From: altamira (altamira@ecpi.com)
Date: Sat Jul 01 2000 - 21:34:32 MDT
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-extropians@extropy.com
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.com]On Behalf Of Zero Powers
>
Most
> females are more drawn to tall ("dark and handsome" too) males
> than they are
> to shorter males. To them it probably just looks better.
I was in the city today and took a look at _The Mating Mind_, which has been
a subject of recent discussion on this list. I didn't like it enough to
want to own it, so I just read parts of it while I was in the bookstore. I
think G. Miller would say that women are attracted to tall men because
tallness is a sign of fitness.
Several days ago someone (was it you, Spike?) said they'd really liked the
book and wanted to discuss it. The reviews that were posted here were
very...um, scholarly-like. You know what I mean? Is this a man-thing or
what? Miller says that women are more likely to understand the word "azure"
but men are more likely to use it, even if they think it means "vermillion."
I found the parts of the book I read quite entertaining. I laughed and
laughed, until I was afraid I was bothering the other people who were
sitting around reading. I could see so much of myself and people I know
there in those pages! Someone should do a study on how specific personality
traits in one sex generally correlate with the characteristics a person
finds attractive in the opposite sex. Maybe it's already been done and it
was in a part of the book I didn't read. Now if I were sitting around with
a bunch of other women, we'd have fun talking and laughing about the kind of
guys we find attractive (I found G. Miller to be quite attractive, by the
way; I never can resist a man who makes me think and laugh at the same
time).
But
> evolutionarily speaking a tall man would probably have been a better
> defender of hearth and home than a short guy.
Another thing Miller questioned was the assumption that Pleistocene women
NEEDED defending by men. More likely they lived together in groups of
several women with their kids. I've gotten in big trouble and been called a
man-basher and worse for saying this, but the fact is that while I adore men
as friends and lovers, I prefer women as house-mates. For one thing, they
don't try to own me. But the owning thing may be cultural rather than
hard-wired.
Bonnie
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