Desmond Morris is an ethologist. That means he studies animal behavior. I can’t find the citation right now, but he witnessed a café scene where a group of single women were complaining about the lack of eligible bachelors in their city. They were complaining right in front of the eligible bachelors who were bussing their table. The young, nubile bus boys didn’t even register on the radar.
What if the diners were men, and the bus boys were bus girls? You think the men would notice?
In surveys performed in 1939, 1956, 1967, and in the mid-80’s, American men and women were asked to rate 18 qualities in a potential mate. In all four studies, women rated “good financial prospects” twice as high as men.
Think of this. One of these surveys was done during The Depression, another during the Eisenhower years, the next during the cultural revolution, and the last in the materialist boom years of the eighties. Popular opinions about sex, marriage, monogamy, materialism, religion, and contraception swung back and forth. The feminist movement, the labor movement, the environmental movement, and the race movement all swept across these decades like tidal waves, then the reactions against them swept back again. Yet women’s ratings of “financial prospects” in a potential mate remained consistent.
Not only do female mate preferences remain consistent across all cultures studied, they haven’t changed much in the US over almost half a century of cultural upheaval.
The meanest thing you can say to a man is “loser.” It’s almost as bad a being a writer. Women want the opposite of a loser. Women want a winner.
Why? Because they’re primates. Female primates need to mate with winners in the competition for social status.
Note: I didn’t say money. I said status.
Read Chapter 3 of my book SPERM ARE FROM MEN, EGGS ARE FROM WOMEN, which is called “What Women Want.” Then skip ahead to chapter 7: “How Men Get Sex.”
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