Scott Adams recently noted a study that women like the sound of muscle cars (HT to Craig Newmark):
A recent study found that the sound of expensive sports cars increases testosterone in both men and women, thus causing arousal. I didn’t believe it until I played the video of the Maserati, the most potent car they studied. Maybe it’s the placebo effect, but I did feel a surge of something.
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/09/weve-got-some-b.htmlThis solved one of the great riddles of my life. Every summer a group of classic car enthusiasts gathers in my area to compare cars and whatnot. The odd thing I noticed is that the men are generally bearded, out of shape, and unattractive. But the women accompanying them are often very attractive. Now I know why. Apparently the sound of custom car engines is like catnip to hot chicks.
I wonder if this works with the flatulent sound of 4-cylinder un-mufflered "The Fast and the Furious" cars.
Anyways, a friend who works at an all-male school emails me:
The only thing strange about this is that the author doubted it. Men, like males in *all* sexual dimorphic mammal species, compete for breeding rights; females pick the winners. One of the modes of competition (there are others, of course) is economic--a man can pile up lots of money--and then display his fancy "breeding plumage" by, say, driving an expensive sports car--to attract women. All humans from time immemorial until, say, 30 years ago have known this. It takes a special and massive kind of corruption--say colleges and universities completely dominated by a p.c. anthro/soc ethos that deny maleness as such and femaleness as such--to bludgeon people into not recognizing *themselves*, who they are by dint of their bodies. Really, my 94-year-old grandma (whose terminal degree is an eighth grade diploma) could explain why chicks get turned on by fast and expensive cars. Only an academic (or his bamboozled students) could f*ck this up.