Mating Games
Lester
Earnest (les at cs.stanford.edu)
2016.11.24
In order for evolution to advance efficiently it
is important for individuals of all species to select the best mate available.
Various species have evolved different strategies for doing that and, as you
may be aware, male birds generally try to look pretty and ruffle their feathers
while doing dances to attract females. Based on these exhibitions, females then
choose who to mate with.
It is interesting to note that the ancient
ancestors of birds were closely related to some large dinosaurs such as
Tyrannosaurus Rex and it is likely the they too used that strategy, which would
have been quite a spectacle. Most likely our small mammal ancestors witnessed
some of those Tyrannosaurus exhibition dances but would have had to stay out of
the way in order to survive.
Humans play this game the other way around:
young women try to look pretty and dance a lot. In preparation for that, little
girls are genetically programmed to like to dance whereas little boys are
generally more interested in wrestling, in preparation for showing their power.
After clothing was invented, women mostly wore
dresses or skirts to advertise accessibility while men wore trousers, which
facilitate showing their crotch bulge and they sometimes padded it a bit.
Similarly, women sometimes pad their bras or get breast implants to draw
attention there. Men try to show their power and based on the women they see,
men generally initiate mating. In fact, powerful men often try to collect harems,
like other herd animals.
In some parts of the modern world, young women
have now stopped wearing skirts or dresses in favor of skin tight trousers or
shorts that show a lot of anatomical details. However, it is still basically
the same game.
At some point in the 1800s women prostitutes who
specialized in fellatio reportedly invented lipstick as a form of advertising. However lipstick was soon taken over by women of all kinds,
which indicates that calling attention to their lips made them more attractive
to men. It appears to me that this is because lips are reminiscent of another
interesting part of female anatomy.