Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

March 27, 2010 By Fausta

The girly-men have it?

In today’s Wall Street Journal,
Why Women Don’t Want Macho Men
New research suggests that women from countries with healthier populations prefer more feminine-looking men. Jena Pincott on the science behind attraction and masculinity, and the future for manly men.

After crunching the data—including the women’s facial preferences, their country of origin and that country’s national health index—the Face Lab researchers proved something remarkable. They could predict how masculine a woman likes her men based on her nation’s World Health Organization statistics for mortality rates, life expectancy and the impact of communicable disease. In countries where poor health is particularly a threat to survival, women leaned toward “manlier” men. That is, they preferred their males to have shorter, broader faces and stronger eyebrows, cheekbones and jaw lines. The researchers went on to publish the study in this month’s issue of the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences.

Feminine-looking men? Ugh.

Must be a generational thing.

Compare and contrast:

Sean Connery

louis-vuitton-sean-connery1

and

Jon Hamm:

Don-Draper-Jon-Hamm-and-S

versus

Orlando Bloom:

No contest: Sean at age 79 and Jon at age 39 win over Orlando at age 33. Especially since Orlando waxes his chest hair. Yes, Jon’s only 6 years older than Orlando but Jon looks like a grown-up while Orlando still looks like a kid.

Is my preference based on my age?

Is it based on the subjects’ testosterone?

The link is testosterone, the hormone behind manly muscles, strong jaws, prominent eyebrow ridges, facial hair and deep voices. Testosterone is immunosuppressive. This means a man must be healthy and in good condition to withstand its effects on his development. Testosterone is also linked to other traits related to strength: fitness, fertility and dominance.

Or is it because of my land of origin?

Meanwhile, women with the strongest masculinity preferences tended to hail from the countries with higher disease and mortality rates and some of the poorest scores on the health-care index: Mexico, Brazil, Bulgaria and Argentina.

The article ends asking,

So will it be considered progress if women start pursuing “metrosexuals”—impeccable guys who exfoliate, order salads for dinner and carry man purses?

Not in my book!

What do you say, gentle readers?

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Filed Under: manly men, men and women Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Jon Hamm, Orlando Bloom, Sean Connery

Comments

  1. Kate says

    March 27, 2010 at 10:38 am

    Who are these women who prefer feminine-looking men?!
    I proudly include myself in the group of women who like manly men 🙂

  2. Janette says

    March 27, 2010 at 10:42 am

    Girly-men? I’m just not interested and, as a matter of fact, I’m starting to find it a little creepy. I hear of so many women my age (40ish) and older swooning over the stars of ‘New Moon’ and ‘Twilight’. I hope that it’s just a Hollywood trend.

    Ick and no thank you!

  3. Sissy Willis says

    March 27, 2010 at 11:24 am

    Beyond my personal preference for the hot, sexy Sean Connerys of this world over the wussy, waxing metros, I’m mighty skeptical of the entire premise of the study. What is the agenda of the promulgators of this so-called “health index” that declares the US “one of the least healthy” nations, for starters?

    The article itself sounds like a pro-Obamacare sermon dressed up as science reporting:

    “While Stone Age forces once wired women to associate strong cues of masculinity with their children’s chance of survival, times are changing. The promise of improved health care in America could be one example of a shift.”

    They make it sound like you can change our basic human nature, evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, with a little social engineering. Typical leftist utopian thinking.

    Great, fun post, by the way, and thanks for your invitation to us readers to comment. One more thought:

    Is it a generational thing? It’s likely a cultural artifact of 20-somethings ‘having been indoctrinated by proseletyzers of the cheerless feminism of their mothers’ generation. Out in the twittersphere I’ve been encountering a countertrend of young women who aren’t buying what the “progressives” are selling. It would be interesting to poll the masculinity preferences of these fearless woman warriors who are fighting to push back the travesty of our God-given freedom that is Obamacare!

  4. baldilocks says

    March 27, 2010 at 11:38 am

    No pretty boys, thanks.

  5. baldilocks says

    March 27, 2010 at 11:40 am

    And in Lord of the Rings, the hot one was Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen).

