by Jesse James
Females seeking long-term mates may not experience any attraction whatsoever to muscular men. According to the strategic pluralism theory, men pursue different reproductive strategies based on their mate value as short-term or long-term lovers.124 Sexually attractive men maximize their reproductive potential by engaging in casual affairs with multiple partners, rather than settling down with one woman. Such men spread their seed far and wide. Because less attractive men enjoy fewer mating opportunities than their muscular compadres, they invest more in one female and her offspring, increasing their mate value as husbands. Women find less-muscular husbands more attractive since they are more loyal and more willing to invest in the female and her offspring. The rich guy with a pot belly will stick around longer than the raging young buck with bulging biceps. Or so the theory goes.
I can barely lift a wet noodle over my head, much less an iron bar. The last time I saw the inside of a gym was when I ran through my high school weight room being chased by the football team after shooting fireworks at the prom dance. And yet, I have slept with hundreds of women over the past twenty years, without allowing any of them to imprison me behind a white picket fence or stuff a puppy dog in my lap. Hallelujah.
As a lifelong philanderer, I have learned to compensate for my lack of muscularity in other ways; humor, intelligence, money, status, winning personality, dominance displays, and best-selling books. Muscles do not make the man.
One of my friends is a real estate developer who spends twelve-hour days overseeing large commercial projects like building skyscrapers and shopping malls. He played football as a youth, but the glory days are over; his muscles have turned flabby and limp. He hasn’t seen a bench press in twenty years. His belly is a little too large, his hair a bit too thin. Yet he had no trouble finding a beautiful wife and he cavorts with multiple mistresses. I doubt the young bucks at the local gym have it so good.
Life is short. We can only dedicate so much time and effort to any one activity. My real estate friend has no time to work out. He is better off doing what he does best – building skyscrapers – than trying to tone up those flaccid biceps.
Nevertheless, improving your muscularity is one way to increase your sex appeal, especially for short-term encounters. An intelligent, interesting, high status and muscular man clearly enjoys an edge over an intelligent, interesting, high status and scrawny (or obese) man. All other things being equal (they never are), it is better to sport some muscles than look like you spent the last ten years in a Russian gulag.
Use your limited time wisely, improving aspects of your personality and life where you can make the most effective, most rapid improvements. Could you make faster and more successful changes elsewhere in your life by increasing your status, earning more money, developing a wicked sense of humor, becoming a leader, learning more about women, or improving your wardrobe? By all means, visit the gym regularly, but don’t pitch a tent in the weight room like ‘The Situation’ on Jersey Shore. Become the next John F. Kennedy, not the next Chester Yorton.
Can’t Get Enough of Your Voice, Babe
‘Can’t get enough of your love, babe’ sings Barry White. And apparently women couldn’t get enough of his deep voice. Despite being severely overweight his entire life, White married twice and fathered nine children. Recent studies suggest that Barry White’s deep voice contributed to his reproductive success.
Women find deep, low-pitched male voices sexier than high-pitched voices, according to the latest research. The deeper voice of Luciano Pavarotti stimulates women more than the higher-pitched voice of Truman Capote. One study found that American men with lower-pitched voices enjoyed a larger number of sexual partners than men with higher-pitched voices.125 Another study, involving the Hadza population of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, found that men with lower-pitched voices had more children than men with higher-pitched voices. Deep-voiced Hadza men enjoyed greater sexual success with females, allowing them to increase their reproductive advantage. Researchers conclude that men with low voice pitch have greater reproductive success and more children.126
Evolutionary anthropologist David Puts discovered that women prefer deep-voiced men for purely sexual, short-term encounters. He obtained audio recordings of 30 men attempting to persuade a woman to go on a romantic date. Then he played the recordings for 142 heterosexual women, asking them to rate each man’s attractiveness for either a short-term sexual affair or a long-term relationship. While women rated the deeper voices more attractive in both cases, they dramatically preferred the men with deeper voices when considering them as short-term sexual partners. He also found that women in the fertile phase of their cycle showed the strongest preference for deep voices.127
A deep voice is the sound of symmetry. Women pursuing a short-term mating strategy – casual sex – tend to favor a ‘good genes’ approach. Low-pitched voices suggest good body symmetry, indicating a robust immune system and fewer genetic mutations during development. When a woman finds a man’s voice even sexier during ovulation, it means she is attracted to the potential symmetry for her possible offspring. Women judge men with lower-pitched voices to be ‘healthier, more masculine, more physically dominant, somewhat older, more socially dominant and more respected by their peers.’128
Evolutionary biologist Susan Hughes also found that men with deep voices have a higher shoulder-to-hip ratio – the elusive V-shaped torso – that women prefer for casual sexual partners.
