Fertile cues make women sexier › Dr Karl's Great Moments In Science (ABC Science)
Most women do not know when they are ovulating, and neither do the overwhelming majority of men. To be fair, it is pretty subtle. After all, if men can't tell when a bathroom needs cleaning, or the garbage emptying, what hope have they got with ovulation?
But there is a small subset of sensitive men who somehow 'sense' when a woman is ovulating — and these special men are the clients of the gentlemen's clubs.
Most gentlemen's clubs are dimly lit, serve alcohol and play music loudly. The male clients are usually between 20 and 60 years of age. They generally start the evening by getting a pile of $20 bills from the club's ATM, and relaxing with a few little drinkies.
The lap dancers tend to wear very little perfume, are shaved all over, and many have breast implants. To be able to keep up with the heavy physical demands of lap dancing, they do aerobic and resistance weight training, and this makes them fit and lean.
In this study, 18 lap dancers from gentleman's clubs in Albuquerque, New Mexico, volunteered. (They were paid only $30 for volunteering.) Between them, over the two-month course of the study, they performed 296 shifts (each about five hours long) and did some 5,300 lap dances. Seven of them were taking the oral contraceptive pill, while 11 had normal menstrual cycles. Their average age was about 27 years, and they had been lapdancing for about six years.
The lap dancers did not get paid a salary by the club. Their only income was the tips. To earn their money they had to "appear … more sexually attractive than the other rival dancers working the same shift and by doing the 'emotional labour' of 'counterfeiting intimacy' with male club patrons".
A typical shift would run about five hours. During this time they would perform a few stage dances (perhaps every 90 minutes) to advertise themselves. For this they would receive only small tips — typically one to five dollars — and usually only from the men seated closest to the stage. This would total only 10 per cent of their earnings.
Having 'advertised' her presence, attractiveness and availability, a lap dancer would spend the rest of her time walking around the club asking the men if they wanted a 'lap dance'. The real money would come from these three-minute lap dances — averaging around $14.
The dancers who had normal menstrual cycles and who ovulated earned more money ($276 per shift, over the two-month period) than the ones on the pill ($193).
The results again showed a clear difference within or across the menstrual cycle. If the lap dancer was menstruating, she earned only $184 per shift. If she was not menstruating, but not fertile either, she earned more — $264 per shift. But if she was in the fertile part of the menstrual cycle (ie, ovulating), she earned the greatest sum of money — $354 per shift.
Another separate study claims that a woman's voice can betray her fertility.
Dr Pipitone and colleagues recorded 51 women reading out numbers (between one and 10) at four different times during the menstrual cycle. This included the peak fertility time at ovulation.
The recordings were rated by 34 men and 32 women in terms of being attractive. There was no real change in attractiveness over the month for the women who were taking hormonal contraceptives (the pill). But there was a definite peak in attractiveness when the women were at their most fertile, at ovulation. (Like some parts of the body, the female larynx, or voice box, is supposed to be influenced by female sex hormones).
Other studies claim that around ovulation, women show a definite increase in verbal fluency and creativity as well as in facial attractiveness and soft tissue body symmetry. Their waist-to-hip ratio also shrinks (so a slimmer more attractive waist combined with child-bearing hips would stimulate a man's deep instincts to father children). Ovulating women are also supposed to smell more attractive.
There is also evidence for a human version of the mate-guarding behaviour shown by the lion to his harem of lionesses. It was a bit milder than a bloke attacking random men with his fingernails and bare teeth, if they came near his girlfriend. No, it was simply that on the days when she was at her most fertile, he would ring her more often at random times to see what she was doing! This is technically described as "higher proprietariness, attentiveness and vigilance".
Maybe I should leave this topic with the words of Sharon Stone: "Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships".
