This is another example, in my opinion, of the backwards causality that plagues the logic of so many involved in any research that involves sexiness and young people.

The RANDy researchers’ explanation for this phenomenon was that “The amount of sexual content on television has doubled in recent years, and there is little representation of safer sex practices in those portrayals,” Anita Chandra said. “While some progress has been made, teenagers who watch television are still going to find little information about the consequences of unprotected sexual practices among the many portrayals promoting sex.”

Anita thinks that these unwitting teenagers, subjected to the laissez faire sexual mores of profligate TV characters are prompted to go out and mimic the behavior sans condoms, or the contraceptive pill, or withdrawal at just the right moment.

Did it occur to them that perhaps those teenagers who are drawn to watching sexy-tv.com are exactly those teenagers who have a higher-than-normal desire to have the sex so depicted? Could it be that what one chooses to watch is actually determined by one’s deeper desires, in this case a burgeoning sex drive?

I’m willing to bet that if you could somehow meter a teenager’s sexual drive, you’d find that those with the highest drives had the highest rates of teen pregnancy and the highest rates of watching titillating TV.

I honestly thought the that the mantra of TV being the cause of bad behavior had lost traction with scientific intelligentsia, or perhaps the RAND institute doesn’t employ any of them.

Regardless, this study is bound to generate press coverage and fuel the rhetoric of untold multitudes of family-focused political organizations for weeks to come, so stay tuned.

Psychology Today reports that the benevolent hand of evolution has spared the not-so-perfects of the world the horror of constant rejection by the opposite sex by programming us to be relatively uninterested in those who are out of our league.

Like pigs in shit, we’re happy as can be with our second rate spouses, and until now we were none the wiser! Beta males have “idiosyncratic opinions of women’s beauty, which point them askew of the most elite targets.” 

I feel this ties in with my previous article about fatter, normaler people having more sex than less normal skinny people, which I’m pretty sure is due to their normalcy. With one’s sexual radar tuned to target those equally as ugly as they are, it’s no surprise the world works the way it does.

Glenn Scheyd Jr., psychologist, reported that the more desirable a guy, the more conventional his tastes in the opposite sex. So the Kens of the world like the Barbies. Makes sense.

As for the rest, “their perceptions of who is attractive are actually based to a certain extent on their own desirability.” In addition, these men’s perceptions of other things; for example, the beauty of a certain car, was not similarly affected.

However, I tend to think that men’s tastes in material things are skewed by what is available to them. Guys living in a state of chronic financial deprivation like me don’t tend to drool much over, say, Lamborghini cars because they’ll never afford one. Instead, the limit of their covetousness extends to V8 Commodores or (insert redneck muscle car of your choice here).

Women, on the other hand, don’t exhibit any marked eccentricity of taste as their looks deviate from mathematical perfection. This is apparently because hot guys wouldn’t (or didn’t in primordial times) turn down an easy root even if she was a minger.

So, I think this finally puts into scientific language the phenomenon one often encounters where some no doubt pretty ugly guy will disparage some uber-hot model from the comfort of his nerd hovel on the grounds of something idiotic – usually saying she’s too thin or whatever. But now we know, it’s just that they’ve been staring at a fat ugly pig in the mirror every morning for so long they’ve forgotten what good is. Thanks evolution!

Turns out that this isn’t true.

A recent press release tells us that the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has re-assessed the research and concluded that the weight gain was actually due to normal.. er.. typical age-related weight gain.

“Trials which systematically assessed what happens to women when they use the Pill have not proven any substantial link between hormonal contraception and weight gain,” says Professor Sawicki. “Many women gain some weight as they get older, whether or not they use the Pill. Limiting contraceptive choices will not help women keep their weight under control.”

You’d think that the flatter hormonal landscape that the contraceptive pill affords would lead to less stress, therefore less worrying, therefore less compensatory face-stuffing. So, my bet would be on the pill causing weight loss. Plus, being able to put the fear of impregnation out of mind would, to me, make me feel sexier (were I a woman), leading to a greater frequency of calorie-burning sex and concomitant weight loss. Who knows.

The German Institute has some possibly helpful info on contraception and weight loss if you’re interested.

Prima facie, and following deep thought in the case of our friends at the University of Hawaii, this seems counterintuitive. After all, shouldn’t one’s sexual fitness, especially in the case of women, be directly linked to being of an appropriate weight?

“These results were unexpected and we don’t really know why this is the case,” Kaneshiro said.

So there you go, Dr. Kaneshiro really, truly thought that the stereotype “that you have to be slender to have sex” was likely to hold true.

Anyway, the answer to this question lies in another study that showed that the closer one was with regard to intellect and looks to the average in society, the more sexual partners you are likely to have. Opposites generally don’t attract when it comes to people, and when one is sitting smack-bang in the middle of the bell curve, your selection of potential lovers is the most abundant.

Maybe Dr. Kaneshiro can’t comprehend the idea of turning down an offer of sex, which is fine, but he must realize that attractive women are looking for a shag from within that very small pool of attractive men, if they ever even find the pool.

• The press release can be viewed here.
• The abstract is available here.
• Science Daily has also reported on this.