The Great Skank Question
<p>Monica Lewinsky.  Rielle Hunter.  I&#8217;d haul out the tired old Marx quote about history repeating itself as farce, but l&#8217;affaire Lewinsky was pretty farcical to begin with.  As I looked at <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&#038;q=ReilleHunter&#038;um=1&#038;ie=UTF-8&#038;sa=N&#038;tab=wi">images of Hunter</a> and <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&#038;q=Monica+Lewinsky&#038;um=1&#038;ie=UTF-8&#038;sa=X&#038;oi=image_result_group&#038;resnum=1&#038;ct=title">Lewinsky</a>, though, I was struck by a question:</p>
<p>If power is, as is so often claimed, the ultimate aphrodisiac, <em>why aren&#8217;t these women sexier?</em>  </p>
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<p>I&#8217;m not being gratuitously nasty, this genuinely puzzles me.  And I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s a trivial question, either.  Evolutionary bio says women ought to be competing to mate with high-status males who can afford to support even the offspring from the casual fucks.  Fine, I believe that &mdash;  but in this game women compete mainly on good looks because that&#8217;s a fitness-to-bear signal, and you&#8217;d expect the ones who get caught in flagrante with powerful politicians to be successful competitors. That is, generally pretty hot.</p>
<p>But they&#8217;re not.  And in the last half century the quality of politicians&#8217; bimbos seems to have been steadily degrading, at least in the U.S.  Compare <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&#038;q=Marilyn+Monroe&#038;um=1&#038;ie=UTF-8&#038;sa=X&#038;oi=image_result_group&#038;resnum=1&#038;ct=title">Marilyn Monroe</a> (c.1962) with <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&#038;q=Donna+Rice&#038;um=1&#038;ie=UTF-8&#038;sa=X&#038;oi=image_result_group&#038;resnum=1&#038;ct=title">Donna Rice</a> (1984) with Monica Lewinsky (c.1996) with Reille Hunter (2008). The trend line runs from archetypal sex goddess (Monroe) to outright skank (Hunter) with, in the middle, stops at a fairly attractive woman (Rice) and a pudgy girl-child (Lewinsky) who might have had a good moment or three before way too many trips to the refrigerator.</p>
<p>Is there something wrong with the conventional theory of sexual selection?  I&#8217;m inclined to doubt it, because there are plenty of examples that actually fit the theory. For a recent one, consider the <s>Prime Minister</s> President of France: bagging, extramaritally, the smokin&#8217; hot <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&#038;q=Carla+Bruni&#038;um=1&#038;ie=UTF-8&#038;sa=X&#038;oi=image_result_group&#038;resnum=1&#038;ct=title">Carla Bruni</a>.  He later chucked his wife and married Bruni, of course, but that if anything makes the bodacious Bruni a better example of a <em>more</em> successful competitor.  Bruni even one-upped Lola Montez; I think we have not quite seen her like since the Empress Theodora.</p>
<p>So, what, is it just American politicians who let skanky women get at them?  And why has the trend gotten worse over time?</p>
<p>My wife Cathy thinks it might be that American politicians tend to be prudes who boff ugly women as an expression of their conflicts about sex, but I&#8217;m not buying it; if that were the driver, you&#8217;d expect these women to have gotten better-looking over time as sexual Puritanism lost its hold, not worse.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t actually have any answers to propose, I&#8217;m blogging because I think the question is interesting.  Perhaps one of my commenters will suggest a predictive theory.</p>
