#NOAFW: So, Women Like Beefcake Studmuffins. Who Knew?

I guess it took a whole lot of rigorous --- rigorous, mind you!! --- social scientific research to figure it out.

From Amanda Hess, at Slate, "Study Finds That Women Aren’t Run by Their Periods. Scientists Everywhere Are Confused":

What do women want? Over the past two decades, scientists have endeavored to answer this question by bringing women into their labs, asking about their sexual preferences, and then monitoring their menstrual cycles to try to extract clues from the ebb and flow of hormones in their mysterious female bodies. In recent years, these researchers have told us that the status of our monthly cycle on Election Day can influence our decision to favor Mitt Romney’s chiseled individualism or Barack Obama’s maternal health care policies, that our periods determine whether we feel like nesting with our partners tonight or heading out to proposition a stranger, and that our cycle urges us to swing with Tarzan at our most fertile and cuddle up with Clay Aiken when that month’s egg is out of the picture.

Blech! Clay Aiken?!!

You gotta love Ms. Amanda's take though:

The researchers suspect that the drive to chart women’s choices on their fertility calendars reflects our desire to understand human behavior via rudimentary evolutionary explanations: “More modern evolutionary approaches,” they write, “recognize that social learning and innovation are central human adaptations that are enabled by biological processes” and that ”the evolution of the human brain did not stop with these ancient sensory, perceptual, and motivational systems.” For one thing, women just don’t menstruate like they used to—while our ancestors spent the bulk of their adulthoods either pregnant or lactating, modern women in industrialized societies menstruate regularly throughout their lives, taking just a couple short breaks to have some kids. The rise of birth control has also radically disrupted any evolutionary influences. Other studies have found that women desire greater masculinity in their partners if they live in economies with low GDPs, “in which men’s work may involve manual labor jobs and male brawn,” while women in wealthier countries that “rely more on knowledge workers” are freer to prefer “better-looking men.”

In other words, a woman’s cultural conditioning is even more powerful than progesterone. Women’s endocrine processes have officially taken a back seat to our own mental and physical capacities to regulate our preferences and our cycles to better contribute to our societies.

"To better contribute to our societies."

That's precious!

Whatever. I just love that Tarzan reference, which I'm sure will pique Robert Stacy McCain's interest.

Here's the study, "What do women want? USC study reveals what scientists might have gotten wrong."

Check back for more from the frontlines of National Offend a Feminist Week!