What
do women want? The conventional biological wisdom is that men select
mates for fertility, while women select for status — thus the commonness
of younger women’s pairing with well-established older men but the
rarity of the converse. The Demi Moore–Ashton Kutcher model is an
exception — the only 40-year-old woman Jack Nicholson has ever seen
naked is Kathy Bates in that horrific hot-tub scene. Age is cruel to
women, and subordination is cruel to men. Ellen Kullman is a very pretty
woman, but at 56 years of age she probably would not turn a lot of
heads in a college bar, and the fact that she is the chairman and CEO of
Dupont isn’t going to change that.
It’s a good thing Mitt Romney doesn’t hang out in college bars.
You want off-the-charts status? Check out the curriculum vitae of one
Willard M. Romney: $200 million in the bank (and a hell of a lot more
if he didn’t give so much away), apex alpha executive, CEO, chairman of
the board, governor, bishop, boss of everything he’s ever touched. Son
of the same, father of more. It is a curious scientific fact (explained
in evolutionary biology by the Trivers-Willard hypothesis — Willard,
notice) that high-status animals tend to have more male offspring than
female offspring, which holds true across many species, from red deer to
mink to Homo sap. The offspring of rich families are
statistically biased in favor of sons — the children of the general
population are 51 percent male and 49 percent female, but the children
of the Forbes billionaire list are 60 percent male. Have a gander
at that Romney family picture: five sons, zero daughters. Romney has 18
grandchildren, and they exceed a 2:1 ratio of grandsons to
granddaughters (13:5). When they go to church at their summer-vacation
home, the Romney clan makes up a third of the congregation. He is
basically a tribal chieftain.
Professor Obama? Two daughters. May as well give the guy a cardigan. And fallopian tubes.
From an evolutionary point of view, Mitt Romney should get 100 percent of the female vote. All of it.
He should get Michelle Obama’s vote. You can insert your own Mormon
polygamy joke here, but the ladies do tend to flock to successful
executives and entrepreneurs. Saleh al-Rajhi, billionaire banker, left
behind 61 children when he cashed out last year. We don’t do harems
here, of course, but Romney is exactly the kind of guy who in another
time and place would have the option of maintaining one. He’s a boss.
Given that we are no longer roaming the veldt for the most part, money
is a reasonable stand-in for social status. Romney’s net worth is more
than that of the last eight U.S. presidents combined. He set up a trust
for his grandkids and kicked in about seven times Barack Obama’s net
worth, which at $11.8 million is not inconsiderable but probably less
than Romney’s tax bill in a good year. If he hadn’t given away so much
money to his church, charities, and grandkids, Mitt Romney would have
more money than Jay-Z.
No comments:
Post a Comment