Equality for all

My body is perfect. Perfectly uneven. My right eye bulges slightly larger than my left eye, my left leg is a tad bit shorter than my right leg, and one of my “boys” droops perilously lower than the other “boy” (if I told you which boy drooped lower than the other, that would be too much information). If the two sides of my body represented two sides of a math equation, I could never get them to become equal. And because I will never get them to be equal, this is the reason I will never be called beautiful.

I find it unfair that my mathematically inept anatomy should be a basis for people to judge my aesthetic pleasantness. Can’t people just love me for my self-deprecating sense of humor, my forest of chest hair and my disturbingly large proboscis? Can you truly judge how beautiful a woman is without having to resort to a nightgown competition, a talent portion, and a question-and-answer portion where none of the answers involve world peace?  

Have we been force-fed the concept of beauty by imperialist Western media giants as they bombard us with their O.C. and their Gossip Girl and their horrible remake of Beverly Hills 90210? Is universal beauty truly defined as blonde, blue-eyed, and with mammary glands that can disrupt gravity fields, just like the beauties we see in Girls of the Playboy Mansion?

Interestingly enough, no degree of exposure to Western media has mutated our universal concept of beauty (so you can keep on watching Girls of the Playboy Mansion without any side effects). In Simply Irresistible: The Psychology of Seduction, there was considerable agreement in what was considered beautiful across a host of racial, cultural and national groups, including groups as widely separated as the Ache of Paraguay up to the Chinese in, uhm, China. Fact is, our concept of beauty has been hard-wired into our DNA. 

In a University of Texas study, a group of three-month-old babies were exposed to a series of photographs of human female faces and the babies’ corresponding response to each of these faces were measured. Apparently, all the infants responded much more significantly to faces which meet these culturally accepted standards of beauty. This study suggests that we are born with instinctive concepts of beauty since none of these three-month-olds have yet seen The Girls of the Playboy Mansion.  

According to The Human Mind and how to make the most out of it, evidence from African mud huts to Manhattan condos to Quezon City KTVs suggests that the rules of attraction continue to work on the same principles as it did during our evolutionary past. That’s right, my three female readers, we get all Neanderthal when we are attracted to somebody. Now, I do realize that some DOMs have been around since Neanderthal times, but even back then I’m certain they weren’t too sure what made them attractive to the opposite sex. When it comes to attraction, my fellow DOMs, you do not need pomade, you do not need a clutch bag, you do not need a 50-pound gold necklace that swings across your exposed nipples. As for the ladies, you do not need lipstick, you do not need six-inch high heels, and you do not need silicone implants. Oh, wait, you might want to think twice about silicone implants (but more on that later).

Because what makes you attractive, handsome, beautiful and sexually arousing is — symmetry. And perhaps several visits to the Belo or Calayan medical clinics (make sure to visit the clinic whose endorsers you find more attractive, handsome, beautiful and sexually arousing).   

Several studies indicate that the consensus on beauty, whether it be for the sex with inverted or everted genitals, is rooted in how symmetrical your face and body are. Psychologist Steve Gangestad and the aptly named biologist Randy Thornhill measured various anatomical features, from foot and hand breadth up to ear length and breadth, and combined all these measurements to produce an overall index of bodily symmetry for each person in their study. The researchers then asked volunteers to evaluate these same people for attractiveness, and compared the results. The study found that the more symmetrical volunteers were more attractive. 

The equal length of your pinkie fingers was not only correlated with your attractiveness to the opposite sex, but it was also correlated with your mental horsepower. Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico directly measured the intelligence and body symmetry of 78 male undergraduate volunteers. Electronic calipers were hooked up and used to measure the right and left sides of 10 body features on each participant, ranging from foot-width to little-finger length, to the nearest 0.01 mm. And voila! Intelligence was found to be strongly correlated with body symmetry.  

See, men, if we could learn to exercise a bit more of self-restraint with regard to our symmetry, we could not only become more attractive, but we also might become more intelligent as well. 

What makes those damn symmetrical people so attractive anyway? Why can’t I enjoy all the 32 years of heathen bachelorhood that went into my asymmetry? Disparagingly enough, the more symmetrical your body and your face is appears to be associated with how genetically fit you are. The body’s resistance to parasites and other pathogens shows up in body and face symmetry. Since we weren’t born with DNA test kits, we evolved indirect measures to gauge another person’s genetic seal of good housekeeping — by being sensitive to very minute differences in physical appearance. So if the left and right sides of the body are mirror images of one another, we can intuitively tell that that person is more genetically robust than a cup of barako coffee in the morning. Evolutionary biologists see beauty as a kind of “health certificate” which guarantees that if you get horizontal with a symmetrical person, you will produce higher-quality offspring.    

