female sexual motivation

Chapter 14 The Pleasure of Conquest (1)
hunting and looting

It is not enough to be successful, someone has to fail.

— Gore Vidal (b. 1925)

The hit dating show "The Bachelor" in the United States is a true portrayal of Qunfang Lianyan, although the form is not lacking in exaggeration and artificiality.Millions of viewers sit in front of their TVs each week and relish watching 25 women vie for a bachelor.These 25 women are well-dressed, charming and ostentatious, showing their talents, and even throwing themselves into their arms, hoping to capture their true soul.Of course, the bachelors selected by the program group are definitely diamond-level, tall and handsome, calm, charming, sexy, and successful in their careers.The male guests on the show's first thirteen seasons have included a successful business consultant, the vice chairman of a family-owned bank chain, a self-made loan company owner, a professional soccer player, an actor from the TV show "ER," a cosmetics entrepreneur, and a part-timer. Physician for all-around athletes and naval officers, owner of several large bars, international financier, account manager, etc.

In this reality show, the male guests date different female guests consecutively, sometimes alone, sometimes in two or several couples together.At the end of each episode, some female guests are eliminated.At the end of each season, the male guest chooses his favorite and (sometimes) proposes.As the program progressed, the courtship battle became more and more intense.The contestants not only slandered other opponents behind their backs, but also dressed more and more provocatively, and their words and deeds became more and more seductive.As one viewer put it, "In the end, these women became almost like uneducated middle school girls."Some people even said that the program was rude, hypocritical, insulting to women, oppressing women, superficial, artificial, pathetic, etc.Despite this, according to Nielsen ratings, there are still more than 1100 million viewers obsessed with this game, and most of them are women. (Later, the "Single Women" reality show was spawned. The format of the show was just the opposite. 25 male guests competed for a single woman, and the female guest invited in the first season turned out to be the "unselected" in "The Bachelor". of a woman.)
When it comes to courtship battles, most of us picture males dueling each other, or seeing stags bump into each other in nature documentaries.Indeed, in different human cultures, males are more prone to violent physical conflicts.From the ancient Aztec sacrificial wrestling - winning or losing determines life and death, to today's NBA basketball game, men fight each other, fighting for status and honor.In primitive society, in order to defeat each other, men would strive to hunt high-calorie meat, but in today's society, men will show their status and wealth in a more subtle way, such as through prestige or fame. Said one founder of Dating Banker Anonymous: "He was the king of dragons, aggressive, omnipotent, no one could say no to him, confident and feared, which made him aggressive. character."

In fact, the struggle between males was so ostentatious that Darwin, and many scientists after him, overlooked an important evolutionary and energetic drive: the courtship battle between females.A woman interviewed once talked about how she used sex to defeat her rival:

My boyfriend loves the attention, and soon after we started dating, he sneaked up with another woman.When I first found out, it was overwhelming and unacceptable.Then I decided to prove that I was the one he loved the most.I like to be intimate with him, and now I find that it is also about defeating the third party.

—Heterosexual female, 18 years old

Although the courtship competition between females has been a blind spot for generations of scientists, almost everyone now admits that females are no less competitive than males.

From an evolutionary perspective, the reason is simple: different men need women to different degrees, or, as the saying goes, good men are hard to find.So it’s no exaggeration to say that every woman alive today is an evolutionary legend—and that’s one worth pausing for a moment.

In the long process of human evolution, those women who can finally win high-quality men will have multiple advantages-good genes, healthy offspring, abundant survival resources, higher social status, and so on.For our ancestors, these advantages meant successful reproduction, directly in terms of having more children, and indirectly in terms of having more grandchildren because they were physically fit and more sexually attractive.So behind every woman there are countless mothers who have successfully reproduced.

There is a heated debate in psychology as to whether women's current courtship motivations and behaviors are primarily driven by evolutionary instincts or subconscious influences.Sometimes those two aspects coincide.In our survey, we found that women's descriptions of their own sexual motivations were very similar to evolutionary assumptions.

In recent decades, women's mate selection seems to have become more competitive, which may be due to the media's overwhelming and hyped entertainment news about celebrity husbands, such as Debbie Reynolds's husband was taken by Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Aniston's husband was snatched by Angelina Jolie, and more.Star babies under the spotlight are sought after by tens of millions of fans, and the current entertainment programs have a bit of erotic elements, so people often regard these high-ranking stars as potential rivals in love, although their partners have no chance to know the stars at all, let alone Maybe having an affair with a celebrity.The current situation is that people don't take real rivals seriously. Instead, they worry that their lovers will have fantasies about celebrities, and they are determined to use various means to tie their lovers' hearts.

