“Never Make a Pretty Woman Your Wife”…Or Apparently, a Dumb One

Wow – My first thought in reading this article was “this explains the popularity among women of those dreadful Uggs boots!”

Recall this image of Venus Williams –

Looking dumb as a beauty strategy to attract guys.

It also goes a long way to explaining conservative men walking around with tented trousers at the thought of the Sno’ Ho’ – Sarah Palin…

And the lore (and allure) of the “dumb blonde” stereotype.

Do Men Find Dumb-Looking Women More Attractive?

Ask a straight man, “How do you like your women?” and it’s unlikely he’ll answer, “Dumb and sleepy.” But according to new findings, these characteristics—and any other traits suggesting that the lady isn’t particularly alert—are precisely what the human male has evolved to look for in a one-night-stand.

In an article soon to be published in Evolution and Human Behavior, University of Texas–Austin graduate student Cari Goetz and her colleagues explored what they called the sexual exploitability hypothesis. The hypothesis is based on thedifferences between male and female reproductive strategies as humans evolved. For ancestral women, casual intercourse with an emotionally unattached man who had no clear intention of sticking around to raise any resulting offspring constituted a massive genetic gamble. By contrast, for a man with somewhere around 85 million sperm cells churned out every day—per testicle—the frivolous expenditure of gametes was far less detrimental to his genetic interests. Goetz and her team began with the assumption that—because our brains evolved long before prophylactics entered the picture—female cognition is still sensitive to the pregnancy-related consequences of uncommitted sex and women remain more reluctant than men to engage in it. They set out to test the idea that any indication that a woman’s guard is lowered—that she’s “sexually exploitable”—is a turn-on for your average man. “[T]he assessment of a woman’s immediate vulnerability,” surmise the authors, “may be central to the activation of psychological mechanisms related to sexual exploitation.”

Reminds me of an old 60’s song…

This is an inflammatory hypothesis, of course, and the language employed in the field doesn’t help matters. It’s worth noting that in the evolutionary psychology sense, the word exploitable simply means that a woman is willing or can be more easily pressured into having sex—which takes her own desires, rather disturbingly, out of the equation. Even if she’s the aggressor, a prostitute, or a certifiable nymphomaniac, having casual sex with her would still constitute “exploiting” her (or at least her body), according to this model. 

 

On Intelligent Black Folks

Hat Tip to NewsOne

This one by RK Byers which poses an interesting question –

Do Intelligent Black People Have A Harder Time?

James Baldwin once wrote, “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” Now imagine being a particularly intelligent ‘Negro’ (and some of you don’t have to imagine.) You’d pick up on every racist slight and you’d catch every joke that was intended to go over your head. You’d be, in a sense, a living piñata, being beaten by people who never even realized that you were alive.

You, the intelligent Black, would seemingly have two options—both of them bad.

1. You could try to prove your intelligence to white people. This sucks for two reasons: the first is that it presupposes that every white person has an intellect that is worthy of your proving equal to. Second, it puts whites in the position of using their respect for your intellect as a sort of ‘carrot on a stick’ whereas no matter how smart you prove yourself, you could never possibly be smart enough.
2. You could take the Lincoln Perry route, disguise your intelligence, rename yourself something like Stepin Fetchit, and make money giving the stereotype believers what they want. Perry, a literate, thoughtful, educated and intelligent man, played a complete buffoon onscreen and made millions. That route’s gonna take a toll on your soul, though. Look what it did to Stepin Fetchit.

So what’s the deal smart black folks?