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Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life: Why Playboy Is Bad For Your Mental Mechanisms
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Kenrick D. (2011) Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life: Why Playboy Is Bad For Your Mental Mechanisms, 9-22.
In this chapter, the author talks about the fact that in his youth he came to the assumption that when we see a large flow of people, they seem more attractive to us because we only catch images, when the crowd starts to thin out, we can look at the faces of each individual and the average person will looks like the average person. The study confirms his assumption and also says that if you are a man and if you see a large number of beautiful women, this may adversely affect your feelings for your partner or even lead to difficulties in building relationships with ordinary girls. That is why “Playboy’ negatively affects the mental mechanism of men. And if you are a woman and there are too many well-off male leaders before your eyes, this can also negatively affect feelings towards a partner.
Nowadays, people are increasingly paying attention to how the image of a woman is shown in modern mass media being an institution that occupies an important position in the system of formation and maintenance of the modern human community. The transformation of the image of women in popular culture has had a tremendous impact on the crisis of women's identification as one of the aspects of the global identity crisis, which has serious consequences for the harmonious development of man and the whole society. It is alarming how modern advertisement is sexualized. Media demonstrates scenes of cruelty and violence, cultivates of material values and consumer stereotypes, and in particular the wide distributes pornographic and erotic materials.
The author's story begins when, as a student, he notices in a large flow of people that the girls of this university are especially attractive, and his friend Dave does not agree with him saying that there is no really beautiful among them. As it finds out later, this is due to the fact that the entire room of Dave is hung with posters from the playboy magazine. A long-term study of the author has proved that the more a man sees beautiful women, the less chance that he will be able to contact ordinary women in real life. On this occasion, I would like to give an example from my life, some of my male friends like to watch Victoria's secret shows, and they watch them in the presence of their girlfriends. One of them once asked me a rhetorical, in his opinion, question: “It’s ok to call other women beautiful in the presence of a girlfriend, right?”. I did not agree with him, but he continued to say that if a woman is objectively beautiful, this is normal. I believe that this behavior suggests that the man is not only disrespects his lady, but also is not sure about his choice, and therefore not confident of himself. If a person has chosen a partner and intends to be in a serious relationship, then there is no point in looking at other with sexual interest and corrupting his fantasy. If you cannot cope with the desire to look and talk about models, perhaps you are still at the search stage. At that
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moment I couldn’t give good reasons why looking at beautiful women and discussing them is not normal, especially if you are in a relationship, but after reading the discovery from this book, I will definitely share the research evidence with my friends. Also, Douglas Kenrick tells that during the study, men in two held their gaze longer on attractive girls in a small group of people and could then recognize them in photographs, did not linger on men's faces, and did not recognize them in the photograph. Women also showed greater interest in beautiful women and recognized them in the photo, but it is surprising that they would pay more attention to attractive men, but afterwards they could not recognize them in the photo. This led him to conclude that men are more likely to choose a partner by looking at external data rather than women. However, another experiment showed that although women are not predisposed to be disappointed in their partner after looking at photos with attractive men, they tend to give preference to men with high social status. As we discussed in lectures, this long-known scholarly distinction between gender reproductive strategies. Men for the continuation of the race are interested in a healthy, able to bear, give birth and feed the child female. The most obvious sign of good health is the appropriate appearance (dimensions, proportions, skin, hair, etc.). Women are not only worried about the appearance of the male, perhaps in the sense of physical abilities (strength, endurance, speed), but also his inner “capacity” such as intellect, talent. As well as psychological readiness to raise a child with her for several years, without even being sure of paternity. Thus, such behavior of representatives of different sex is natural, because it is determined by instinct.
Both men and women are interested in attractive individuals of the opposite sex, it is embedded in our genes. For each sex, this attractiveness is determined differently. But it cannot be denied that the contents of such magazines as playboy is incompatible with what is happening in real life.
Sofia Khmeleva 11324123