This chapter discusses how women overcome their rivals in the competition for lovers and lovers.Here we specifically analyze the situation of "digging the wall", that is, taking someone's love and being a third party.First, we analyze the two strategies that women usually use: to increase their own sexual attractiveness, and to denigrate the sexual attractiveness of their rivals.

Enchanted
There is no doubt that whether looking for a lover or a lover, men like attractive.Social scientists have always believed that only men in the United States, other Western countries, and other societies with more developed visual media love beautiful women, but this is not the case. Everyone has the desire to love beautiful women, as long as men love beautiful women.

According to the law of sexual selection, mate preference is generally the content of courtship competition.In other words, competition among men reflects women's mate preferences, and competition among women reflects men's mate preferences.Therefore, men often pursue status and wealth, and show off their sense of humor, wisdom, and muscular body, because these are what women like; similarly, women also do everything possible to obtain the qualities that men think are sexy, the most important of which is Just looks.

Harvard psychology professor Nancy?Etcoff said Americans spend far more money on beauty than education and social services.Within the United States, Americans buy 2136960 lipsticks and 2959200 bottles of skin care products every day.Approximately 30 women undergo breast augmentation surgery each year.The Bath Evolutionary Psychology Laboratory interviewed women to find out the most common and effective means they use to attract the opposite sex - most of which have to do with beauty:

learn makeup;

Make up every day;

diet to lose weight;

dress fashionably;

dress up;

Trendy hairstyle;

Dressing time exceeds 1 hour;

comb hair carefully;

tanned into a wheat complexion;

Wear earrings, necklaces, or other jewelry.

Not surprisingly, far more women wear makeup than men (although men wear it now too).Twice as many women as men spend an hour a day applying makeup, and 50 percent more likely than men to sunbathe or sunbathe for a tanned complexion.Although men are spending more and more time and energy on grooming themselves now, they cannot be compared with women at all - women spend almost 10 times as much time and energy on beauty products as men.

Women have been consumers of fashion and beauty products since ancient times. Women wear high heels to look slimmer, dress to flatter their waists, and conditioner to smooth hair.All of this grooming is designed to make women look youthful, flawless, alive, in other words, sexy.

The researchers surveyed singles bars and found that "most women go home after work to 'fix' before going to the bar: usually showering, shampooing, re-makeup, and changing clothes three or four times. Done. 'Grooming is more important to us women than it is for men to care as much about how they look.'" Well-groomed women attract more potential mates, which means a wider range of choices.

It matters whether women are looking for dewy love or lasting love.Generally speaking, an attractive appearance is more effective in a casual sexual relationship, because in a long-term relationship, men not only look at the appearance, but also look at other aspects of the other party, such as intelligence, character, honesty, and loyalty.And women who have casual sex will dress up very enchantingly, for example, wearing tights, clothes showing cleavage, shoulders and back, miniskirts showing thighs, and so on.Voluptuous and sexy appearance can generally help women seduce temporary sexual partners.Sending out provocative signals can also greatly arouse men's sex-hunting psychology, such as chest up, bending over to show breasts, looking at each other for a long time, twisting hips sharply when walking, and licking lips seductively.All of these strategies can make men aroused, so women have more choices.

Rhythmic competition for ovulation

Interestingly, how well a woman grooms changes with her ovulation cycle—at least for those women who aren't using oral contraceptives.Evolutionary psychologist Christina Durant and colleagues conducted an experiment in which women were asked to come to the lab twice a week—once when they were ovulating and once when they were not.Each time, the participating women were photographed full-body and asked to draw a picture of what they would wear to a social event.It was found that compared with other women, women who were ovulating wore sexier clothes on that day, and the clothes they drew were more revealing.Women who were more sexually casual — who said they were sexually open and had multiple partners — dressed more sexually.Durant and colleagues say this tendency suggests that ovulating women have a stronger desire to outwit their competitors.

