(9 of 10)
So, to the extent that females relied on male help in raising a family, the smartest female reproductive strategy may have involved no less treachery than the male one: behave promiscuously, so you'll be sure to get pregnant, but pretend to be monogamous--professing undying love--so that at least one of the fellows will think the kids are his and possibly take an interest in them. Hey, it fooled the evolutionary psychologists!
Men fall for pretty faces, women fall for healthy portfolios? Here's another object lesson sometimes drawn from the evolutionary allegory of Monica and Bill: men go for ample breasts and buttocks accessorized with thong underwear, while women are attracted to power and money, even when it comes in a chubby, gray-haired middle-aged package. True, there are more cases like ex-Playmate Anna Nicole Smith and her late, wheelchair-bound millionaire husband than there are like elementary school teacher Mary Letourneau and her 13-year-old boyfriend. But since men tend to accrue wealth and power as they age, it's a bit odd, as zoologist Desmond Morris once noted, that baldness doesn't necessarily activate the female swoon response. It may be smart for women to go for the billionaires and tribal big shots, but in practice their choices are often politically and economically irrational, if not self-destructive. Helen dumped a perfectly good warrior-king for the cute but feckless Paris. Juliet fell for a scion of the enemy clan. In rock-'n'-roll tradition and movies from The Wild One to Shakespeare in Love, it's the penniless no-account who makes the girls scream--and did anyone see Titanic?
There is in fact a respectable evolutionary rationale for such "irrational" female choices. Women may want loyal, provider-type mates to help them raise their children. But if their sons are, in turn, to be attractive to other women--and hence keep the lineage thriving--it might help if Dad is a heartbreaker himself. Unfortunately, though, physical attractiveness is not a reliable guide to reproductive "fitness," as in health and wealth. Consider the peacock. Its gorgeous tail renders it highly vulnerable to predators, so any peahen with a concern for her sons' longevity should opt for a more modestly endowed mate. Trouble is, all the other peahens are fools for those huge tails and may turn up their noses at the short-tailed sons of their practical-minded sister. So, the evolutionary strings are pulling us in two directions: Go for the geek with the Microsoft stock, says Mating Program A. No, wait, says Program B, did you see that adorable rake with the earring and the black leather blazer?
Plus--need it be said?--the human sexual impulse, like that of the bonobo, is not as tightly coupled to reproduction as certain pro-family moralists like to think. Even in so-called primitive hunter-gatherer societies, such as that of the Australian Aborigines, women have always managed to invent forms of contraception--herbal drinks, pessaries to block the cervix, oils to bog down the sperm. Then there is homosexuality, a reproductively senseless but nevertheless deeply compelling sexual strategy for millions of both sexes. Not to mention masturbation, celebrated by rapper Foxy Brown's chart-topping song Ill Na Na, in which she promises to "hold my own like Pee Wee in a movie theater...I can do bad by my damn self." Men are not the species' only sex machines.