[nectar_dropcap]Y[/nectar_dropcap]ou know when you’re stood in front of the cashier waiting to pay for your copy of Tractors Daily, and you’re looking around at all the other magazines surrounding you… What do you see?

That’s right, girls.



Everywhere, girls.



Wall to wall women. Lotso ladies. Girls galore… you get the point.

They make up the majority of both men’s and women’s magazine and newspaper front covers.

Why?

Likewise with all life forms, magazines evolve – if they don’t sell, they die. Therefore, over time, the front cover theme of magazines have converged and established that a beautiful female face is the maximal image to ultimately entice consumers of either gender.

Beauty and physical attraction encompass our most powerful of tools. So powerful in fact that we subconsciously attribute positive characteristics (such as honesty and intelligence) with high physical attraction.[1]

So how does yours match up?

This article covers 3 generally lesser-known biological clues to attractiveness. Hopefully this will give you a new insight into your own undiscovered allure. But don’t fear if it reveals any shortcomings, I’ve included ways for you to ‘outsmart nature’ for each.

1. Human pheromones

What are they?

In this context, they’re naturally produced sexually arousing smells secreted by us with the purpose of attracting a mate.

Do they exist in humans?

Yes, but not in the conventional way.

Do we often secrete them to attract a mate?

Perhaps, but certainly without realising it.

Can we even detect them?

At a subliminal level, absolutely.

Animals usually detect pheromones with the use of a specialised organ, called the vomeronasal organ. Now, this organ does exist within our noses, however, as Dr. Meisami states in his study:

“There is no trace of [vomeronasal axons] in adult humans”

This basically means that our vomeronasal organ is no longer connected to any part of our brain. It’s about as useful as a chocolate teapot, or better yet, Anne Frank’s drum kit.

However, there is strong evidence of us secreting attractive smells…

Researchers found the testosterone of men to skyrocket upon smelling the shirts of ovulating females. These men even rated them as more pleasant smelling (compared to non-ovulating females).[2] Highly rating a girl’s sweaty pits? Where did they find these weirdos?

But this effect isn’t exclusive only to men. Ovulating women were found to be particularly sensitive to the musky-compounds that are highly secreted by men in their sweat. Usually, men aren’t so sensitive to these compounds so it was believed that the female hormone estrogen was causing this musk responsiveness in women.

So what did the researchers do to test this? They injected men with female hormones of course, and you can guess what happened… these poor guys became so aroused by those hunky musky smells that (I imagine) they began to question their own sexuality.[3] I bet they needed some counselling after that one.

So the fact that men naturally secrete these musky compounds and women become most receptive to them when at their most fertile, suggests a purpose in human sexuality.

And it explains why we all have hairy armpits.

What?

Well think about it. Our body hair and sweat producing glands appear simultaneously (and often concentrated together) during puberty; suggesting a role in sexual development. This is why we sweat so much at our concealed pubic regions. Supposedly, the thick curly nature of pubic hair:

Naturally wicks the musk secretions away from the skin, increasing ventilation and creating a stronger odour,

and also increases surface area for the bacteria at these regions to break down and create new potentially attractive odours. [4] Yum.

So guys, just think of your hairy pits as built-in trebuchets that fling around your musky scent, similar to how an old dog spatters his urine up a tree. After all, the desired effect of announcing your presence isn’t all that different.

Your specific odour ‘fingerprint’ dictates who finds you attractive

You have these little ‘flags’ on the surface of your cells called MHCs. Your immune system uses them to recognise and distinguish your cells from invading pathogens. We now realise that your own personal signature of ‘flags’ is secreted through the skin and others can detect it with their olfactory “smelling” system. And with alarming accuracy too as a study by Wedekind and Füri found that:

“both sexes preferred the body odors of individuals whose MHC genes were dissimilar to their own”

This means that you’re subconsciously attracted to those who have a genetically different immune system, and you can sense this through your nose. Mother nature gave you this magical ability to prevent you from banging your cousin. That’s right. Your close relatives will have very similar MHCs to you, so lacking arousal from their smell helps prevent inbreeding. Isn’t nature wonderful?

Meanwhile, your attraction for different MHCs encourages you to breed with (e.g.) an ethnically dissimilar partner. Your offspring will then inevitably have a high MHC diversity which will improve their immune systems ability to recognise itself. This will lower their susceptibility to infection and autoimmune disease.[5][6]

Outsmart nature: Modern day colognes and perfumes use musk-like compounds to mimic an enhanced human attracting odour. Don’t bother sweating the small stuff, just use these instead. Sorted.

