The Discovery Channel documentary ‘The Science of Sex Appeal’, explores not only the factors that humans take into consideration when choosing a possible mate, it also explains the chemicals that are involved in both choosing a mate and maintaining a long term relationship with that mate. Attraction can stem from different physical features ranging from facial symmetry to body movement and even voice. Humans look for characteristics that they want to pass on to their offspring and signs of health as reflected by appearance.
When it comes to the face, attractiveness has been attributed to symmetry and balance, as well as the masculinity and femininity of a face. The Greeks used a formula that is often found in nature called the Golden Ratio, to measure attractiveness. It measures the distance between certain points in the face and the ratios formed between them. The Golden Ratio has been used in various studies and it has been found that an attractive face usually ranges from 6 above. Another important factor in facial attractiveness is symmetry. It appears that faces that are more symmetrical are more attractive.
Males and females also have distinct facial characteristics: females have more pointed, rounded jaws and lower brows while males have square angular faces and higher brows. Males tend to gravitate towards more feminine faces in females while females are more attracted to more masculine faces in males. People do not only focus on the face when they are looking for a mate: they also look at the body. Males look for signs that a female would be able to bear and take care of children, so they look at the breasts, waist and hips. Females look for signs that indicate strength, so they concentrate on the torso and arms.
However, body movement in consideration of body shape is also important. A person’s walk can contribute to their attractiveness, especially if paired with the right body shape. An attractive female walk is one that emphasizes the hips, with a side-to-side movement. This is especially attractive if a woman’s body shape is curved, with large hips. For a man’s walk to be attractive, it should have more of a swagger, with emphasis on the shoulders. This works well if a man has broad shoulders, part of the ideal body shape for males. A person’s voice can also be a cause for attraction.
Females are more attracted to low, deep male voices while males are attracted to more high-pitched female voices. Other considerations for attractiveness and picking a mate involve timing and average attractiveness. Studies show that females are more attractive when they are ovulating, and also simultaneously they find men more attractive. An experiment showed that although humans are concerned with finding the most physically attractive mate possible, because this reflects genetic health, people are likely to pair up with partners of averagely the same level of attractiveness.
There are different chemicals involved in the attraction process and in the process of being in and maintaining a relationship. Pheromones are those hormones involved in the attraction process. Each person has their own smell and their own set of pheromones and people also have different preferences for these. Although, it seems that a person’s smell becomes less attractive to us when they are genetically related or similar to us and more attractive the more different they are.
This could be a natural mechanism to aid us in producing healthy children, since if we pair up with someone genetically related, the odds are the child will be less equipped to battle certain diseases. Other important chemicals are endorphins, oxytocin and vasopressin. Once a mate has been chosen, one then has to keep that mate. In the animal kingdom, polygamy is not really an issue, however humans opt for monogamy. Endorphins and oxytocin are the chemicals associated with being happy, falling in love and the maternal urges in women.
In order to keep one’s mate, one needs to have the person at a healthy level of these chemicals. In men, it was found that men with vasopressin are those least likely to stray, the same with a monogamous animal, the prairie vol. Even after all these scientific explanations for attraction and love, the video concludes that love in the end is something that is much more than just choosing genes to pass on and chemical levels. Choosing to stay in a relationship is a choice and something people can choose to work on. The documentary was very insightful in terms of how people become attracted to one another.
It also provided me with ideas on how to become more attractive if I chose to. I told a lot of my friends about the video and all of them were very interested because this process of being attracted to people and wanting to attract people in return is very integral in human life, especially for certain stages in our life like the adolescent stage. There are a lot of instances when I see couples that don’t really make sense to me. This has also been echoed by my friends and perhaps even society in general. Even in media, these sort of ‘physically incompatible’ relationships have become a humorous point.
These couples are composed of an attractive male and an unattractive female or vice versa. Although people are apt to take physical attractiveness first when looking for a mate, there are things that are not so easily perceived on surface level such as the pheromones and of course, a person’s attitude and inner beauty. We might be biological programmed to be attracted to certain people, but in the end, like the video says, we choose who we stay with. It’s something beautiful about human nature, being able to love and be loved in return, and I think that it was good that the video highlighted this.