Crank up the James Earle Jones. Scientists recently discovered that women are more likely to remember what men with deep voices say. David Smith at the University of Aberdeen found that a woman’s memory is sensitive to the pitch of a man’s voice. Researchers showed ninety-one female participants images of various objects while playing high and low pitched voices describing the objects. Women best recalled the objects described by low-pitched male voices. ‘Our findings demonstrate that women’s memory is enhanced with lower pitch male voices, compared with the less attractive raised pitch male voices,’ reports Mr. Smith and his colleagues.129
The human male larynx is about 20% larger than the human female larynx, leading some scientists to speculate that low-pitched voices evolved as a kind of mating call, similar to bullfrogs and koalas. The male bullfrog’s mating call - a slow, deep guttural g-r-r-u-u-u-u-m – drives female bullfrogs wild. And the deeper the better, pretty please, with a cherry on top.
Koalas may be cute and cuddly, but their mating calls sound like the bellows of bison. Male koalas advertise their manhood by emitting loud, deep, guttural yells, suggesting their size and genetic quality to admiring females. Muscles anchored deep in the thorax allow koalas to pull their larynx back even further to make deeper, more guttural, lower pitched mating calls. Observing a group of 20 male koalas during the 2010 koala breeding season at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Australia, scientists found that lower-pitched bellows correlated to larger body size. Females find larger koalas sexier than smaller ones, presumably because the big guys can dominate and intimidate lesser rivals. The Darth Vader of koalas enjoys more sexual success than his Truman Capote counterpart.130
Sexual selection may explain the origins of human music and song as a form of peacocking, with males advertising their body symmetry, testosterone levels, and genetic superiority by the tone of their voice. Indeed, Barry White’s rumbling basso might not be so different than a peacock’s tail.
The Suya tribe live on the Suya-Micu River, native to Mato Grosso, Brazil. Their ceremonies, taking place in the village square, center on music and oral traditions. Most Suya music is vocal, aimed at story-telling, speech-making, and passing on their history and culture in verse. Known as ‘akia,’ men sing at the same time in the central square before all the people of the village. Absent a unified song or tune, each man performs entirely on his own. Only adult males participate in such auditory braggadocio. The vocal displays of the Suya and other hunter-gatherer tribes provide a competitive forum for men to advertise their genetic value through the tone o
f their voices. In terms of evolutionary function, Suya music differs little from the male bullfrog’s mating call or koala’s bellow.
A deep voice is sexy – this much we know. But not everyone is born with Leonard Cohen’s larynx. Some men sound more like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Deepening your voice is possible through a combination of hard work and determination. Lowering your voice pitch gives you a competitive advantage over higher-pitched rivals. Women will remember more of what you say and consider you more attractive. Ovulating women who do not use birth control will find you especially irresistible.
Lowering your voice is easier than elevating your height. One option is voice-deepening surgery. Remember those Chinese doctors? The operation involves physically modifying the voice box, a procedure just as dangerous as it sounds. Unless your voice shatters glass, X-men style, consider this option a last resort.
Testosterone injections deepen a man’s voice. If low testosterone levels are responsible for your high-pitched screech, then artificially boosting your male hormones might help you sound more like Stevie Ray Wonder. Unfortunately, testosterone is quite dangerous, correlating to increased risk of cancer and immune deficiency.
