News / Entertainment
Dancing: Attracting a Mate and Staying Fit
This is a new one. In findings published in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters (whatever that is) Dr. Nick Neave has associated our ability or inability to dance with mating dances of wild animals, and he’s demonstrated a link between good dancing and better health and virility. Dr. Neave got men to dance for cameras which transformed their images into computer rendered generic figures. Then he showed the dance moves to women who rated them on a scale from 1 to 7 and described what movements they considered alluring. Dr. Neave took blood samples from the men and did biochemical tests on them which showed that the good dancers were also healthier. You can read more about his findings here.
The problem, of course, with a study like this is basic. It takes quite a bit of practice to get good at dancing — exercise. Then, how do they know the dancers aren’t healthier simply because they dance rather than that they dance well because they’re healthy and virile? For instance, would a scientist know that swimmers or tennis players wouldn’t get the same health results? Dancers aren’t more physically attractive than non dancers. They might just be athletic people in the same way a tennis player is naturally athletic thereby making them, like other athletic people utilizing natural selection, better physically capable of reproducing.
What Does that Make Me?
My dancing is an embarrassment to humankind. Really, I would, without a doubt, be rated a 1 on the 1 to 7 scale. So how the heck did I manage to find a mate and reproduce? I can’t vouch for my health as I’ve never taken blood tests to figure it out scientifically, but I’m pretty sure I’m healthy. In fact, I think Dr. Neave, while probably right that good dancing is attractive and bad dancing isn’t, has missed a vital fact of our civilized world. Some people don’t like dancing even if they’re naturally rhythmic and good at it, and they have no need to dance. I’ve never been to a dance club and I’ve never had the desire to go to one. Certain people enjoy that sort of thing, but it isn’t like we’re plumed birds that rely on body movement and strutting to find mates. We humans are versatile. I can’t dance, true. But there are other things about me that women seem to think is attractive. Is it possible that some people don’t go to dance clubs because, well – they don’t need to? We’re sophisticated people. There is more than one way to skin that cat (why do people say that?).
8 Ways to Stay Healthy Without Dancing:
Eat Lots of Veggies
Read (your brain should be healthy too)
Play (with the kids or whatever, play outside and have fun)
Lift Weights (high repetition)
6 Ways to Attract Women Without Dancing:
Intelligent Conversation
Money (It’s a good indicator of security)
Be Generally Healthy (See the first list)
Be Competent (Nobody wants to marry a talentless hack)
Sincerity and Honesty (say what you mean)
Compassion (do no harm)
See? A lot of women don’t care how you dance. They just care that you’re reliable, somewhat healthy and aren’t a dumb pudding face. Now, if you’re the sort of person who does like dancing then that will work too. There’s nothing wrong with dancing, but there are so many other things that go into finding a mate. Women might have some vestigial attraction to body movement. That’s what Dr. Neave was studying. But, I wouldn’t take these findings to mean that women are so passion driven that a well executed dance move is going to charm them.
