Agreed, and most women are put off by a guy who can not pass a mirror by without flexing something…
that said, a fit healthy man with muscles-that FEELS sexy, sort of a little thrill to touch, even though Mr Noble isn’t musclebound-he DOES have great arms- which feel WONDERFUL–esp when he comes up behind me and hugs me or when he’s doing pushups or push up type maneuvers…
There is another difference, in fact the one that prompted this thread.
We are very consciously aware of visual stimulus and our reactions to it.
Many of us have little conscious awareness of olfactory stimulus, much less our reactions to them. In fact, those stimuli may be so far below conscious awareness that we falsely attribute behaviors caused by them to a visual or other hypothesised stimulus that is closer to our conscious awareness.
Just about everyone can identify the smell of spoiled milk. Fewer people can consciously identify close relatives by smell, although most seem to have an unconscious ability to do so.
This awareness varies from person to person. Some people, (probably including most of the experienced pheromone users on this forum) are more aware of olfactory stimulli.
But they are in the minority.
This may differ in other cultures. I would expect primitive peoples living outside the world of artificial perfumes, anti-persperants, and deodorents, to have greater awareness of olfactory stimulli.
This brings up an interesting point. A friend of mine had been trying to “hook me up” with a friend of hers she knew. From the photographs she showed me I was (sorry to admit) unimpressed with her physical presentation. She just didn’t appear to be “my type.” However upon being in the same room with her she appeared much more attractive.
This could obviously be the victim of so many variables, but thought-provoking nonetheless.
I’m with you on this.
Sadly my last date thought otherwise.. I didn’t expect a woman to reason the way she did, preferring outer aesthetic…
She coulda been pheromone’d up 
She did say she liked EO’s for one thing. I got her to smell my TUTH at least and she liked it…
She had tried to set me up with a friend too!
Well research has proven that what women find attractive changes depending on whether they are ovulating or not.
Ovulating Mmm square jaw big muscles could have a one night stand with that guy.
Not ovulating Mmm caring soft features guy i could have a telationship with him.
Any way iv studied art history and its obvious the idea of beauty goes on changing through the centuries.
Do you agree that these changes are cultural? I’m convinced that from a biological perspective beauty does not change across time. Fitness indicators, like the waist-to-hip (WHR) ratio in women and muscularity in men that are visual indicators of reproductive hormone levels and pheromone production have stayed comparatively static. The WHR as calculated from the paintings of Reubens and from pictures in Playboy is a commonly used example.
James V. Kohl
The Scent of Eros
Well yeah i believe there is the cultural and the biological aspects of attraction.As well as (for a man) embodying attractive qualities like conversation skills,social ease and a powerful presence.
As for the biological indicators of beauty i agree with you that there are certain factors that don’t change and we are hard wired to recognize them as indicating healthy genes .What you say is very clear.
I still believe however that cultural factors play a part.For example post September eleven this whole chisel jawed soldier image of masculinity has become culturally attractive.Unlike the nineties when looking like a silver back was less attractive socially.
Hungry Men Like Skinny Women
Seems plausible that more generally preferences depend on programs evoked by particular endocrine patterns over time… so not that social and cultural conditions don’t matter, but maybe one route they influence preferences is via biology.
FuturePundit: Hungry Men Like Fatter Women
August 05, 2006
Hungry Men Like Fatter Women This result opens up all sorts of possibilities. Dr Viren Swami of University College London and Dr Martin Tovée of Newcastle University found that before they eat dinner men find heavier set and less curvy women more attractive.
How full a man’s stomach is can dictate the type of woman he will fancy, UK research suggests.
A study of 61 male university students found those who were hungry were attracted to heavier women than those who were satiated.
The hungry men also paid much less attention to a woman’s body shape and regarded less curvy figures as more attractive.
The molecular mechanism by which this works might be manipulable some day. Could a drug target brain locations which govern attraction without affecting whether a person feels hungry? If so, a guy could (knowingly or not) take a drug that makes his skinny or fatty mate look more attractive all the time.
I’ve long thought that a drug which increased the range of men or women which a person finds attractive would allow a person to be a lot more satisfied when pursuing the opposite sex. Also, a drug or other treatment that allowed a mind to find a single person the most attractive (say stare at that person while getting the treatment to imprint that shape as ideal) would allow everyone to think their mate is most attractive.
Biotechnological manipulation of feelings of attraction might not cause natural selection problems. In the future people will genetically engineer their offspring anyway. So hooking up with a person who is less attractive due to genetic problems doesn’t have to lead to genetically less fit offspring. That will be able to get fixed with genetic engineering at the time of conception.
Male students entering and exiting a school dining hall were shown pictures and women and asked to rate them.
They recruited male university students as they entered or exited a campus dining hall during dinner time.
They asked the men to rate how hungry they were on a scale of one to seven. Using these responses, the researchers selected 30 hungry and 31 satiated men to take part in the study.
The men were then asked to rate the attractiveness of 50 women of varying weights, all within a healthy range, who had been photographed wearing tight grey leotards and leggings.
Skinny women should want to go out to dinner with men since the men will find them more attractive as dinner progresses. Heavier set women might want to go bicycling with a guy to build up his appetite in more ways than one.
By Randall Parker at 2006 August 05 08:52 AM Brain Sexuality | TrackBack
Interesting, i had a child with a women who was not the type i normally go for but i was won over by her good qualities and intelligence.Needless to say i went though a weird cycle of not desiring her (after all it was she that pursued me) still we managed to have plenty of sex lol.
Our daughter strangely is really beautiful people constantly say she should be a model or something and she is only 12.Iv always thought that the only reason we got together was to have our daughter.
Might have something to do with what tisha said because her name and middle name were exactly the same as my mothers (very weird)
By the way thats not my daughter in the picture thats my niece.I just liked that pic for some reason.
Research reported yesterday suggests that it is not so much the number of sexual interactions as the way in which we compensate to maximize the likelihood of conception.
Did you ever ask her what it is about you that made her pursue you?
James V. Kohl
The Scent of Eros
She just said im really hot lol and she may never meet someone like me again.I thought she was appealing to my ego
An initial appeal to your ego seems less likely to produce the end result of you fathering a child with her than does something different about you compared to other “hot” guys. I’m surprised that she wasn’t more specific. Thanks anyway.
JVK
Well she did say something weird when we first met.She told me she “recognized” me.
I just read that article.You know one of the reasons i wasn’t happy in the relationship was because i resented not choosing her as a mate.
it was very strange. For me it started with a dream.
i actually had a dream about the specific circumstance in which we met (never met or knew her before) don’t normally go in for dreams but thats what happened.
After we met she was all over me she would knock on my door come in try and seduce me.In the street she would walk past touching me.She wouldn’t leave me alone.lol
I lived in her block and i visited once thats where she told me she ‘recognized me’.What she meant by that i don’t know.
By the way we used contraception but she still manged to get pregnant
There are some little known reports indicating that male pheromones might induce ovulation in human females (“reflex ovulation”), which could influence the outcome of any form of contraception that was not 100% effective (e.g., all forms). From a research angle, this is what interests me. Unfortunately, as with the little known reports, anecdotal information doesn’t weigh heavily on the mind of most researchers.
James V. Kohl
http://www.pheromones.com
Or, she might have been fooling around on the side.
This alternative explanation helps to also explain why anecdotal evidence is of little concern to most researchers.
JVK
I am curious if it was a condom that you brought, or that she brought.