Why Women Are Screwed (Umm, not Literally)

My friend Melissa’s boyfriend, Dan – he can be kind of a douche at times…whenever Melissa would make a silly/nonsensical comment, he’d pat her head and say, “But she’s pretty.” And there was this specific voice that went w/ the phrase too but clearly I can’t do the voice in writing…could YouTube it…but umm, I won’t. BTW, I’m not implying that she made frequent nonsensical comments, cuz she didn’t, just pointing out the outcome. Anyway. Brett picked this up and used on me occasionally as well. But we all know that I never make silly comments so he didn’t get much use out of this. Right.

So, moving on with this thought… Was chatting w/ Jane last night and she mentioned some article from the NYTimes about some study that indicates that if two attractive people have kids, they are 36% more likely to have a girl as their first child than if two unattractive people mate. Basically the premise is that beauty is as important of a trait as intelligence, strength, etc. and it’s something your genes want to pass along. And, women apparently benefit from beauty over some other traits in comparison to men. Confused? Here, read this: http://health.theledger.com/article/20060808/FAMILY/1411/0/RSS2 Guess it explains why you can single out feminine beauty and just say she got hosed elsewhere: “But she’s pretty.” No, I’m kidding on that – I know that we’re also smarter and generally better, but I had to tie back into my opener.

Anyway, I guess my mom wanted me to know that she thinks she and my dad are attractive as I was the first born. And clearly, I took all the beautiful genes. After all, “I’ve always been attractive.” That is a joke, ps, and it’s directed at a certain someone, who will remain…nameless.

Anyway, this is not really the funny part of the article. The more interesting piece is the study author’s conclusion that essentially, women are more attractive than men, and I quote: "Because physical attractiveness is heritable - and because physically attractive parents have more daughters and less attractive parents have more sons - the average level of physical attractiveness among women increases over time relative to men," he said. "In my study I demonstrate that more men than women are average-looking, while more women than men are either attractive or very attractive," he said.

I don’t know what you conclude from this, but I conclude that women, as usual, get f’ed here. This just validates that phenomenon you see every day: A much higher percentage of couples where the woman is more attractive than the man. It does tie back to another conclusion of the study, that “men value physical appearance more than women do when seeking a partner…,” but it also indicates that hey, we really have no choice, we must date down, b/c the pickings are slim for us. How unfair is that? And then, they even get to benefit from our pretty genes when we procreate!! So unfair.

That’s all I have to say about that. But I bet you’re now really anxious to find out if your first born will be a girl or a boy. Or maybe you’re not. But I’ll be honest. I’m curious. The end.