Martian Honeys (7 of 8)
Last week I mentioned something about the New Monkey Effect, but I didn’t explain it. Today I will rectify that.
There is a certain primate species in which the young males suffer from extreme sexual frustration. No, I am not talking about human beings- not yet, anyhow. The problem is that none of the females in his group find him attractive. Eventually, after many years of loneliness and self-doubt, of staying up all night eating ice cream and posting to message boards about how girl monkeys don’t like nice guys, the boy monkey will decide that he’s had enough. The next day he’ll pack his things and head off into the jungle alone.
Soon enough the intrepid young explorer will happen across more of his kind. This new group of monkeys will appear very much like his original group, but something is different. Suddenly our young monkey will be a hit with the ladies. He will literally have girl monkeys fighting over him. What happened? How can we explain this amazing transformation?
What happened is the New Monkey Effect. The attractiveness of a monkey is increased by a whole order of magnitude if the monkey in question is an exotic outsider. Now, human beings are not monkeys, but we have a similar attraction to outsiders. Seriously, would Antonio Banderas be anywhere near as popular if his name were Bob Keene and he spoke with a Brooklyn accent?
In general, if you live in a foreign country you count as one attractiveness level higher than you would in your home country. The effect tends to be reciprocal: you will count your neighbors as being one attractiveness level higher than their co-nationals would. Of course the New Monkey Effect doesn’t always hold. For whatever reason some exotic outsiders are better than others. The effect also varies by gender: men from country X might be regarded as sexy, for instance, while women from country X aren’t.
I was going to finish up with a snappy ending but that’s going to have to wait for Thursday.
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