"A lot of men-especially in the United States-dismiss personal style and taste as the exclusive domain of the metrosexual, the feminie, and the gay. Real men don't care about clothes, decor, or beauty, the tell themselves between heated discussion about their fantasy football lineups. That stuff is for chicks and guys who like dicks!
There's no other way to put it: men who think this way are penis pilots destined for failure and loneliness.
FOr many of you younger guys, it's not your fault. Notions of masculinity have been tossed around like a ping pong ball in a hurricane for the last fifity years. Hw can we expect to have any idea of what to do or how to do it when sexual and social more keep changing and you get so many mixed messages from the media?
So let's not talk about the last fifty years of social development; let's talk about the last fifty thousand generations of sexual selection. Across thousands of animal species, over the millenia, females have been using the beauty trait-sexual ornament-as the main signal of genetic quality in selecting mates. Awesome male style is a very ancient thing.
In fact, Charles Darwin realized that female choice for beauty and style explains why the males of so many species evolved amazing, intricate physical traits. It's the male peacock who has all the pretty feathers. The male cardinal is the bright red one. The male lion has the giant, lush mane. In nature, it's the men who usually dress up, not the women.
These conspicuous displays evovled to signal to female eyes and brains that the male who possessed them was so fit, strong, and capable that he could easily afford to spend his energy lugging around risky, unnecessary bullshit to get their attention. Sexual ornaments like feathers and sexy manes don't help the male's survival. but they do something much more important, they help attract mates and reproduce.
This principle of attracting mate through conspicuous beauty and style extends int human courtship and mating in every culture. Self-ornamentation with hairstyles, accessories and sepcial clothing, for instance, is universal across both sexes in all hunter-gatherer tribal peoples and modern cultures and has deep evolutionary roots. Archaeologists found that humans have been ornamenting themselves with red ocher pigments and shell-bead necklaces for at least 90,000 years. Even Neanerthals were ornamenting themselves with cut, notched, polished, talons from white-tailed eagles 130,000 years ago. There is even evidence that our ancestors were selecting mates for their artisitics skill in making stone tools since long before we were humans-over 1.5 millions years ago.
Women pay a lot more attention that you realize to your stylisj sexual ornaments, your aritistic and musical skills, your appreciation of beauty andthe whole aesthetic dimension of your life: your grooming, scent, clothes, car, music, furnishings, apartment, Instagram-feed, online dating profile, and everything else. All these things are reliable signs to women of who you are and how well you've cultivated your other traits-especially your mental health, intelligence, willpower and empathy, If you neglect all these aesthetic signals just because you thing they're metrosexual, feminine or gay you might as well shoot your own dick off, it's not like you're going to need it anyway.
Because women, instinctively think about your whole appearance, lifestyle, adn set of possessions as a work of art, they want everything your life to be stylish, beautfiul, creative, clean and well maintained.
Guys who are good at aesthetic proof understand this and use good taste to guide every decision in their lives; which neighborhoods to live in,, which restaurant to book for a date, which wine to order, which bedroom candles to buy, which condom to wear. These may seem to be unrelated decisions but they all add up to form your aesthetic proof. "
- Mate by Tucker Max(Founder of Book-in-a-Box and Author of Assholes Finish First and I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell) and Dr. Geoffrey Miller(Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of New Mexico and Author of The Mating Mind and Spent: How our Sexual Choices Affect Consumerism)
