There’s a recent theory that if you want something with a singlemindedness you can attract the universe to deliver your desired outcome to you. But, I am not about to discuss that here. This post is about what attracts the male and female of species to each other, the basic laws of attraction that blooms into love and the desire to nest together. No simplification is ever completely general, to be applied across the board; but the basics could still be right. Those basic attractions then get moderated by various other layers of liking so that no two pairing is exactly similar or one can say definitely that this is what made the attraction happen. In fact it is so complex that even the parties directly involved will have difficulty in saying what attracted her/him to the significant other.

After that disclaimer let’s look at some of the prevalent theories. in fact the whole chain of thought was triggered by couple of news items that appeared today. But a bit of a history first. The ealiest theory I remember was during my student days an article that appeared in the Scientific American. It tried to look at the beauty contests and tried to find if there was any unchanging criteria that decided the most attractive beauty queen. That sidy found that as the fashion kept swinging beween thin and the substantial figure one unchanging measurement was the ration between the hip and waist measurements. Whenever the waist measurement was about a third less that the hip measurement it was found attractive. In other words everyone that won these contests had this same ratio in their vital statistics. Is that the vital fertilty signal then! There seems to be some correlation here with what used to be done here in India, when elders went to choose a prospective bride. It was common for such elders to ask the bride to talke a walk. Not only did that confirm that the propspect did not have any defects in the limbs, I am sure the elders did take a look and got a feel of this ratio of the prospect. Some of these elders were reputed to have the ability to identify women who would never be able to produce children. So, there’s something about the third dimension alright!

Next bit of knowledge comes from the then popular Desmond Morris who in his popular antropology books like “The Naked Apes” propounds the theory that the attractions to the human female breasts developed as we learnt to cover things up. He goes on to establish that the attraction of the clevage came from the original cleavage of the buttocks. He has photgraphs to prove that one is unidentifiable from the other if you did not know which cleavage was photographed.

Now, before the fiminists amongst us start branding me sexist, I want to talk about the theories I read about today and both the news items are about both sides of the equation. The first is a study about bodily symmetry. Feamles find the symmetry in males attractive. Brad Pitt is cited as an example. Same is true of males about females. There was a study few years back which said the same thing about facial symmetry. May be the facial and bodily symmetry somehow signals a pure genetic line! Natural selection is about finding the best genetic material anyway!

The latest news says women find men who have wide shoulders, slender hips, long torsos and short legs( like Chistian Bale for example). Men like women with long legs, slender limbs and big breasts (e. Marilyn Monroe, Racquel Welch…).

So then, that’s about the shape of things in the laws of attraction! What adds color to these basic insticts? Dear readers you are welcome to comment!

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