But what symmetrical body parts should you look for to guarantee that you will have kids that will look like Brad Pitt, have the physique of Piolo Pascual and the cunning of Jocjoc Bolante? In The Mating Mind How Sexual Choice Shaped The Evolution of Human Nature, female breasts were considered the best indicators of fitness because they came in (what should ideally be) symmetric pairs. Female breasts are the type of bodily ornaments that not only advertise a female’s genetic fitness, but it is also an ornament that keeps men entertained for hours on end. So when body traits grow in pairs, the perfectly symmetric development of these pairs indicates a high level fitness. And, just for the purposes of mate choice, these, ahem, paired traits tend to grow large to make their symmetry more obvious to the opposite sex. The larger the mammary glands, the easier it is for men to spot the asymmetries (as much as you may think it, I am not making this up). Some breasts have even grown so large on their own that they have been classified as weapons of mass distraction. 

Aside from being lethal weapons, evolutionary psychologists John Manning and the comeback-ing Randy Thornhill have also shown that women with more symmetric breasts tend to be more fertile. But men, be forewarned: there are also some women out there who use silicone implants to simulate symmetry. Or even to exponentially simulate symmetry. So be wary while you are on the constant lookout for genetic fitness. Keep on looking, though.     

But since men cannot look at a female’s chest area for prolonged periods without risking dismemberment, is there a more acceptable area of the female anatomy that we can scrutinize?   

According to The Human Instinct: How Our Primeval Impulses Shape Our Modern Lives, nothing screams like “our kids will make us millions when they are Hollywood celebrities” than a person with a symmetrical face. There is even a fairly precise formula for the structure of the perfect female face, drawn up by ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician and the bane of high school students everywhere — Pythagoras. Pythagoras believed that for someone to be considered “beautiful,” the ratio of the width of the mouth to the width of the nose should be 1.6180339887 to 1. This figure should also hold true for the ratio of the width of the mouth to the width of the cheekbones. Now, what does this all mean, aside from the fact that you cannot be beautiful if you flunked geometry in high school? It means that if you were to measure the faces of universally attractive faces, like that of Angelina Jolie’s, her measurements would probably fit squarely into the “Golden Ratio.” Just be careful that, while measuring Angelina Jolie’s face, you are not sucked into her industrial-sized lips.   

Unfortunately, if your inborn face symmetry measuring device is more irreparably damaged than the relationship between the PDEA and the DOJ, you cannot just come up to an attractive woman and shove a tape measure all over her face, even if it is for valid scientific reasons. I have the scratch marks to prove it. There are more diplomatic ways to handle this situation. Politely come up to her, take her picture without her permission, and then scurry away like the stalker you are. Because modern technology allows us measure facial symmetry on a computer program using a scanned photograph. This program measures the sizes of and distances between various facial parts, then assigns a single score for physical attractiveness, which correlates highly with the scores of “beauty” assigned by human judges. This demystifies beauty by turning it into an objective attribute much like your vital statistics. In other words, they can reduce your attractiveness (or the lack of it) to a mere number.   To whoever made this marvelous application who can determine how beautiful or how butt-ugly I am, I say — screw you.

Sigh. Is all the effort to keep ourselves symmetrical worth the hassle? And if we men are to remain symmetrically, does this mean we need to learn how to become ambidextrous?

For those who need more motivation towards an ambidextrous lifestyle, a Canadian study in 1999 revealed that the more symmetrical men’s bodies were, the greater the likelihood that they were to have sexual encounters. And, when the likelihood of sexual encounters increases, the question of asymmetry becomes moot and academic. But perhaps the most potent argument for symmetry comes from our third-time’s-a-charm evolutionary biologist Randy Thornhill: A study he conducted in the University of New Mexico suggested that regular orgasms are up to 40 percent more common for female partners of men with symmetrical bodies. That’s just so randy, Randy. 

But, Randy, your study sure does raise a lot of questions. For example, were the volunteers for this study female undergraduate students of the University of New Mexico? Did you take any pictures of this study while it was being conducted? And can some of my male readers have the Facebook IDs and phone numbers of your volunteers? Aside from those key questions, Randy, how could you tell that your female subjects were being truthful about their orgasms? Did you give them a questionnaire that says “Did you have an orgasm”? Did you count the number of times that their eyes rolled to the back of their heads? Did you measure the decibel level of their screams? Or did you just put them through a congressional hearing? Despite the number of questions we have about your study, Randy, we can only be sure of one thing: the male subjects, who worked very, very hard at their symmetry, must have been very, very happy with the results of the study. Not that they really cared about the results of the study.   

And on a parting note: To all the No Girlfriends Since Birth (NGSBs) who are reading this column, remember that not all of your paired body parts are meant to be symmetrical. So please do not attempt to make any adjustments to any of your paired parts, without the assistance of your urologist. Or your manghihilot. 

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For comments, suggestions or to learn how to become ambidextrous, please text PM POGI <text message> to 2948 for Globe, Smart and Sun subscribers. Or email me at ledesma.rj@gmail.com or visit www.rjledesma.net.