In a study of female strippers, researchers have proven that women are, indeed, sexier to men for reasons that are not outwardly apparent, during certain times of their monthly menstrual cycle.  The findings solidified what was a suspicious of researchers for a while, sort of having to do with the effect that pheromones that attract us to women and other things we can’t actually see might have to do with the “laws of attraction” between men and women, and why there do seem to be certain times of the month when women get more attention.

I’ve often heard women comment that they’re not sure why they start getting more attention from men certainly at indefinite times during a given month.  They say they don’t know what’s different about them but they definitely detect men are giving them more attention, and more than just friendly attention.

It seems according to the research that women do indeed have features that subtly change during certain times during their menstrual cycle, and as that sneaky but ultimately genius mother nature would have it, it happens to be during their peak fertility time.  In other words, the features women exude, or even possibly the pheromones they unknowingly emit, are higher during the times of their menstrual cycle when that are the most fertile, or most likely to conceive a child if they have unprotected sexual intercourse. 

Subtle changes occur, it is said, during a woman’s peak fertility time, in her waist to hip ratio, in her facial features, supposedly her lips may be fuller, the face may be slightly shaped more appealingly, and as stated before there may just be an unspoken additional sexiness to the woman’s body during this time, as well as to the “air” she has about her, without her even knowing it. 

The studies were actually done on strippers and it was found that the strippers got more attention and far larger tips when they were at their highest fertility potentials.  It also concluded that women who are on hormone regulating substances such as the birth control pill, do not get as much attention (tips) as those who were not on hormone regulators.  Interesting! 

Apparently mental health professionals are concerned about the sexualization of young women in our culture, following up the likes of young women such as Paris Hilton and other young, wild teen stars and stars in their early twenties who are setting bad examples for young women and how they behave and present themselves.  Sure, it’s healthy for a woman to want to be an attractive woman and attract men, but it’s gone overboard these days into mass vanity and body image problems. 

It seems that young women who are in the media spotlight present themselves without the same class that women used to, and it’s rubbing off on our youth, especially with the likes of MySpace and other social online meeting places, where girls seem to feel pressure to post sexy pictures of themselves to get attention.

The outward problems that society has shown in young women and the examples that are being set that young girls are sex objects from a younger age, and that sexuality and “being sexy” means everything in the world these days is resulting in lower self esteem and body issues in much of the young women these days and is also resulting in less women doing “smart” things and acting smart, which seems to be another very annoying affect of the Paris Hilton phenomena.  Well, at least she stopped saying that stupid “that’s hot”, but she still has a long way to go in setting examples of what a real women should be.  Like smart and funny, and having more depth than a puddle for starters.

Others issues besides low self esteem that mental health professionals are saying this phenomena of hyper sexualization of young women is increased depression, and eating disorders to try to be like women who are in the spotlight, most of whom unfortunately seem to be taking after Skeletor at the moment. 

Even Angelina Jolie, who was once a beautiful, shapely woman is now promoting this deathly skinny image and sadly many young women are trying to emulate these looks and are torturing themselves to try to be that skinny, which if you ask me doesn’t look good and isn’t attractive at all in a woman.  I think for men, they just want a real woman, one who is smart and funny and keeps it light instead of taking herself too seriously all the time.  Some men do like their women dumb, but that’s all up to them! 

Well, this new little toy that women can use to enhance their sexual pleasure, with or without a partner, certainly capitablized on the popularity of the iPod MP3 player that seems to be in the hands of everyone from teens to old folks these days.  This new little sexual enhancement product for women is a neat little vibrator that has some unique features, and of course, a catchy name that may have women in Japan (that’s where the product was conceived and is being manufactured) thanking the makers for life if it does what it says it can.

Here’s why the name gPod seemed appropriate for this nifty little tool, which retails for approximately $243 and debuted at a huge sex toy show in Tokyo recently.  You can hook the device up to any music device, like an iPod or other MP3 music player, and the darn thing will actually respond to the music, switching things up, so to speak, with each different beat, sound of instrument it hears. I guess there may be something to rhythm and women sexually being fulfilled - at least that’s what I’ve heard before a couple million times!

The suggested use, and reason the product was conceived to work to respond to sounds, is because it can actually be hooked up to one’s cell phone, and a guy can be on the phone, talking to his girlfriend or wife, and having some intimate conversation, while the gPod responds to the inflections in his voice, and therefore responds to the woman’s need for different movements and pressures coming from the gPod down there, so that it can increase their sexual enhancement and pleasure.  Maybe having one of these things could help attract a woman, who knows! 

Intersting stuff, definitely.  I watched a news story that talked about female mice being monitored for brain activity and brain growth, and found that female mice who were sexually aroused, presumably through the scent of the male mouse, specifically his pheromone attractants, actually had bigger brains.  How is that possible? 

