Trophy Wives: They're FOR THE CHILDREN!!

When I was a very little girl, just trying to figure things out, I developed numerous misconceptions about the way the world works. Here are just a few of them:

For some reason, I thought wars lasted about four years, and then whoever was “ahead” was declared the winner.

I thought that once a woman was married and had sex one time, her body went through some sort of transformation that made her capable of – surprise ! -- automatically becoming pregnant at any moment. (Whew! Glad that one wasn’t true.)

I thought that old people made grammatical errors as part of a kind of “old person’s accent.” In other words, that was just the way old people talked. (This must have been because we lived in a semi-rural area with lots of older people who hadn’t had much education.)

And I thought that the husband was always older than the wife, usually by one or two years. (After all, my daddy was about 1 ½ years older than my mommy.)

On that last one, I turned out to be almost right! The typical husband is indeed older than the wife, though there can be much more of an age difference than my parents had. Ashton and Demi aside, why is it that most unions happen to fall into this pattern? Why are most variations regarded with curiosity? Researchers at Vienna University were wondering the same thing, and now they say that men have evolved to seek younger women to maximize their chances of reproducing, while women seek slightly older men.

In examining people who had changed partners after having their first child, they found that women looked for men with more resources and status, so they chose someone a little older than themselves. Men picked someone younger than their first partner. (Really???) Researchers also found that a couple were most likely to have a greater number of children if the man was about six years older than the woman. Their conclusion: the age difference is a trait acquired through evolution by both men and women to help create more children.

Question: how come so many men will say that their ideal woman looks 18 and is on the pill?

Men seem to have a curious dichotomy between what their evolution-programmed loins tell them and what their conscious minds do. (We could have a discussion right now about the special gift many men have of compartmentalizing EVERYTHING IN THEIR LIVES, but I’ll save that for a future rant.) Here are their loins, whispering to the men, “We must make babies…we must make babies…as many babies as possible…” (Men also tend to quantify everything, don’t they?)

And, except in the case of rap musicians, here also are their conscious minds, warning, “We must not make babies…no babies…too much commitment…too much child support…”

You’d think that, consciously, the man would be on the prowl for an attractive babe who’s coming to the end of her childbearing years. But the loins still win out. This is why humans – with the possible exception of the Europeans and Japanese -- are still being fruitful and multiplying even though the world’s population is over 5 billion and counting! It also explains the staggering backlog of child support cases.

On the other hand, loins can be fooled. The right sexy clothes and strategically-designed lingerie can enhance a woman’s curves and help create the bountiful breasts and youthful proportions that suggest fertility. If the breasts still aren’t bountiful, a plastic surgeon can transform them, and virtually everything else, to suggest that this woman is a genetically-perfect baby machine. Everything from body lotions to hair thickeners to lip plumpers is designed to create the lusciousness associated with a young, fertile hottie.

Thus, the loins are satisfied. Still, the conscious mind, completely at odds with the loins but helpless to oppose them, always makes sure the man is carrying condoms.

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The other day, I wrote about the pressure on Asian girls to have their eyes “westernized” through plastic surgery. Well, last night I saw “Never Perfect,” the documentary about a woman who must decide whether “to crease or not to crease.” I hope you’ll look for my commentary in tomorrow’s blog!