Seen through a Darwinian lens, men's stronger interest in a partner's looks is initially quite mysterious. In most species, it's the females that care more about looks. Among peacocks, for instance, peahens will only mate with the males with the sexiest tails; males, in contrast, are less shallow and will mate with any female who'll have them. If peacocks had pornography, it would be the females, not the males, that would spend their time staring at images of the other sex, and the males that would complain about being treated as sex objects. And what's true of peacocks is true as well of most animals. In our species, however, it's the other way around. Why?
Steve Stewart-WilliamsRelated topics
care contrast darwinian female instance interest lens less mate pornography quite seen sex shallow species spend staring time way well men's looks tailsRelated quotes
[Most people] are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. ... Depend upon it, you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull grey eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones.
George Eliot
As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence...On the other hand, as regards human nature in general, woman is not misbegotten, but is included in nature's intention as directed to the work of generation. Now the general intention of nature depends on God, Who is the universal Author of nature. Therefore, in producing nature, God formed not only the male but also the female.
Thomas Aquinas
I invariably, after great familiarity with a film, concoct a personal way of reading it that relies entirely on information which a public audience would, I feel, have scant interest. I might travel from a casual unrehearsed glance of a minor character to a detail of folded cloth, from a rhyme in the dialogue to an over-excited high note in the music, from a misplaced shadow to a patch of rogue colour, from a shine on a furniture leg to a curious accidental photographic haze around a street lamp, from the examination of a cloud that looks like a snail to the discomfort of an actress who I know is stifling a sneeze.
Peter Greenaway
But now we come to the real paradox: that something as explosive as sexual excitement can nevertheless become a matter of habit, But then that applies to all our pleasures. We discover some new product in the supermarket, and become addicted to it. Then our tastebuds become accustomed to its flavour, and or interest fades. In the same way a honeymoon couple may find an excuse to hurry off to the bedroom half a dozen times a day; but after a month or so sex has taken its place among the many routines of their lives. They still enjoy it, but it no longer has quite the same power to excite the imagination. Sex, like every other pleasure, can become mechanical.
Colin Wilson
The student of culture is concerned with a characteristic which man displays more markedly than any other known creature - the ability to transmit what he has learned. In following the procedure I suggest, the learning of Homo sapiens would be treated as a further specialization of the concept of grades, with the recognition that in some species - possibly even in some orders - the ability to learn may represent not only an improvement, in an evolutionary sense, but also an increase in vulnerability. Man's unique, high ability to learn, coupled as it is with a small amount of built-in behavior, represents such a vulnerability.
Margaret Mead