  6. Fausta says

    March 27, 2010 at 11:52 am

    MMmmm, Aragorn…

  7. Claudia says

    March 27, 2010 at 12:13 pm

    I’d vote for Hugh Jackman. I don’t think either that these “girly men” have a lot of future. Maybe some of them are cinema stars but I don’t think they can compete with “manly men”.
    In Lord of the Rings, Éomer (the Rohirrim Lord) was also much more attractive than Orlando, who seemed ghostly to me. Very elfish, if you know what I mean. 😉

  8. Jane says

    March 27, 2010 at 12:58 pm

    no there’s got to be a flaw in the study…

  9. Sissy Willis says

    March 27, 2010 at 2:02 pm

    I’ve posted about it with more thoughts:

    Do conservative women prefer macho men?

    http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2010/03/why-conservative-women-want-macho-men.html

  10. Cappy says

    March 27, 2010 at 3:47 pm

    And, the women from those places that prefer the non-metro guys are the hottest. Except for Bulgaria.

  11. O Bloody Hell says

    March 28, 2010 at 3:31 pm

    This looks to me like their selling a can of bullsh** and labeling it “chocolate”.

    I call attention to the start you quote:
    They could predict how masculine a woman likes her men based on her nation’s World Health Organization statistics for mortality rates, life expectancy and the impact of communicable disease.

    but then concludes with:
    So will it be considered progress if women start pursuing “metrosexuals”—impeccable guys who exfoliate, order salads for dinner and carry man purses?

    “B” does not follow from “A”. According to the opening quote, THEY’RE SUPPOSEDLY ALREADY DOING THAT… but then they ask if it would be “progress IF…”?

    So something is wrong here.

    I believe that the USA, once you allow for accidents and other compensating data, has one of the longer lifespans (decidedly longer than many other nations which nominally have “greater life expectancy” than the USA). I’m curious if they used THAT notion in their little statistical games. I doubt it, as, let’s face it, the more “butch” a guy is the more likely he’s going to take on challenges and wind up getting killed in some bizarre BASE jumping incident.

    So “health” isn’t the relevant factor here. “Avoiding accidents by never doing anything dangerous” is more likely to be a reason for increased longevity.

    And sorry, wimps who don’t do anything “manly” are hardly the magnet women are attracted to in the theaters. While young girls like Bloom’s softer qualities, as women mature they see the bigger picture in what a man is, lose that romantic foolishness, and are more likely to find, as our host, the Jon Hamm type to be more interesting.

  12. O Bloody Hell says

    March 28, 2010 at 3:33 pm

    > This looks to me like their selling a can of…

    **THEY’RE**

    DOH!

    Can’t believe I missed that one. It’s these tiny boxes. Yeah, that’s it. The word “wrapped” on me… LOL.

  13. Pamela says

    March 28, 2010 at 6:09 pm

    Give me James Caviezel. Holy begezus!

  14. Pat Patterson says

    March 29, 2010 at 11:02 am

    Dionysus and Bacchus (not the cartoon version) were described as beautiful and in many cases the former was used as an example of andogyny. So this is not something recent but is embedded within Western Civilization. But the negative, which is not even hinted at in this study, is that this androgyny is also viewed as an enticing lie where the consequences of this attraction to beauty is fatal.

    PS-Real men do not shill for leather bags unless they are keeping shark’s teeth or the ears of their enemies in them.

  15. Texan99 says

    March 29, 2010 at 12:16 pm

    I’d like to see the data analyzed by age of respondent. Certainly when I was younger I was more drawn to the pretty boys.

  16. Teresa says

    March 29, 2010 at 3:05 pm

    As with all “studies” like this, I’d like to see who they chose to question. Were they over the age of 14? Were they heterosexual women? It’s the details that are important.

  17. DdR says

    March 29, 2010 at 3:12 pm

    As a teenager in the late ’80s, I liked David Bowie, Prince and the boys in Duran-Duran, though even then, I thought Sean Connery was good-looking. The boys I chose to date were inevitably slender and not heavily muscled…..in direct opposition to my parent. My mom always thought I was afraid of big burly guys. Given that my Mom went to work at least twice a year in heavy makeup and sunglasses to hide the bruises, she may have had a point. Today, my tastes run to mature-looking men rather than boys, Sean Connery still looks good, but my husband, without a doubt a manly man, is still of a more slender than average build.

  18. Fausta says

    March 29, 2010 at 7:38 pm

    DdR, one of my college friends dated an abusive guy and after that would not go out with men who were significantly larger than she.

  19. Crimson Wife says

    April 3, 2010 at 1:15 pm

    I agree with #16. Average life expectancy is disproportionately affected by accidents, homicides, and suicides. Teen boys and young men with higher levels of testosterone are at greater risk of dying from these causes. If you look at the life expectancy for white American males aged 30 & up, we’re similar to Europeans.

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