Well, we don’t know for sure of course, but pheromones and their implications on humans have also been widely studied without complete conclusion, but we do know that pheromones produce chemical reactions in the brains of the opposite sex when they “get a whiff”, and usually this response if a pelasurable one.  In this case it is hypothesized that female mice who are exposed to male mouse pheromones actually get smarter because of it! 

We’ve talked on MaleEnhancementMagazine (see review of pheromones products) before about pheromones and people, and how there have been studies done that show that we definitely follow in the path of other species, including ants and other mammals, in that we do seem to emit and respond to pheromones, and they do account for attraction to mates to a certain extent.  We’ve all experienced those moments when we find ourselves inexplicably attracted to someone for no apparent reason. 

They may not be exactly our physical “type” but we know that we feel somehow connected to them, as well as sexually attracted on some level that almost borders on subconscious.  The study with mice seems to conclude that maybe women would experience some sort of positive brain development like the female mice too, since mice are very similar to humans biologically in some ways, one might be able to hypothesize that female women may react the same way to male pheromones. 

This may sound odd, but it is true, only in some scenarios, that grown women tend to be attracted to men who look like or at least slightly resemble their fathers.  But, there is a catch.  Women seem only to be attracted to men that resemble their fathers in a physical way if they had good daughter/father relationships, but if not, they do not tend to favor men that look like dad.  Makes sense, since most of us correlate experience with physical attraction, doesn’t it?  It is just another way the human mind tends to be intricate and purposeful in its meanings and actions.

It all sounds so Freudian, doesn’t it?  But it really isn’t all socio-sexual, it’s really based on what makes actual relationships flourish and bonds form between men and women.  If women have tended to have negative relationships with father figures in their life, they would of course not be attracted to men who look like their father figures out of association.

The research was performed in an interesting fashion.  Women were shown pictures of men with varying proportions and shapes of facial features such as lips, nose, foreheads etc, and the women were asked to pick which men they found most attractive.  Lo and behold, when a father history was asked, the women who tended to choose the pictures of men who had the same facial traits and characteristics as their fathers were the ones who reported having a happy and healthy relationship with their father, whereas the women who reported having a negative or difficult or upsetting relationship with their father growing up tended to pick men with opposite facial and other physcial characteristics as their fathers. 

So, fellas, treat your daughters well, because then the guys she brings home to meet the parents may be just like looking in a mirror!  It’s all in the quality of the daughter and father relationship that counts toward a woman giving her father a “vote of confidence” by tending to pick men to be attracted to who resemble them in some way.  And guys, you just may not be able to help what attracts a woman, if you don’t know what kind of relationship she had with her father, so that just may be a crapshoot for ya! 

Gee, I thought this was only applicable in my relationship, but I guess a lot of couples are experiencing the “work spouse” phenomena, thanks to an increasing work force of married couples, and the pressure to maintain two incomes and have the man and woman out in the work force at desk jobs. 

It’s increasingly common for men and women to grow closer to their coworkers, and many times that coworker may be of the opposite sex.  Uh-oh, this sounds like grounds for an affair or something, right?  Not necessarily, although nine times out of ten it seems affairs outside of a marriage or a relationship do start in the workplace of the person having the affair. 

Many times these relationships between men and women at the office are purely platonic and do not offer any threat to a pre-existing relationship, although it certainly could be perceived by more jealous partners as such.  Men and women alike are reporting that they have a work place husband or wife jokingly. 

A person who they can talk to openly, can go on joint ventures with in the work place on common projects, and can pick at and even criticize just like they can do with their real spouse. 

The only time it becomes dangerous, of course, is when romantic feelings start to develop, so ladies and men, it’s important to not let the tired excuse of always being too tired for sex come into a relationship, because this is when problems can start to happen, when a married couple or parts of a married couple or exclusive partnership feel sexually shafted or unwanted, which can many times result when one or both partners tend to turn down sex or never initiate it due to being exhausted, an increasing problem in today’s workaholic mentality and busy lifestyles. 

This is why workplace romances can tend to blossom, because many people spend more time with other people at work than they do with their spouses.  It’s in our genetics to be loved and wanted, and also to be sexually fulfilled and to feel as though our partners want us in a sexual, sensual way.  Sometimes it’s sad, but true!

I’m not sure if this new pill is also supposed to help with a woman’s PMS as well, but there is a new birth control pill poised for FDA approval that is going to come out to market soon that proposes to stop a woman’s period cycle (menstrual cycle) indefinitely, or as long as she is on the pill.  Many women who cannot stand to have their periods may rejoice, but I ask, is this really a healthy thing or not?

It seems to me that women’s periods are meant to happen for a reason, and taking a pill to stop the period seems, well, unnatural at best I guess.  The pill does indicate that it will stop a woman’s menstrual bleeding, but did not indicate whether it stops the moodiness that tends to go along with the period, otherwise known as PMS, the time when men want to stay away from their spouses and girlfriends because they are afraid they might inadvertently p them off.

