Lovatt’s research is easy to grasp. Everyone can appreciate that women are not attracted to men who barely move and show little imagination when they dance. Lovatt knows this, and he knows how to sell his work. After all, as a professional dancer he learned how to entertain, and win over, an audience. He just had to learn to do the same thing verbally. Take, for example, his explanation of why women are not attracted to men with primitive moves: “Women simply don’t like it small and simple.
If what I have written is all true, then surely men would love dancing, as it is an opportunity to show off to the ladies, and attract mates. No. In any population of men, half the men will be above average at dancing, half will be below average. There is nothing to be gained from advertising to the world that one is below average. Half of all men will shy away from dancing, therefore. Men who are only slightly better than average will risk dancing badly on a bad day, and might not have practised or learned enough of the current cultural dance forms, and so will also be very reluctant to dance. If all the below average men danced not at all, then the worst of the above average would be the worst dancers on the dance floor. It is only the very good dancers who will benefit from dancing. They will enjoy dancing, because they have evolved to get a kick out of dancing well. Men will have inherited from their male ancestors a terror of dancing badly.
…and this…
Recent studies have shown that women are very sensitive to the smell of men. Sub-consciously, it seems, women can tell a good-quality man from a low-quality one, and their decisions are influenced by smells. One such decision is how highly they rate the attractiveness of a photograph of a man, while smelling the smell either of a healthy attractive man, or an unhealthy unattractive one. Thornhill and Gangestad (1999) showed that women prefer the smell of handsome faces and symmetrical male bodies (but not when on the pill), and that the effect of women’s smell on men is much lower. Women were most smell fussy at fertile peak of their menstrual cycle (2). When a woman goes out dancing, she will judge the men, subconsciously at least, by smelling them. Since men don’t rate by smell much, they can live without the opportunity to smell all the women. Most modern women at a dance hide their smell with perfume anyway.
However, in order to use this skill, the women would have to get a good smell of all the men in their tribe. This is not always possible or convenient, nor easy to do politely. Also, the smell of old sweat is often bad, and not so informative. Ideally, a woman would get to smell all the men under the same conditions, and would get to smell fresh sweat on all those men.
One way a woman might get to smell fresh sweat on all the local men, would be to play vigorous sports with them. While this would be less dangerous than fighting them all, it would have its hazards, and most men can run rings round most women, and so this is unlikely to work very well. Since the purpose of discerning which men are good and which bad is to decide which men to have sex with, getting the men sweaty by copulating with them is a very bad idea. By the time he’s broken sweat, it might well be too late. Dancing offers a woman not just an ideal opportunity to smell fresh sweat on all the men of her tribe, it probably offers her the only opportunity for this.
The supposed reason for under-arm hair is for increasing the ability for others to smell one’s sweat. It is interesting to notice that a movement common to almost all partner dances is for the man to turn the women under his raised arm. In passing, the woman’s nose wafts past the man’s armpit every time.
Be sure to check out her website, Harmony Hoops. She teaches hooping, yoga, and performs at events, such as the one above (generally in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area). I’ve also met her in her person, and she’s kind and patient. If you’re on Facebook, become a fan to be notified of upcoming events.
Forrester’s Hall has been sold! Forrester’s Hall is the current venue for Redwood City Swing. As a result, Carla and the other instructors are looking for a new location. The ideal location would:
* be located within a 15 minute drive of the current location
* have hardwood floors
* have at least 3000 square feet
* have a “nice” ambiance (not a high school gym)
* have ample parking.
If you know of such a venue, please let me or Carla Heiney know.
capitalism-yeah invited me to go with her and her friend Gretchen last night to Redwood City Swing. It was blast!
We took the beginner drop-in class, which they offer every Tuesday at 8:15 p.m. Both instructors were very competent, helpful and on the ball. Afterwards, Gretchen and capitalism-yeah took turns dancing with me. After they left, two women asked me to dance. There were probably 60 – 80 people there overall. They also served snacks (strawberries, chips, cookies), and had several coolers of water set up.
Downsides: the music is loud (though there are areas where it is much quieter, and you can talk), and it can get stifling hot (no a/c).
Took an introductory salsa class at Cubberly tonight. The instructor went at a pretty good pace — not too fast, not too slow. He also kept rotating the partners, so I got to dance with about 30 different partners. I’ll do it again.
