Mid Brain is concerned:
Science centric reports on a piece of research by evolutionary biologists at the University of Glasgow which suggests that females shouldn’t trust guys who look and act flashy. Ok, their work was done in the animal kingdom so it may not correlate, but I can’t stop wondering if some of the same principles apply. Here’s what they learned:
Tasty testosterone
We all know that male animals use sexual signals like big antlers, bright plumage, or even pretty songs to to attract a mate. But according to Dr Jan Lindstroem at the University of Glasgow females shouldn’t count on the flashiest male being the best mate. Lindstroem’s research indicates that the “ladies” are better off waiting for the dishonest males to exhaust themselves by producing flashy signals they can’t sustain. THEN they should select a mate. That’s because “honesty in males mostly depends on how many opportunities there are to breed.” The example cited in the research involves birds: male sticklebacks begin the summer with lots of red plumage but only those in really good condition can maintain their bright coloration throughout the season. Female sticklebacks have learned to ignore male redness of a male early summer and only mate with redder males later in the season. There’s a lesson there for all of us!
The Beauty Brains bottom line
What do YOU think? When guys are too flashy and too good looking do you think that means that means they don’t have real staying power? (In terms of relationships, that is!) Leave a comment and share your thoughts with the rest of the Beauty Brains community.
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I wouldn’t know about staying power, but seems to me guys like that are really shallow. They usually ignore me and go for the skinny girls.
Or another guy.
Either way, no experience with the flashy ones here.
Or even the non-flashy.
I do know the guy in your picture I’d never date. I believe he’s the host of that show where he goes around eating dinner food and a lot of what he eats is pork. BLECH! As someone with an allergy to pork I would never date someone who eats it practically every day – and for a living as well! He always makes me want to puke.
The fact that he eats pork is the least of my objections to him.
And what is with men wearing huge watches these days? Maybe they’re cheaper and more portable than sports cars and they think women will be impressed. Gentlemen, if you’re a bottle blonde, are wearing a shirt with flames on it and dopey looking sunglasses, and are posing like you’re in a “Saturday Night Fever” dance contest and the first thing I notice is your watch, THEN IT’S TOO BIG.
I don’t trust ANYONE straight out of the gate, no matter what they look like. And ugly guys can flag and drop out just as easily …
I don’t know. A lot of this ev-psych junk always just seems to consist of a bunch of middle-aged men rationalizing why they should get all the teenaged girls they want. *shrug* Not my cuppa.
That’s the problem with anything like this. It’s created by humans and therefore has a human biases. The results, therefore, are tainted.
There’s just no understanding some things from a human POV. Just sit back and accept that’s the way things are.
Sticklebacks are FISH not birds.
@KMD: You’re absolutely correct. Right Brain meant to say StickleBEAK which is a rare Indonesian bird (a relative of the emu, I believe.) Thanks for keeping us accurate!
StickleBEAK??? Come on! You can’t pin that mistake on me, Mid Brain. You’re the one who wrote that! Nice try.
Pretty interesting! Always new that was true. Avoided the :good looking guys like the plague…at least for any serious relationship. Generally speaking, they are vain and self-absorbed. But, I also realize the role we,as women, play in the creation of their vanity and short-attention span. Hard not to be attracted to their physical attributes…and they know it. Probably works that way for beautiful women, as well.
Aww Ann, not all of the good looking ones are bad ! It’s just the ones that are horrible that are out there making a bad name for the good ones.
I once dated a beautiful man. What a clueless thing I was. He had a real girlfriend near his military post. I was just a dumb young thing he dated on the weekends he came home. He could not be depended on for anything. Left me stranded 20 miles away from home at my job because I suppose he wanted to get drunk. I did not know these things about him until long after we broke up. He chased women mercilessly until finally after many years he married a real nice woman. I guess she must have been hard up. After all those women he chased, I would be afraid of catching something I couldn’t get rid of.
“Honesty in males mostly depends on how many opportunities there are to breed” is very accurate. Superior looks in a man will always attract women. Just like money will. A man just needs one or the other, not necessarily both.