The name of the new women’s pill is Lybrel, supposedly named for liberating women from the inconvenience of having their monthly period and accompanying bleeding, and is by drug company Wyeth.  Supposedly though, women can already exercise the no period option even on regular birth control pills, simply by skipping their inactive sugar pills at the end of the active hormone pills cycle, and going straight to more hormone pills for the next cycle, thereby avoiding the bleeding cycle, but this new Lybrel product will advertise especially for skipping the period, something the gynecologists say is an increasing demand among women for various reasons.

Most researchers conclude that monthly menstrual bleeding, while a biological fact, is not necessary, and in fact leads to health problems for some women including anemia and other health issues, but other gynecologists do believe that continuously suppressing the period is not good, and women who practice this should at least take a rest from it and make their body menstruate at least once every 12 weeks, which is a lot better than the typical menstruation cycle, which happens once every 21 to 28 days today. 

We’ve touched on this before, but seeing the story with a slightly different spin in the “news” again drew my interest to this fascinating biological fact again.  Women, during their ovulation, which is when the egg is ready to be fertilized and is dropped far down into the tubes for fertilization (this also happens to be the time of the month when women crave sex the most, go figure), tend to pick more “manly” masculine men to bed. 

The other interesting fact is that women tend to pick more masculine men when they are looking for short term flings, as a purely sexually driven fling, but do not tend to pick these types of men when choosing a mate for lifetime, whether this is really a concious decision or not.  It most likely is a biologically, instinctually driven instinct though, as most sexual instincts and mating rituals do tend to be for both the male and female sex.

Interestingly enough, women tend to also base their choice of masculinity in men, and the level of masulinity, on how attractive they rate view themselves as.  Masculine traits in men tend to be a deeper voice, genetically larger sized penises, a strong jaw line and brow line, pheromones out the wazoo (some studies have actually shown that men with more masculine traits also tend to emit more pheromones for whatever reason).

The studies showed that women who were at their most fertile peaks during the month when shown pictures of various men would usually pick the pictures of the men with the most manly characteristics as mate choices, or as who they were most sexually attracted to at that moment. 

The really interesting part of this on a biological scale is that men who tend to have higher testosterone levels are actually viewed, instinctually, as being healthier, and more capable of providing, as well as more able to fertilize a woman’s egg.  Not only that, scientifically men with higher testosterone levels have been shown to be the healthier men with more stable health qualities than men with lower testosterone levels or even testosterone deficiencies. 

Women tended to find men with more feminine/less masculine traits more attractive during times of “off peak” for ovulation and fertility though, because supposedly in the woman’s mind, and often in nature, men with higher testosterone levels are more likely to not stick around, and to not be as stable and trustworthy of a mate.  Interesting stuff, definitely.

New on MEM, we have an overview of pheromones, their importance to the human mind and that art of sexual attraction between a man and a woman, and how you can actually “wear” pheromones and garner more attention from the ladies - no we’re not kidding.  Pheromones have been wittled down to a science where they can relatively easily be assimilated into a cologne-type spray and worn to the benefit of any guy.  Guys report that they do notice increased attention from the opposite sex.  Could it be a placebo?  Perhaps, but the evidence is pretty compelling to the contrary that pheromones, when worn, do attract women.  Read our pheromone review : pheromone review.  It’s fun stuff..

An interesting study was done recently in NY which involved the study of young people newly in love and what parts of their brains were “turned on” and most active during these first, thrilling stages when a person has just fallen in love with someone.  We all know that falling in love or lust with someone can be totally consuming when it first happens, for a few months or even up to a year.  Of course, this excitement does gradually fade as the love matures, but it is a very powerful, overcoming feeling at first which involves brain areas that are responsible for the feelings of elation - almost a “high” if you will.

The study involved studying MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) of the brain of those newly enthralled with their loved one, and when presented with images of the one they love, various areas of the brain involved with the production of dopamine and cravings “lit up”, showing that the creation of additional dopamine accounts for the feelings of being on cloud nine when first in love with someone. 

They even differentiated between love and sexual feelings, or lust without love, and did not find that these same areas lit up, which is fascinating, because one would think love and lust would be closely related to one another in relation to the areas of the brain it would stimulate, but this apparently is not the case with love and its counterpart lust. 

Not only did they find out why new love feels so incredible, but these finding also explain why when a person is rejected by their loved one, it can be ultimately defeating and very emotionally painful.  The most intersting part to me is that it is fairly conclusive at this point that lust and love operate out of two different brain centers at first, and then as the love matures, they kind of blend the line and become fuzzy (probably because sex becomes more of something that has to be kept interesting as a couple is together longer).  I’d love to see a study like this on the pheromones affects on the human brain, both on men and women.  I don’t think that’s been done yet….