Know More Women: Inside the Sexual Mind

So, Do Opposites Attract?

The Female About April 07, 2018

No doubt we are sometimes attracted to people who are different from ourselves. However, when it comes to actually choosing a long-term sexual partner, it is more the rule than the exception that “similar” attract. Several studies have shown substantial similarity between husbands and wives in their attitudes about faith, war, and politics, as well as similarities in their physical health, family background, age, ethnicity, religion, and level of education. Dating and married couples are similar in physical attractiveness, and young married couples even tend to be matched in weight. The “matching hypothesis”—as named by social psychologists—is so strong that observers react negatively when they perceive couples who are mismatched on levels of attractiveness. There is one notable exception—a beautiful woman and a less-attractive man. In this scenario, consistent with evolutionary logic, people judging the mismatched pairs ascribe wealth, intelligence, or success to the man.

So, Do Opposites Attract?

Reviewed by The Female About on April 07, 2018 Rating: 5

The Face of Attraction

The Female About April 07, 2018

Masculine facial features are heavily influenced by the production of testosterone during adolescence, when the bones in the face take their adult form. From an evolutionary perspective, puberty marks the time when men and women enter the arena of mate competition. They begin to allocate time, energy, and effort to the tasks of mate selection and mate attraction. In men, the amount of muscle mass, as we have seen, contributes to success in competition with other men and sexual attractiveness to women. And testosterone turns out to be the magical hormone that promotes men’s muscle mass and masculine facial features.

The Face of Attraction

Reviewed by The Female About on April 07, 2018 Rating: 5

Fit for Sex!

The Female About April 07, 2018

Height, of course, is not the only aspect of men’s bodies that sexually excites women.

Studies of mate preferences reveal that women desire strong, muscular, athletic men for long-term mating as well as for sexual liaisons. Most women show a distinct preference for a particular body morphology—namely, a V-shaped torso that reveals a high shoulder-to-hip ratio (broad shoulders relative to hips). They are attracted to a lean stomach combined with a muscular (but not muscle-bound) upper torso.

Fit for Sex!

Reviewed by The Female About on April 07, 2018 Rating: 5

Why Size Matters?

The Female About April 07, 2018

We’ve seen how body symmetry, because it indicates good health, is attractive to women. Body symmetry is also linked with men’s muscularity, and studies conducted both in the United States and on the Caribbean island of Dominica have found that symmetrical men have a larger number of sex partners than asymmetrical men. When women identify the specific qualities that attract them to a sexual partner, they frequently mention “the person had a desirable body”—the sixteenth most frequent reason cited for having sex in our original study. But what sorts of bodies do women find sexually desirable?

Why Size Matters?

Reviewed by The Female About on April 07, 2018 Rating: 5

The Power of a Man's Musk

The Female About April 07, 2018

A person’s scent can influence not only a woman’s mate choice, but also when and how frequently she chooses to have sex and possibly the chance she will become pregnant.

Researchers have shown that exposure to male pheromones can increase a woman’s fertility. Pheromones are substances secreted from the glands at the anus, underarms, urinary outlet, breasts, and mouth. In nonhuman mammals, a specialized olfactory structure, the vomeronasal organ, acts as the locus for receiving phenomenal signals, which control most animals’ and insects’ mating rituals. One study found that frequent sexual exposure to men (at least once a week) regularized women’s menstrual cycles, increased fertile basal body temperature, and increased estrogen in the phase of the menstrual cycle following increased estrogen in the phase of the menstrual cycle following ovulation, called the luteal phase. Another study showed that women who slept with a man two or more times during a forty day period had a significantly higher incidence of ovulation than those who had slept with a man less often.

The Power of a Man's Musk

Reviewed by The Female About on April 07, 2018 Rating: 5

The Scent of Sexiness

The Female About April 07, 2018

Scents are famously known to carry strong psychological associations—think about how a whiff of a loved one’s favored perfume or cologne can bring to mind the person who wore it, along with a cascade of emotions. Partly, this is due to the unusual design of the olfactory nerve, which extends in a network throughout the brain—unlike the nerves carrying information for the other major senses, which are less wide-ranging. This architecture helps the brain to tie memories of emotional events with olfactory information. The emotion-stirring aspect of smell is important; but smell also turns out to be surprisingly important to women when it comes to basic sexual attraction.

The Scent of Sexiness

Reviewed by The Female About on April 07, 2018 Rating: 5

Where Attraction Begins

The Female About April 07, 2018

People are constantly coming into contact with one another—we are nestled into adjoining seats in college lecture halls, bump into strangers at coffee shops, move into neighboring houses on suburban cul-de-sacs, or spend long hours in catty-corner cubicles at the office. This proximity is often the first step in becoming attracted to someone.