Bad Criminal

There are many types of sexual disorders from dendrophilia (literally translating to “love of trees”),  objectophilia (emotional desire towards specific inanimate objects, oculolinctus (licking the eyeballs), vampirism (attraction to or involving blood), and even necrophilia (attraction to corpses). You can literally look up lists of all the strange things that people are sexually attracted to.  Bonnie and Clyde, the epic duo, even have a syndrome or sexual paraphilia named after them. Hybrisophilia, defined by sexologist Professor John Money is described as “the sexual arousal and pleasure from having a sexual partner who is known to have ‘committed an outrage or crime, such as rape, murder, or armed robbery’” (Griffths). People with this disorder often focus their attention on someone who has been imprisoned and in most cases they urge the object of their affection to commit crimes. 

Bonnie and Clyde

Have you ever wondered how those creepy serial killers who are imprisoned get a fan club and have all these women throwing themselves at them (even though these women are well aware of the fact that these men kill)? In some cases of hybrisophilia, the person with this disorder will contact someone already in prison who they do not know but may have only seen in the media. 

“High profile murders and serial killers that are known to have received sexual fan mail include Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramierez, and Ted Bundy” (Griffths).

Unlike most other paraphilias, hybrisophilia is more common in women than it is in men but it also varies in “disposition and degree” (Griffths). The women with passive hybrisophilia are the women who fed the prison fan mail services, they have a desire to be with someone who has committed crime but not actual commit crime themselves. They put themselves in “positions to be seduced, manipulated and lied to by the people they fall for” (Love Arthistory).  Their counterparts, the aggressive hybrisophilia, the ones who help their mates commit crimes (the actual Bonnie and Clyde). The only thing that is common between both passive and agressive hybrisophiliacs are that they both tend to be in abusive or unhealthy relationships. 

It’s not really known as to why this sexual paraphilia even exists or how it came about. An evolutionary reasoning could be that these men’s children would have a higher survival rate than others. They could also be “narcissist enablers who are attracted by power” (Love Arthistory). Though these women can be seen as victims of their own circumstances it must be understood that these women are not victims at all but instead want to subject themselves to this criminal behavior with violent tendencies. 

Symmetry's For Squares

It's obvious that Hollywood, a billion dollar industry, is doing something right. Yet, what would a good plot be without someone beautiful to look at. Celebrities are so appealing to us because they are, let's face it, ascetically pleasing. Not only has it been proven that we base our judgement (trustworthiness and personality) of others based on the symmetry of their faces but we base how to find a mate on it as well. The body/facial symmetry of another (specifically the opposite sex) is directly correlated to their "physical fitness and condition" (Ragsdale).  Both men and women look for someone who will produce good offspring and facial symmetry comes in handy when looking for a mate. A person with better symmetry produces better offspring.

The Curse of Curves

Sir Mix-A-lot will probably forever be immortalized for his song Baby Got Back, but what sticks out in that song is the lyrics "36-24-36." Representing a woman's size in inches for her breasts, waist, and hips. After some calculations, someone figured out that American men combined, annually, spend about 3 billion dollars to stare at women that look like Sir Mix-A-Lot's description.  Men are attracted to women who have a "waist size that is 60 to 70 percent of their hip size" (Lassek). Psychologist Devendra Singh and cognitive neuroscientist Steven Platek found that when a man looks at a woman with a Playmate figure,  it ignites a internal pleasure system. The system which curvy women lit up in men, is the same system that is lit when using drugs such as cocaine or heroine. Men's preference for women who look like they belong in an issue of Playboy, has been "shaped by a millennia of evolutionary forces" (Lassek).  What in evolution makes years to shape men to want women with the curse of curves? The answer: an hourglass figure relates to not only a woman's success at being a mother but also, believe it or not, her intelligence.

Marilyn Monroe is famous for having the ideal body size and type. Small waist with curvy hips all on a 5 foot 5 1/2 inch frame. The average Playmate is 5 feet 6 inches tall and 115 pounds. The 24 inch waist held by not only Marilyn but also most Playmates, is only a small part on what gives a woman her curves. The ideal woman also has normal sized legs and hips which are also well graced with fat. That's right, I said it ladies, fat. For what ever reason it may be, men LOVE the fat found in these areas. As much as we may hate it, female humans carry the most amount of fat out of any animal. Carrying seven times the amount of any other animal, excluding ones hibernating bears or Arctic diving whales, though we may compare ourselves to them.  A reason for this could be that the fat stored in women's hips, butt, and legs are a constant. Weight fluctuates but these areas stay untouched during weight changes. 

The human brain, other than water, contains fat, mostly an omega-3 called DHA or docosahexaenoic acid (Lassek). Women, tend to store their DHA in their these loved areas, their hips and legs. A human infant's growing brain needs DHA, which help in the rapid communication of information. Most of the DHA, that a mother feed to her child in her breast milk, comes from the fat stored in her hips and legs, however her supply is not endless and with each child her supply decreases. With this logic comes that a mother gives the greatest amounts of DHA to her first born child, which is "why the first born sibling tends to be the smartest" (Lassek). 

The fact that a woman's DHA amount helps to produce smart children helps to connect a woman's figure to why men want it. Studies have shown that women with "curvier hourglass figures have more DHA stored in their body fat" (Lasske). Higher the DHA, the better the brain works and in turn the curvier the woman the smarter their child will be. Today, American mothers rank near the bottom in the DHA content of breast milk. Therefore, the only way a woman can increase her DHA in her fat stores would be to gain more weight. This can help to explain why American women weigh twenty pounds more now than they did in the 70's, and a whopping forty pounds more than the average Japanese women, who were also found to have four times the amount of DHA.