(What's this? A joke about sex and the internet that doesn't involve porn?)
Anyway, I found this website: blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/01/20/the-4-big-myths-of-profile-pictures/
It's basically a statistical analysis of the activities of participants on dating websites in relation to elements of their profile pictures (self-taken pictures/smiling or unsmiling/eye contact / 'flirty face' / etc) Most of it was pretty dull, to be honest, but one part piqued my interest:
When analyzing position/ eye contact in pictures, women's results were about what you'd expect - they were far more likely to be contacted if they were smiling, and also if they were making eye contact with the camera. Their results dropped, however, when looking unsmilingly into the camera
What's curious to me is that the results were exactly the opposite with men - men's results were far less successful if they smiled, and their chances were actually damaged by making eye contact with the camera - whether they were smiling or not.
The results were by far the worst from both genders when the picture was both unsmiling and making eye contact, which is understandable - a serious face staring you down, to me, comes off as either pretentious, humourless, or vaguely threatening.
So why might it be that women so strongly prefer a man frowning in another direction, while men prefer a warm, adoring gaze? In gender studies you're always hearing about woman as the "seen" object - woman is "to be looked at", whereas men are "looking", but then why would men more strongly respond to a woman looking into the camera? The only thing this seems to indicate is that men enjoy being the subject of cheerful and adoring attention from the opposite sex, but then, who doesn't?
Well, women, apparently. Why we would prefer a sullen, preoccupied photo over a positive, open one is completely beyond me.
I think it's indicative of the "Edward Cullen" syndrome that seems to be sweeping the nation. I don't know much about Twilight, but I know that old Edward is apparently the new standard for all that is hot and desirable about men to young women. Edward is:
1: Serious
2: Aloof
3: "deep"
4: pretty
5: sparkly
And since so many girls are so hot for his sparkly self, he must be the next big thing in attractive males. If Edward took a "mycupid" profile picture, he wouldn't be smiling, he wouldn't make eye contact, and I very much doubt he would be making the "flirty face". So despite all this Gender Studies talk about men being the subject and women the object, it seems that women too have a tendency to want a man who is seen and not heard - a man not looking at the camera is unthreatening, but he is also mysterious - it takes some work to figure him out. He's also separate and inhuman (like Eddie Cullen) free to be attractive and looked at without revealing any of those pesky flaws and imperfections that happen in real life.
It seems a kind of alarming trend for young girls, if you ask me.
