Chapter 9 - Women's Strategies and Tactics

Abstract

This chapter discusses the women's strategies and tactics to attract men. To understand women's strategies and tactics, one must begin by looking at females in general. This chapter addresses some of the behaviors and strategies used by modern human females to deal with the problems faced throughout evolutionary history. In addition to looking at some of the cross-cultural and robust elements of female nature, the chapter looks at some of the modifications and variations of that nature in response to particular features of modern environments. Just as males of other species do not consciously select mates based on fertility or plans for making babies, neither, generally, do human males. Selection for this preference has been so powerful that the age-attractiveness relationship in women holds up even when homosexual men or other women are doing the rating and whether the rated stimuli depict the entire body or just the face. Women are more likely than men to use cosmetic effects to try to enhance youthful features and they are also more likely to lie about their age. For humans there is no specific sexual season and there are no clear and obvious signals (other than the negative signal given by the body shape associated with the final stages of pregnancy) as to when a woman is able to conceive. Furthermore, unlike most other species, humans are sexually active during all phases of the female fertility cycle.