I’ve been thinking about sex a lot recently. As one tends to do when one is not getting much. The trouble is I’ve grown picky in my old age. I now actually have to like the person to sleep with them, I require some form of connection and chemistry beyond the physical: attraction for me transcends a person’s exterior. It’s no good to just like a book’s cover – I have to like what’s on the pages as well. It doesn’t seem to be so with many men who seem to be able to go from zero to ninety in much less than sixty seconds, regardless of whether they feel a deeper connection or not.
All this thinking about sex – and I don’t mean just the act but the culture, norms, and etiquette that accompany the pursuit of procreation – has got me thinking about the economics of sex. Eggs are in low supply and sperm is in high supply. By this logic, women – carriers of eggs – should have considerably more buying power than men – harbingers of spunk. But this does not seem to be the case. Not only is a hell of a lot more time, energy and crying involved in the production of eggs, and later babies, but a hell of a lot more time, energy and crying goes into women making themselves attractive for men.
But isn’t it the male of the species who is meant vie for the womb space of women and not the other way round: women clamouring for cock? In Nature all the brightly coloured birds and insects are the males and the frumpy ones females. Why should these ladies bother preening themselves if they have all that colossal buying power from holding a scarce resource: ova. It is a similar buying power that makes Tesco think it is excusable not to pay the farmers on time: because they have more clout and dollar.
So what happened along the line? Did the dynamic endowed by Nature shift somewhere or has it got something to do with the self-consciousness inherent in human beings, whereby women decided for themselves that they would rather look and feel sexy as much for them as for men, and the chaps realised that they didn’t have to try so hard.
Or are women now less able to let go of the go-getter attitude that has been drummed into them under the pressure of trying to succeed in fiercely competitive schools, universities and offices? Perhaps many women can’t help but go about finding of a mate in a similar way to how they have climbed the career ladder and find it hard to simply turn off their masculine energy once it is going home time.
DISCLAMER: For God’s sake, don’t take anything of this too seriously.