Voice training and conditioning offers your best option for developing a sexy rumble. Like biceps or abs, the voice box is just a group of muscles which can be worked and trained to produce the desired effect.
Try projecting your voice from the lower part of your throat. Speak in the lowest pitch you can, noting where you feel the sound originating. Many prominent speakers and politicians with naturally high-pitched voices employ this trick during public orations. Unfortunately, overuse of this technique could damage your vocal cords.
John F. Kennedy popped out of the womb with status, wealth, power, and good looks. He had everything – except a deep voice. In casual conversation, Kennedy used his natural, high-pitched tone. During debates or speeches, however, he projected sound from his lower throat to broadcast a manlier, authoritative voice befitting a President. As a result, he often experienced hoarseness and even voice loss due to wear and tear on his vocal cords.
Like JFK, you can deepen your voice naturally with practice and hard work. The internet offers a huge volume of information on voice deepening therapy, including many exercises that you can practice throughout the day. Be careful; some of these techniques damage your vocal cords, while many do not. Train your voice just like you train your muscles at the gym.
Deepening your voice pays huge dividends in the world of seduction, giving you a competitive advantage over lower-pitched rivals. Even if you are muscular, attractive, high-status and confident, can you afford to sound like Pee-Wee Herman?
Plato’s Sex Tips
Why are men necessary for sex? Men play a fifty percent role in the creation of new life, but why didn’t human females evolve the ability to simply churn out babies on their own, absent the need for male sperm? Wouldn’t it be easier to spawn a child without the huss-and-fuss of a relationship? The simple question ‘why are men necessary at all?’ has baffled scientists from Darwin to Dawkins.
Female bdelloid rotifers don’t need a husband, or even a sexual partner, to reproduce. In fact, all bdelloid rotifers are female, evolving the ability to reproduce asexually millions of years ago, a skill known as parthenogenesis.
Higher up the food chain, hammerhead and blacktip sharks also enjoy the convenience of asexual reproduction on rare occasions. It’s fast, it’s easy, and you don’t need to pick up the dinner tab. In December 2001, scientists were shocked when a baby female hammerhead mysteriously appeared in a tank at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo. The tank held three adult female hammerheads, but no males.131
Apart from bdelloid rotifers, some stick insects, a few reptiles, and two known instances of parthenogenesis in sharks, virgin birth is almost unheard-of in the animal world. Asexual reproduction seems like a quick-and-dirty solution to genetic eternity, which begs the question why it occurs in just a handful of the hundreds of thousands of species on planet earth.
Imagine if women could make their own babies without all the headaches of awkward candlelight dinners, bad movie dates, sixty minute makeup sessions and outrageous cosmetics expenses, not to mention the emotional devastation of breakups and divorce.
Luckily for you, dear reader, men are necessary after all. Sex isn’t about making a bigger, stronger, faster, smarter animal; it’s all about making a healthier one. Genetic variety – the boon of male sperm added to a female egg - increases the offspring’s resistance to disease in a never-ending game of cat-and-mouse between parasites and their hosts. The ‘Red Queen theory’ argues that sexual selection favors traits which advertise resistance to parasites. Matt Ridley points out that ‘sex is about disease. It is used to combat the threat from parasites. Organisms need sex to keep their genes one step ahead of their parasites. Men are not redundant after all; they are woman’s insurance policy against her children being wiped out by influenza and smallpox.’ 132
Sex enables parents to create offspring that are genetically unique. Parasites which adapted to infect the mother or father have difficulty infecting the next generation. Offspring born through asexual reproduction enjoy no such protection, sharing exactly the same DNA as their mother. Since they are basically clones – exact replicas of a single parent – any parasites capable of infecting the mother could also infect her offspring. Absent genetic diversity, a parasite could evolve to wipe out the entire population, or even the entire species, which might explain why so few animals reproduce asexually. The price for ‘do-it-yourself’ babies is extinction.
