Because of the post by Aramas, I now step in . . .
OK, first off I think Craig Reeves initial criticism of MysteryWoman was valid, and the last comment of
"leave your problems and your snotty feminist attitude at the door"
was well meant. Having said that I view her now as someone, maybe the creationists are guilty of this also, of wanting the world in their own image. Her obsession with "model looks" and all this physical attraction business tells me something about her character that I rather not say here, but I think we all know what it is . . .
You see, before I move onto the main point, Nature is not - and never was nor will be - in our own image. Nature does not care about us, no matter what we think of it. It has no feelings and it cannot be turned. We simply have to submit to it in ways that best suit us. Which is why all these scientific disciplines arose. I rather they did not arose since it makes for a serious amount of effort of intellect to understand them - and that requires discipline and solitude, plus you need to have the intelligence to do so, which the general population doesn't (no offence to anyone here, I wished I could have been a world class footballer once but I just cannot make the grade)
It was I who mentioned "The Red Queen" in another thread that MysteryWoman started, entitled rather typically "looks are more important than you think". The other book by Buss that she mentions is probably "The Evolution of Desire", and the research that Bellis and Baker did. They also found out (and she forgets to mention this) that these cheating women typically had affairs with men who are higher in status than their husbands . . . Oh and in "The Red Queen" women were orderd by their looks and men were orderd by their STATUS . . . Why didn't you mention that?
I agree that attraction is not a choice, for the reason (and you all should have known this although I have hinted at it in various other posts since I looked into it very carefully) is to do with your sexual imprinting . . see Lorenz (and for a good overview see Morris).
Main point is this, and here I'm totally brutal: There is no such thing as good looking, nor ugly, nor anything . . Never has, never will be. It's the species that defines it according to its own standards. What if I took you in a time machine and sent you back to the time of Neanderthal man, how would they rate your looks? We have all deluded ourselves into this trap because our domiance and status hierarchies demanded it. If you read Dawkings carefully (The Selfish Gene, The Extened Phenotype), who incidently was trained by Niko Tinbergen as was Morris, he does mention about looks and dominance, BUT only in the context of whether it helps the gene pass onto the next generation.
And that's the point here we should look at. You all may or may not like this, but Nature has the last laugh. If it's looks that gets genes into the next generation so be it, if it's intelligence or having a fit body to provide food so be it. If it's a way with words or the ability to acquire wealth so be it. They are just solutions to an age old problem.
If any of you want me to reaffirm this, you can't choose those that do not choose you. We can all talk about looks or domiance and status but at the end of the day people make their decisions, and usually their bodies tells them so. You also got to know that some genes don't go well together, even though they live in the bodies of two "good looking" people according to MysteryWoman's point of view. And sometimes we fall in love with people who don't choose us or are abusive towards us, but the benefit to be with them outweights that costs (to our minds that is, even though others might see it differently). This is all a mishmash mess that our genes play with us.
And lastly, somewhere Pook made a beautiful insight. The opposite of love is not hate, it's power. That is what your posts are telling me, MysteryWoman. You seem to think, through insecurity or similar, that you might get interested in an "ulgy" guy or that an "ugly" guy could get you if they followed the tactics in this thread. It's a mark of that insecurity that you post the stuff that you do here, and your obsession with "model looks" makes me cringe. You want power, darling, and the sad thing is, we ain't going to give you it . . .
As for myself there's this one woman I'm seriously interested in, and I can't change the way I feel about her. I don't care if you find her "ugly", because my feelings for her is none of anyone's business. And if you want to ruthlessly judge people I think you ought to have a good look at yourself first before you do so. One of the things I learned is that I really can't judge other people in any way, not because it wrong, but because all of us have to bow down to Nature at the end of the day - we're all in this together whether you like it or not . . I don't like Nature the way it is, but the fact that it is the way it is and that I can never change that tells me something, and that's when I learnt to grow up. Just like Pook, DeepDish, The UnkownDon, BondJamesBond and the other wonderful posters on this site that makes it worth visiting from time to time . .