Love at First Sight

It seems that there is research that supports the Rogers and Hamerstein's "Some Enchanted Evening" lyrics

Some enchanted evening you may see a stranger
You may see a stranger across a crowded room
And somehow you know, you know even then
That somewhere you'll see her again and again

at least for the reverse case of women.

There is research alleging that with just one look at a photograph women can detect the testosterone level of men and determine whether the men are better suited to one-night stands or as husbands, these predictions being predicated on an alleged ability to detect whether the men seemed to like children, their masculinity, their physical attractiveness (duh!), and whether or not they were kind. In short, if you show a woman a mug book of all available men in her area, she will be able to pick out those she just wants to screw and those she might want to marry.

These decisions are, we are assured, being made at an unconscious level and thus hidden from both the women and the researchers and is probably due to genetic programming, which is also safely out of view of both the women and the researchers. The researchers were flying blind without brains, I fear.

"How were the men tested?" you ask. Their testosterone levels were tested from saliva (so far so good) and their interest in children was determined by showing them pictures of an adult and a baby and asking them to pick one or the other and indicate their level of interest in it. Now, the fact that women could identify which men had the higher testosterone levels from photos seems possible (don't high testosterone men lose their hair more quickly than the low testosterone guys?), but the idea that choosing between a picture of an adult and a baby and rating one's interest in the picture is one sorry ass way to determine whether a man is interested in being a father.

I am sorry but life is just a bit more complicated that this. I heard on some TV show the other day that a guy decides whether or not he wants to sleep with a woman in 4 seconds. I would have thought it was instantaneous and I can see women being just as quick as men in determining the studliness of a man. But the idea that one can determine which men are better prospects as fathers from looking at photograph and determine which men would be better candidates as fathers from their choice between a photo or an adult or a baby and rating interest in the photo are ridiculous.

Maybe they could have asked the college boy subjects to bathe an infant and seen how quickly they set about the task, whether or not they showed good instincts as to how to cradle the baby over the water, whether or not they avoid dropping the baby onto the floor or drowning the baby, whether or not they dried the baby off well, and then whether they put powder on the baby's nether region and then properly put on a diaper. Each of these skills could be scored and a measure of "help meetness" (but in reverse, since "help meet" goes back to a Hebrew term that refers to wives) determined. That might put the lives of babies at risk but, hey, this is science.

The irony of this is that the Rogers and Hamerstein's lyrics quoted above applied literally to me and my wife, or at least to me. I saw her long before she saw me so the "across the crowded room" part isn't relevant to her. Also, she wasn't looking for someone who would be a good father since at that point she had no motherly instincts whatever. I was the one who had motherly instincts (gave the baby her first few baths, showed my wife how to diaper the baby, and so on and so forth). Some powerful motherly instincts did kick in, sort of like they did for the Eva Longoria character on "Desperate Housewives."

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Tags: love at first sight