless of what people say makes them attracted to other people, when you do the studies, what makes them look and makes them look for longer at some people than others, turns out to be some very basic proportions. The evolutionary argument comes after that observation and the evolutionary argument may be wrong but the observation is not in question.
And of course you are right that like all such studies with real humans there is variation, but interestingly there is a lot less variation than for most other such studies. You may like to believe you are different but the odds are very good that you are normal.
That doesn't have much to do with what makes you want to keep looking the next morning or what makes you want to keep talking to someone or spend your life with them. And it also has nothing to do with discovering that some people are really nice to be with even if they don't look attractive (gasp). But since this thread is about a magazine with pictures of men that are meant to be attractive, it is kinda relevant.
So does that make the comment a cliche?
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Stephen I'm not trying to be reductionist at all. It's just an observation that has been made many times in many different studies. And as I said it's an observation with less variation than you normally get when studying real people.
It's not about long term relationships or anything like that - just the initial "attractiveness" bit, that turns your head or makes you look at a magazine page just a bit longer.
Or, y'know, gay people.
That was the really cool thing about the initial studies and one of the most controversial. It demonstrated that gay men and women liked the same features about men and gay women and men liked the same features about women.
that was controversial because it showed really clearly that gay people actually really were "attracted" to the same sex. That is, it wasn't just a "choice".
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Sorry Gio didn't realise you'd had this conversation before.
Not at all. I enjoy it.
So I'm happy to stand by the studies that show regardless of what people say makes them attracted to other people, when you do the studies, what makes them look and makes them look for longer at some people than others, turns out to be some very basic proportions.
Ah, but the first look doesn't tell the whole story. Not even in a magazine, I would argue - photogeniticity must have something to do with how you are able, however artfully, to project an allure, something else about you other than your raw measurements and features.
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that was controversial because it showed really clearly that gay people actually really were "attracted" to the same sex. That is, it wasn't just a "choice".
And that's controversial for whom? His Holiness?
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Ah, but the first look doesn't tell the whole story.
Sure. Happy to agree with you about that second look and especially about the look that lingers after the third date. But of course that's all about pheromones :P.
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And that's controversial for whom? His Holiness?
Hell yeah. The first studies were done in the netherlands and caused all sorts of crap to start flying in the Catholic community.
It undercut one of the major arguments against gay rights and so played a political role as well. If gays really were biologically different then it would be wrong to discriminate, however if it was "merely" a choice well then surely the government had a responsibility to "help" them rectify that er wrong choice. Which of course was bollocks and these studies made such arguments particularly easy to dismiss.
Which just meant even more silly arguments were raised - sigh.
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If gays really were biologically different then it would be wrong to discriminate
Much as it shouldn't be, 'choice' is still an issue, and a major argument against equal rights in the US. It was obviously still a Big Deal for John Barrowman when he made the BBC documentary The Making of Me a couple of years back, which I cannot recommend highly enough
(part one of six)
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Oh and just in case I'm coming across as all clinical and biological about this stuff - I think all these things we discover about attractiveness - ratios, symmetry and pheromones - are incredibly romantic. I love the fact that there are parts of me that are hard-wired to fall in love with my sweetheart. Or is that just geeky?
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