“Unlike their sisters in the animal kingdom, human females don’t openly advertise their ovulation. But even without a human version of the baboon’s bright pink behind, signs of fertility sneak out… Subconsciously, women dress more provocatively and men find them prettier when it’s prime time for conception. And a report from the University of New Mexico demonstrates that the cyclic signs have economic consequences. Psychologist Geoffrey Miller and colleagues tapped the talent at local gentlemen’s clubs and counted tips made on lap dances. Dancers made about $70 an hour during their peak period of fertility, versus about $35 while menstruating and $50 in between. Miller links the wage fluctuations to changes in body odor, waist-to-hip ratio, and facial features. Despite operating at the upper limits of flirtatiousness already, he says there may also be subtle shifts in their behavior — ‘how they talk and move when enticing a customer to buy a dance, and how they perform the dance itself.’ Women on the pill averaged $37 (and had no performance peak) versus $53 for women off-pill. The contraceptive produces hormonal cues indicating early pregnancy, not an enticing target for a would-be suitor. Birth control could lead to many thousands of dollars lost every year. The researchers were surprised that almost no one in the business had noticed the pattern before. But if you’re a woman in any service-industry job looking to maximize your tips, Miller suggests scheduling more shifts for the phase right before ovulation: ‘It might help to know about this so that you can exploit these effects.’” — Psychology Today (US)

It is ironic that attractiveness is something that everyone appreciates but few understand. When you try to describe it, you fall back on terms that have a scientific air about them — “Jill and Bob have chemistry” — and yet you probably don’t really know what the chemicals are. Hormones? Pheromones? When you read about research such as this study of lapdancers, you may find the conclusion obvious. Of course women at peak fertility attract more men and/or elicit more generosity from the men that they do attract. And yet to see this obvious conclusion described in the concrete language of science makes you understand it in a better and deeper way. You can chart the information, use it, base new behaviors on it. If you’re a stripper, as the researcher says, strip when you’re fertile.

The quantification of this data also enables you to extrapolate some new hypotheses. For example, if women on the pill do not go through these same cycles of greater and lesser attractiveness, are they more likely to bore their long-term partners? Or what about perversion? Does bestiality occur more often when animals are ovulating? If anything, perverse practices probably deviate from these cycles of attractiveness and fertility. Little girls don’t ovulate, so pedophiles probably aren’t much affected by the peaks and valleys of the menstrual cycle. In fact, many of the desiderata typical in perversions — little girls, cadavers, feet, excrement — don’t ovulate, which makes you wonder if perversion could be defined as the sexual desire impervious to “chemistry.”

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