Uncle Bob’s Treehouse has a great post on female mate choice, with a little nod to r/K toward the end.
The first of two parts which really caught my eye:
Some lessons about what female audiences like can be drawn from the early career of Clark Gable. The film that made him a star was A Free Soul (1931), in which he played a gangster who pushes Norma Shearer around to let her know who’s boss.
As a fan site puts it, previous male leads had been “suave and svelte, romantic and tender.” Gable’s character, “…was supposed to be the villain, the evil corrupt criminal that you are supposed to root against–it’s Leslie Howard you are supposed to hope Norma ends up with–plain vanilla Leslie Howard. Well, the fans spoke and spoke loudly–the 1931 woman didn’t want plain vanilla and no longer wanted “powder puff” men with styled hair and ruffles on their shirts–they wanted a real man, a rough man, a man who was a bit dirty and not afraid to put them in their place.
In the roaring twenties, women wanted the metro-sexual rabbit, because his strategy was best adapted to reproduction under conditions of free resource availability. Once the Depression hit, women were so desperate for a violent and competitive man, they were actually excited by the sight of a man who hit women. By the time WWII ended, promiscuous sex without marriage was considered a huge taboo, being a wimp was bad, kids had a mom and dad or they were bastards, commies were the enemy, freedom was paramount, and American greatness and dominance was everyone’s goal.
And the second:
“…the best reason not to strike a woman today is that you will never be able to get rid of her afterwards.”
That one has got to give a feminist somewhere an amygdala hijack.
It’s a great piece, check it out.
…………… being a wimp was bad, kids had a mom and dad or they were bastards, commies were the enemy, freedom was paramount………………..
back then the rabbits hadn’t taken over the education system.
I’ve seen little on high/low time preferences as it relates to r/K. Seems r would be low. Depends on IQ, I think.
Right.
Because K selected human races (you know, the actual stuff that r/K selection applies to) are known for being wimpy and cooperative.
Women will basically always reproduce so the challenge is balancing resource provision for her offspring with genetic quality. Women judge genetic quality based on what’s sexy to women (yeah, it’s circular – that’s how sexual selection works). So when women have significant resources then they are less attracted to resource provision and seek better genes for their offspring.
When this happens over tens of thousands of years in one direction or another you get the differences between African humans and Eurasian humans and it’s impossible to miss which group there is (more) r selected and which is (more) K selected.
Same thing with the 1963 film Hud. Paul Newman’s character was meant to be evil, an anti-hero, but the reality was the opposite.
Same thing with George Costanza. His entreaties toward Anna were rejected until Elaine warned her off him. Once he was the bad-boy, Anna was smitten – at least until he got them both busted for bootlegging movies for Brody. Women love the bad-boy.