11 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
11 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
The Great Skank Question
|
|
<p>Monica Lewinsky. Rielle Hunter. I’d haul out the tired old Marx quote about history repeating itself as farce, but l’affaire Lewinsky was pretty farcical to begin with. As I looked at <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=ReilleHunter&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi">images of Hunter</a> and <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Monica+Lewinsky&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&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’t these women sexier?</em> </p>
|
|
<p><span id="more-345"></span></p>
|
|
<p>I’m not being gratuitously nasty, this genuinely puzzles me. And I don’t think it’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 — but in this game women compete mainly on good looks because that’s a fitness-to-bear signal, and you’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’re not. And in the last half century the quality of politicians’ bimbos seems to have been steadily degrading, at least in the U.S. Compare <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Marilyn+Monroe&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title">Marilyn Monroe</a> (c.1962) with <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Donna+Rice&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&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’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’ hot <a href="http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Carla+Bruni&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&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’m not buying it; if that were the driver, you’d expect these women to have gotten better-looking over time as sexual Puritanism lost its hold, not worse.</p>
|
|
<p>I don’t actually have any answers to propose, I’m blogging because I think the question is interesting. Perhaps one of my commenters will suggest a predictive theory.</p>
|