physical list because as brain scans show, men are largely visual and a woman’s face and body are what they see first. This short-term list is what many women respond to most of the time. Like it or not, however, it’s what men look for in a one-night stand or short-term relationship, not in a long-term one. The woman who constantly dresses like a cheap slut or a hooker is responding to this list. Miniskirts, low-cut blouses, heavy makeup, and raunchy behavior are all responses to a man’s short-term list. This is why women who present themselves this way spend a lot of time in short-term relationships with men. To attract men for a long-term relationship, a woman needs to study his long-term list and to dress and behave according to it, while at the same time knowing when to act on his short-term list to keep his immediate attention.
What the Personal Columns Reveal
The personal columns where people seek partners clearly highlight the difference in preferences between men and women. Men advertise three to four times more often than women do for a physically pleasing, attractive partner, while women seek resources as their main goal—that is, a man who at least has a job, a car, and a place to live.
Psychologist Mark Mason at Nene College, Northampton, England, researched 2,200 personal ads to find out what is asked for the most and what ads are the most effective in getting responses. The formula he found was to talk 70% about yourself and 30% about what you want.
Here is an ad that has been shown to work effectively for men who advertise themselves as available:
Male, 28, high earner, sincere and genuine with sense of humor, seeks attractive, caring young woman for genuine partnership
.
It works because it offers women readers what they want—resources—and asks for what he wants—youth and health, which equals reproductive value.
Contrast this ad with a woman’s typical requirements, also from the personal columns and one that works very well:
Female, attractive, slim, loving and sensitive, seeks high-earning man with sense of humor, independent, sincere, for genuine relationship
.
In this ad, she offers physical assets and mothering in return for resources.
Any discussion of what men and women really want inevitably draws howls of protest from some people and raises stories about someone they know who advertised differently from this but still managed to do well. Keep in mind we are talking in this book about the basic principles that are effective most of the time for most people, not about minorities or exceptions.
Why Attractiveness Has Become So Important
A cross-generational mating study over a fifty-year period starting in 1940 measured men’s and women’s criteria for a mate. In each measured ten-year interval men saw attractiveness in a woman as very important, whereas women saw it as desirable in a mate but not very important. By 1990, both men and women were attaching around 50% more importance to physical attractiveness, and this rose to 65% more for men by 2008 than the same group that was surveyed in 1940. This is because of greater globalization and because a wider availabilityof possible mates was available at the end of the twentieth century, and the media worldwide became obsessed with showing perfect men and women. It also highlights that the importance we place on attractiveness is not permanently set in our genes but can change to match our circumstances. Unfortunately, however, we are more demanding of perfection than our forebears.
The study also shows that it is a specieswide phenomenon for men and not geographically limited. Latvian men want attractiveness; so do Greek men and Icelandic men, Chinese, Moroccan, Inuit, and Zulu men. Men’s preferences for physically attractive mates has been operating for hundreds of thousands of years, and these male preferences are completely responsible for the emergence of the multi-billion-dollar plastic surgery and
What the Personal Columns Reveal
The personal columns where people seek partners clearly highlight the difference in preferences between men and women. Men advertise three to four times more often than women do for a physically pleasing, attractive partner, while women seek resources as their main goal—that is, a man who at least has a job, a car, and a place to live.
Psychologist Mark Mason at Nene College, Northampton, England, researched 2,200 personal ads to find out what is asked for the most and what ads are the most effective in getting responses. The formula he found was to talk 70% about yourself and 30% about what you want.
Here is an ad that has been shown to work effectively for men who advertise themselves as available:
Male, 28, high earner, sincere and genuine with sense of humor, seeks attractive, caring young woman for genuine partnership
.
It works because it offers women readers what they want—resources—and asks for what he wants—youth and health, which equals reproductive value.
Contrast this ad with a woman’s typical requirements, also from the personal columns and one that works very well:
Female, attractive, slim, loving and sensitive, seeks high-earning man with sense of humor, independent, sincere, for genuine relationship
.
In this ad, she offers physical assets and mothering in return for resources.
Any discussion of what men and women really want inevitably draws howls of protest from some people and raises stories about someone they know who advertised differently from this but still managed to do well. Keep in mind we are talking in this book about the basic principles that are effective most of the time for most people, not about minorities or exceptions.
Why Attractiveness Has Become So Important
A cross-generational mating study over a fifty-year period starting in 1940 measured men’s and women’s criteria for a mate. In each measured ten-year interval men saw attractiveness in a woman as very important, whereas women saw it as desirable in a mate but not very important. By 1990, both men and women were attaching around 50% more importance to physical attractiveness, and this rose to 65% more for men by 2008 than the same group that was surveyed in 1940. This is because of greater globalization and because a wider availabilityof possible mates was available at the end of the twentieth century, and the media worldwide became obsessed with showing perfect men and women. It also highlights that the importance we place on attractiveness is not permanently set in our genes but can change to match our circumstances. Unfortunately, however, we are more demanding of perfection than our forebears.
The study also shows that it is a specieswide phenomenon for men and not geographically limited. Latvian men want attractiveness; so do Greek men and Icelandic men, Chinese, Moroccan, Inuit, and Zulu men. Men’s preferences for physically attractive mates has been operating for hundreds of thousands of years, and these male preferences are completely responsible for the emergence of the multi-billion-dollar plastic surgery and
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