Why Have Sex at All: (Not) Down With the Sickness

Why should we have sex at all? Many creatures reproduce without sex. Sure, that makes things pretty boring, but that's not nature's problem. Mother Nature is a bitch and all she cares about is herself. Our genes are part of nature and they are just as selfish. They want to exist and to exist for as long as possible. As far as nature is concerned, one of the largest threats to the survival of genes is disease.

The bitch has a point. All through history, diseases and plagues have wiped out millions of people. The Black Death killed over one third of the people in Europe in the thirteen century. Over ninety percent of the Central American Indians died of smallpox after the Spanish brought the disease to Mexico from Europe. More people died of Spanish flu in 1918-19 than in the previous four years of the First World War.

How does a species protect itself from being wiped out by a really nasty bug? By changing up immune systems. Viruses and bacteria are always mutating and evolving, so our immune systems need to keep changing to stay ahead of them. One person's immune system being mixed with another person's immune system keeps sickness guessing. If all immune systems were the same, it would be easy for a disease to kill us all, because we'd have the same weaknesses.

So how do we know whose immune systems we should combine with our own to create stronger children? Smell. A guy with a different kind of immunity system from a woman's will smell sexier to her than a guy with a similar kind. TV's Christina Hendricks may not read much of evolutionary theory (Maybe she does, who knows? If so, hi Christina. Damn, you're radiant.) but she touched on it in the May 2010 Special Edition "Women" issue of Esquire magazine.

She said, "Speaking of your body, you don't understand the power of your own smell. Any woman who is currently with a man is with him partly because she loves the way he smells. And if we haven't smelled you for a day or two and then we suddenly are within inches of you, we swoon. We get light-headed. It's intoxicating. It's heady."

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/women/women-issue/christina-hendricks-sexy-0510#img#ixzz0nYq2phse

Smart woman. Her opinion was confirmed in a famous study involving sweaty t-shirts. Men were asked to sleep in a brand new t-shirt for two nights. After the shirts were turned over to scientists, the shirts were given to women to smell. The shirts worn by the most symmetrical men (meaning facial attractiveness, based on tiny measurements of the face) were considered the best smelling by the women. The women's sense of smell varied over the course of her menstrual cycle, and it was strongest while they were ovulating. So women are on the look out for healthy, good looking men when they are most likely to get pregnant.

But men are attracted to a woman's smell as well, although on a more subconscious level. In a October 2007 issue of Evolution and Human Behavior, it was found that strippers that were ovulating made on average seventy dollars in tips. Those that were on their periods made thirty five dollars in tips and those that were in between made fifty dollars from customers. Men also tended to be more affectionate and more jealous when their wives were ovulating.

So guys, stay clean but don't go over board on the cologne and deodorant. The women will be more attracted to you. In theory. If you get laid, thank me. If you get told you're gross, blame science.