Whew. Good to know your sperm is required to keep a woman’s child from being eaten alive by the Pox.
Looking for love? Bring a white gown and stethoscope. The Red Queen theory suggests that mating decisions involve medical examinations of potential mates. We’re attracted to people whose genetic contribution will help us produce disease-resistant offspring. Researchers note that the Red Queen theory ‘proposes that beauty of bodily form is perceived as a cue to high parasite resistance by animals in choosing mates.’133
In simple terms, this theory suggests that a pretty girl who sees you in a club unconsciously evaluates you for potential genetic compatibility; will the resulting offspring resist disease? We’ve already learned how women can sniff out compatible partners by sensitivity to the scent of their MHC gene complex. Facial symmetry provides another important cue to parasite resistance, offering a quick-and-easy way to evaluate a potential mate.
Christopher Marlowe writes that Helen of Troy was ‘the face that launched a thousand ships.’ Rumored to be the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen eloped with Paris of Troy. Enraged, the Greeks deployed a fearsome armada to win her back, initiating the Trojan War. How did Helen cast such an intoxicating spell over the men of ancient Greece?
Oscar Wilde got it wrong when he wrote that ‘A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.’ It turns out that a woman’s face is her autobiography too, or at least a short excerpt on her resistance to disease. The secret to Helen’s beauty was her symmetrical face, which belied her strong immune system, low mutation load, and ability to combat parasites. Good genes, in other words, made Helen the Angelina Jolie of ancient Sparta.
Philosophers and scientists have long suspected a connection between beauty and symmetry. Plato investigated the ‘golden proportions’ of an ideal face, speculating that a perfect facial width would be two-thirds of its length, with a nose no longer than the distance between the eyes. During the second half of the twentieth century, scientists discovered that people with symmetrical faces enjoy increased resistance to disease and a stronger ability to combat parasites compared to their less symmetrical counterparts. Not surprisingly, humans evolved an ability to use facial symmetry as a cue to genetic fitness. Helen drove Greek men wild not with her flowing blond hair, deep blue eyes, or sumptuous figure – but by showing off her robust immune system through perfect facial symmetr
y. Symmetry is sexy. Mystery solved.
Those of us born with an asymmetrical face swim upstream against biology. Plastic surgery is an option for someone whose face appears grotesquely lopsided, but the expense and risk deters most people. One could try hiring an ‘image consultant,’ Hollywood-style. Not all movie stars enjoy the same beautiful facial symmetry as Natalie Portman or Brad Pitt, so image specialists have learned some tricks to improve the on-camera appearance of facial symmetry. Such techniques involve eyebrow maintenance and makeup application, which works better on women and produces no long-term physical changes in facial structure. Closely set eyes are unattractive and asymmetrical; glasses with a clear or thin bridge make the space between your eyes appear wider.
Some battles are worth fighting, others not. Outside of drastic plastic surgery, one’s options for permanently repairing facial asymmetry appear limited. Luckily, symmetry is not the only quality that females find attractive in a man’s face.
Women also love a ‘healthy glow.’ A recent study by Ian Penton Voak, an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol in the U.K., found that women prefer men with yellow or red skin over ghostly white. No surprise there – just watch an episode of Jersey Shore. Dr. Voak’s insight was that skin tone trumped virtually all other facial characteristics in measures of sexiness, including symmetry and masculinity.
Penton-Voak and colleagues snapped 20 photos of Caucasian men in northern England, mathematically quantifying their facial colors and masculinity. Researchers then asked twenty-one women to rate the attractiveness of each man’s picture. The women judged men with yellow and red skin tones as sexier and more desirable than those with a pale complexion. Next, the scientists digitally morphed the original photos into more masculine or more feminine faces, asking subjects to select the more attractive version. The women overwhelmingly ignored masculinity, instead choosing faces with a healthy glow. Goodbye computer gamer, hello surfer dude.134