Femininity’s Effect on Men’s Long Term Mate Selection
by Meltem Lübe Yasaran
Since our late animal ancestors, we all create strategies and preferences in mate selection. We can observe these strategies through their behavior (Buss, 2015). For instance, some species can dance to impress, and some have a variety of colors in their furs. So, to survive in our environment and to reproduce, we also have to have the “wanted’’ traits by the opposite-sex. Mate preference may depend on a variety of factors, and it changes from species to species. Economic resources, high social status, good financial prospects, dependability and stability, preference for similarity, and willingness to invest children are some of the factors for humans in mate selection (Buss, 2015). Moreover, we adapt these categories for centuries evolutionarily, and they don’t vary across cultures. However, they change between genders and mating periods.
Men and women have different strategies for short-term and long-term mating preferences (Buss, 2015). Even though the common belief is that men seek one-night stands, it is not always the case. Men also gain benefits from long-term commitment and marriage. For example, they have repeated sexual access; and with marriage, they have a secure environment for reproducing in terms of investment of the women to the child and paternal certainty (Buss, 2015). Marriage also increases the status of the person in the culture. While men are less selective on short-term mating, they have different criteria for long-term mating. When we examine men’s long term mating behavior, we see that they value youth, evolved standards of physical beauty, hip-to-waist ratio, and BMI (2015). But what do we mean by evolved physical beauty? Since our male ancestors to today, men put emphasis on skin quality, femininity, facial symmetry, facial averageness, and leg length for long-term mating (Buss, 2015). However, in this paper, I will be examining the femininity attribute preference of men in long-term mating.
Human faces show variation between sexes, and some features define these differences. For instance, men have longer and broader chins, and smaller eyes (Gangestad & Scheyd, 2005). Moreover, when women have some features closer to average men features, they may be seen as ‘’ masculine’’; and when men have features closer to average women features, they may be seen as ‘’feminine’’. So, facial femininity contains full lips, higher cheekbones, relatively large eyes, thinner jaws, and a relatively short distance between mouth and jaw (Buss, 2015). The attraction is also affected by these features and men prefer women with these or closer features (2015). It has been hypothesized that there are a couple of reasons why femininity attracts men.
Firstly, femininity can reflect baby-like features. Large eyes and small chin can create sensory bias since we also observe them in babies. Therefore, this may create an instinct to give care and love towards them. However, this theory faces some contradictions because not all feminine features are baby-like- such as high cheekbones (Gangestad & Scheyd, 2005). The second theory is that femininity is a marker of reproductive value (2005). Reproductive value refers to the average expected number of future reproduction of a person of a given age and sex (Buss, 2015). When a woman reaches to higher reproductive value age, it is the age that they are mostly seen as feminine; and it decreases afterward (Gangestad & Scheyd, 2005). In a third theory, it has been suggested that femininity is a marker of female quality or condition; which means the ability to dedicate energy to offsprings (2005).
On the other hand, femininity has an interaction with women’s age, fertility level, health, voice pitch, and body features sex (Buss, 2015). When we look at the relationship between femininity and age relation, we see that reproductive value is the highest at younger ages and it decreases over time, just like femininity. Hence, with aging, skin quality and shape changes; and facial features that give femininity to a face decrease. Sagging and corrugation occur because of progesterone levels (2015). Progesterone levels increase when fertility is low (Jones et al. 2005). So, maybe youth is not the factor for males but fertility is.
Women’s femininity may be influenced by their fertility level. There are no clear studies that examine males’ femininity preference and women’s fertility level. However, in Jones et al. (2005) article, they examined women’s fertility level during their menstrual cycle and their femininity preference for females and males. They hypothesized that; (1) when the progesterone level is high in the cycle, attraction to female faces will be increased, (2) progesterone will have a positive influence on preferences to femininity and healthy appearance in the face. To examine this issue, they created stimuli that contain faces of 6 individuals with feminine and masculine manufacturing. Participants were asked to choose the most attractive face in each trial and they gave information about their menstrual cycle. In a second experiment, they evaluated the masculinity of men and their healthiness throughout the menstrual cycle. Their results showed that when the participant’s progesterone level was high in the cycle and fertility was low, they find feminine males and females more attractive. So, we can indicate that when estrogen is high and fertility is high, preference of facial femininity increases (2005).