2. Symmetrical face

Few things have perfect symmetry in life, and I’m afraid most of our faces are included in this. When it comes to studying attraction, participants often rate symmetrical faces more highly than asymmetrical faces. Surprisingly, however, slight facial asymmetry is preferred over perfect symmetry.[7]

Why do we prefer symmetry?

We’ll begin with the obvious. As you age and your face begins to resemble an overweight pug, your face loses symmetry. This indicates a lack of youth which (understandably) is less attractive to someone who wants to reproduce with you.[8]

Psychologist Dr. Shackelford discovered those with high facial symmetry to possess a strong immune system. Specifically, they show a higher resistance to upper respiratory infections.

So is this why we find facial symmetry attractive? Surely we can’t be recognizing these beneficial health advantages at a conscious level. It must be innate/intuitive. It makes you wonder just how much of our attraction for each other is instinctual.

Facial symmetry isn’t only a direct indication of current genetic fitness (as you may believe), it’s also a tell-tale sign of past disease resistance. The stressors (e.g. diseases) an infant is exposed to largely determines their facial symmetry (or lack thereof) later in adult life. So someone with a symmetrical face is secretly revealing to others that they’ve not been exposed to many diseases (e.g. Hemifacial microsomia) during childhood.

The craziest part is, those who did experience infection or disease during childhood are more likely to favour potential partners with symmetrical faces.[9] This phenomenon was even observed in those who had just recently been unwell! So does this mean that catching a cold temporarily raises your standards? If so, let’s just hope Melanie Trump catches one sometime soon.

All things considered, your facial symmetry (or lack thereof) gives a potential partner a window into both your development and the development of the potential offspring they could have with you. Very sneaky.

That’s the biology out the way, now let’s look at it from a more philosophical point-of-view.

What’s the deal with humans and their love for symmetry anyway?

As explained with an excerpt from Alan Lightman’s book The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew:

“Why do we human beings delight in seeing perfectly round planets through the lens of a telescope and six-sided snowflakes on a cold winter day? The answer must be partly psychological. I would claim that symmetry represents order, and we crave order in this strange universe we find ourselves in. The search for symmetry, and the emotional pleasure we derive when we find it, must help us make sense of the world around us, just as we find satisfaction in the repetition of the seasons and the reliability of friendships.”

So in the same way in which stereotypes and biases allow us to form immediate assumptions about people/things, symmetry is our quick way of establishing order, and order gives us pleasure.

Psychologist Rolf Reber further supports this by stating:

“Aesthetic pleasure is a function of the perceiver’s processing dynamics: The more fluently perceivers can process an object, the more positive their aesthetic response.”

Put simply: we’re attracted to attractive people because they’re ‘easier on the eye’, and naturally we like things that look “in order”, like that of a symmetrical face.

Outsmart Nature: Luckily, for all us slightly wonky faced individuals (myself included), facial exercises or various methods of makeup application can remedy any asymmetrical features.

3. The limbal ring

Found on your eye, this is the ring that separates your iris (the bit surrounding your pupil) from your sclera (the white bit). Generally, younger and healthier people have strong, dark, defining rings. This accentuates the iris and the sclera, thus = pure sexiness.

A strong limbal ring indicates optimal eye and cardiovascular health. It represents a low accumulation of phospholipids (a good thing). Unfortunately, like friends, these rings fade as we age which makes the surrounding eye whites look less bright. This new bloodshot look gives us a lovely, ‘eternally intoxicated’ appearance which really helps with the DUI accusations.

This 2018 study showed women to become significantly attracted to guys with strong limbal rings when they were in the short-term mate (aka one-night stands etc) mindset. As the male readers are probably wondering, the researchers induced this short-term fling mindset by providing the women with a short erotic story entailing brief romantic encounters. As a comparison, control participants were given a non-love related story (probably Twilight or something).

Outsmart nature: Besides the slow, boring (but recommended) method of improving health to improve your limbal rings, the quick way is to insert some limbal ring enhancing contact lenses. Like most unusual trends, they’re becoming popular in Asia. So why not start this new movement in your own country?

The rest is perception…

As Dr. Reber proposed in his study on aesthetic pleasure:

“beauty is grounded in the processing experiences of the perceiver, which are in part a function of stimulus properties.”

This is basically a scientific way of saying that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. But if anyone tells you any different, just give them a polite jab to the side of their symmetrical face. Their new crooked cranium should give them a whole new perspective on the age-old proverb.