Similar results were found in a study by German scientists who used digital cameras to photograph women in singles bars and then interviewed them. The computer then analyzed the percentage of women in the photos with bare skin and found that ovulation period of women wear more revealing clothes than non-ovulating women.Ovulating women dress themselves up to attract the attention of the opposite sex.At the University of California, Los Angeles, evolutionary psychologist Matt Haselton led a team of scientists to conduct experiments and found that women who ovulate wear more beautiful, fashionable and revealing clothes.

Ovulation period also affects women's consumption behavior.In one study, women's consumption was tracked through simulated online shopping items to see when they purchased products that enhanced their competitiveness, such as clothes, shoes, underwear, jewelry and other fashion accessories.Women love to buy sexy and revealing clothes when they are close to ovulation, and this shopping tendency is even more obvious when they think that they are surrounded by beautiful people of the same sex.

Plus, multiple studies have shown that ovulating women groom themselves to stand out in courtship battles.The interviewed women said that they would like to go to parties or clubs more during the ovulation period, because they can take this opportunity to meet the opposite sex.And women are more likely to flirt with men they don't know when they're close to or when they're ovulating.When ovulation is at its peak, women perceive other men of the same sex as unattractive.Evolutionary scientist Marianne Fischer believes this proves that ovulating women are more competitive with the same sex and more eager to "overwhelm" potential rivals.Another evolutionist, Carl Grammer, interviewed women at a discotheque and found that women who described their clothes as "sexy" and "bold" tended to have a clear sexual motive: to flirt with or sleep with a man.

From an evolutionary point of view, women are most competitive in choosing a mate when they are close to ovulation.Making the right romantic decisions at this stage of conception is crucial, and making the wrong choices can be costly.It's about reproduction and survival.If women at this time can defeat their competitors in the courtship war and finally win an excellent mate, the evolutionary significance will be huge.

gained a reputation as a whore

However, women who dress voluptuously also run a risk: they may tarnish their own reputations.One interviewed woman talked about the trade-off relationship between success in dodging and reputation for chastity:
After months of being called around by him, I finally broke up.I've been in a long relationship before.Now I feel... relieved.We met at a friend's party, and he was so handsome and charming that I fell in love with him.Then I found that almost all the women present were talking about him.There was a "slut" in particular, I thought he would fall under her skirt before the evening... she would bring back dubious men every night, so I wanted to experience what it was like .So I joined her sex-hunting game and won it all... But success comes at a price.

—Heterosexual female, 20 years old

Of course, in different cultures, people have completely different attitudes towards "suave".But promiscuous women are prone to all sorts of stigma, of which there are dozens in the English language alone.Modern vocabulary includes horse, whore, sloppy woman, prostitute, scum, etc., and older vocabulary includes whore, slut, bitch, rotten shoes, scumbag, etc.In addition to these slurs, jealousy among women can also trigger a series of poisonous tongues.Bass Lab has done research on this and found that women who are hostile to each other will call each other promiscuity; tell others that she only wants to have sex; All comers are welcome; call her "slutty"; and so on.

By ruining a competitor's reputation, you can achieve specific goals: keep other women from being friends with her, and men from long-term relationships with her.In a mate rivalry, it pays to discredit others while elevating yourself, because it narrows your rival's pool of mates and expands your own—albeit with the art of language.For example, the Bath lab found that one language strategy was to try to be objective when speaking, such as "I heard she slept with the whole football team," or "Everyone said she had herpes."

You might think that in this era of gender equality, double standards should no longer be used to judge the sexual behavior of men and women. Men can mess around without scruples, so women should also be able to promiscuity without any blame.In fact, this is impossible.Because not only has the double standard not disappeared, but it seems that women prefer to emphasize women's chastity.Anne Campbell, an evolutionary psychologist who has done several studies on women's reputation, said: "The strongest supporters of this moral concept are often women themselves." To protect their reputations, women often isolate and even publicly reject They don't want to be "involved" with those of the same sex who are called "sluts" and "whores".One scientist said: "It is the most dangerous to confess your sexual behavior or sexual feelings to your friends. Few women talk about their sexual desires or sexual behaviors to their friends because they are afraid that their friends will speak ill of them behind their backs—— Rumors of 'she's a slut' are spread everywhere. This kind of betrayal can ruin a woman's face, but men don't have such worries." Once a woman gets this bad reputation, even if she jumps into the Yellow River, she can't wash it away. Ultimately, it will affect a woman's life-long event.

thrill of victory

(End of this chapter)