Facial features may indicate mate quality in terms of health (Gray & Boothroyd, 2012). Being healthy is a criterion for mate selection because, from an evolutionary perspective, healthy individuals are less likely to have infections and more likely to have better immune systems for the offsprings (Hamilton & Zuk, 1982). When we examine male facial masculinity and health, masculinity gives a clue on immune system quality because a healthy immune system can enable the high levels of testosterone (Rhodes, Chan, Zebrowitz, & Simmons, 2003). So, the question is whether female femininity also indicates a healthy individual. According to Thornhill and Gangestad (2006), there is a significant correlation between female femininity and reported frequency of stomach illness and antibiotic use. Moreover, according to Gray and Boothroyd (2012), women who have been identified as feminine have got fewer colds in the preceding twelve months. However, when the same researchers try to focus on future health predictions of femininity they could not find any correlation. Also, Service (1998) indicated that estrogen is positively associated with endometrial, breast, and ovarian cancer. So, these contradictory results may suggest that femininity is not directly related to the immune system but it is related to some parts of it.
Vocal Cues
Vocal cues also affect the judgments of men in terms of femininity of women (Fraccaro et al.,2010). The high pitched voices in women are identified as more feminine and they are believed to be associated with a phenotypic and genotypic condition of the person (Collins & Missing, 2013). High pitched voices are mostly associated with being young, and these preferences may originally come from the tendency to choose females who have high reproductive values for long-term mating (Fisher, 1930). Therefore, young females are more likely to have features that are considered to be feminine such as higher cheekbones, bigger eyes, and small chin. Röder, Fink & Jones (2013) have shown that both women’s faces and voices provide cues to reproductive value. However, interestingly, their results suggested that men attribute more femininity to adult women compared to young girls in terms of vocal attractiveness. So, men’s attraction can be more towards femininity compared to the youth. Moreover, evolutionary psychologists suggest that men are even sensitive to subtle changes in voices during the menstrual cycle (Haselton & Gildersleeve, 2011). Röder, Fink & Jones also show that men perceive women that are in the circum-menopausal’s voice as less feminine and less attractive (2013). Therefore, we can say that men find women’s voices more attractive when they are high in fertility. Hence, women’s high pitch of their voices also gives clues about their higher estrogen levels. (Abitbol et al.,1999). So, men are likely to choose women with high pitch voices without looking at age as long as they are fertile and have high levels of estrogen which are also indicators of high reproductive value.
Body Structures
Another factor that affects the assessment of femininity for men is body structures, and these structures may be enhanced with high heels. Interestingly, when women wear high heels, men have a tendency to find them more attractive and feminine. Even though the history of high heels has started with avoiding the muck on the streets in the medieval period, now it is a big industry that people spend their thousands on. According to Smith and Helmes (1999), wearing high heels increase the likelihood of seeing women as erotic objects because they enhance the contours of the leg and ankle, make feet look smaller, accentuate the hips and breasts, and also make women look taller. These are traits that give women confidence and therefore, make them more attractive. Smith and Helmes suggest that since wearing high heels emphasizes the sex-specific traits of the female body, despite the risk of damage for women, they might choose to wear them for mate selection (1999). So, it increases the potential mate choices for women and evolutionarily, it gives a chance to choose the ones with better genes. Therefore, potential offsprings might have a better chance of survival. On the other hand, for men, these traits indicate a high reproductive value of a woman. To examine the effects of high heels on femininity, Morris, White, Morrison, & Fisher have done another experiment (2013). In their experiments, they have created point-light walker females who either wear high heels or flat shoes and asked people to judge which point-light walkers are women (even though all) and how feminine and attractive they are (2013). Their results showed that participants identify the ones with high heels as females and they give higher femininity and attractiveness to the same female compare to flat shoes. These may indicate that since both men and women attribute femininity to high heel wearing females, this may be because men show more sexual arousal to high heels and make women more aware of potential competitors for mating (2013).
Conclusion
Humans have different strategies for mate selection in terms of long-term and short-term mating and it varies across sexes. When we examine males’ long-term mate selection, we observe that they have a tendency to look for youth, evolved standards of physical beauty, hip-to-waist ratio, and BMI. In terms of evolved physical beauty standards, they focus on skin quality, femininity, facial symmetry, facial averageness, and leg length. Femininity is a subject that has its side branches. In this paper, we study the age, fertility level, health, vocal cues, body structure, and their relation with femininity. Younger females have higher reproductive value and this leads to a higher femininity level. However, this may due to a high fertility level in younger ages since aging women’s faces change and lose some of the features that are related to femininity. Moreover, the literature showed that when fertility level is low and progesterone is high, facial femininity preference increases. When we look at the voice preference of males, we see that they are likely to choose women who have high pitched voices since they judge them as more feminine. Lastly, body structure also has a big impact on femininity. We examine this through high heels because it is generally identified as feminine. We see that males are likely to find high heels feminine and women who wear them attractive since they enhance the body structure.
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