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Review: The Score by Faye Flam
Review The Score: How the quest for sex has shaped the modern man by Faye Flam, Penguin, £17.99/$24.95, ISBN 9781583333129 H. ARMSTRONG ROBERTS/RETROFILE
He’s got the gift of the gab, if not a stick insect’s staying power
MEN BEHAVING BADLY... This explanation for why men attempt abysmal pick-up lines to bag a date points the finger at evolution, writes Deborah Blum
■
MODERN man. Is he a lying, scheming philanderer or a protective, fatherly companion? It turns out he’s all of the above: he’s your typical animal. Although, if I’m reading Faye Flam correctly, he’s an animal that missed out on the really good stuff when it comes to sexual performance. He lacks the potent delivery system of the polyclad flatworm, a ribbon-like sea dweller whose acidic semen burns its way through to its target. He lacks a penis bone, which means that, unlike the walrus, he cannot be – well – ever ready. He also lacks the staying power of stick insects, which are capable of maintaining intercourse for months. And he doesn’t even come close to his primate cousins: “A chimp boasts testicles twice the
48 | NewScientist | 2 August 2008
size of a man’s and a sperm count that makes ours look dismal.” It’s enough to make you wonder how the human species managed to successfully reproduce at all, much less overrun the planet. The Score doesn’t really address that
“Sexual deception is not a uniquely human practice” question, but it makes a good case that, in a social species like our own, corrosive semen isn’t nearly as effective a strategy as conniving one’s way into the bedroom. To emphasise the point, the book centres on a “Seduction Boot Camp”, a seminar for which men pay more than $2000 to
learn techniques for bagging attractive women. Here are a few tips from the book for men: Enter a bar with female friends, so as to look extra-desirable. Be mildly rude to the woman you’ve targeted. Improve on your natural looks. In Flam’s account, the boot-camp instructor wore boots with threeinch soles in order to bring his height above six feet. This made me wonder whether his chosen targets were startled when he stripped for bed and suddenly dropped closer to the floor. Sexual deception is not a uniquely human practice. I’ve always admired ethologist Peter Marler’s work with chickens, which showed that roosters routinely lie to hens in order to improve their sexual odds.
Chickens use a series of simple calling sounds to communicate information, from predator sightings to food locations. Marler found that males will sound a food call, even when there is no food in sight, just to lure a choice hen close enough to be jumped. Apparently it works like a charm. I mention his work not because of the annoyance factor – why can’t those females learn? – but because it illustrates a central point when it comes to discussing the evolution of human behaviour and the influence of sexual selection: we are best understood in context. The most illuminating research helps locate our place in the natural world, explores what we share with other species and what we’ve carved out for ourselves. This is hardly revolutionary; Charles Darwin expressed it far better in The Descent of Man. Thus the flatworm, the stick insect, the chimpanzee and the walrus are among many other species in Flam’s book – a menagerie that helps us to see just what kind of an animal man really is. The Score is at its best when it is exploring the advantages or peculiarities of other species. The author is charmingly entertained by subjects like the corkscrew-esque penis of the Argentine lake duck. But Flam seems to find human males less endearing (barring her boyfriend, who provides “living proof that men are not pigs”), and it shows. Of course, this may be inevitable, deriving from her decision to illustrate the eponymous “modern man” with the wannabe studs from the seduction clinic. If those guys are the end point of human sexual selection then, please, sign me up for a few months with a stick insect. ● Deborah Blum is a professor of science journalism at the University of WisconsinMadison and author of Sex on the Brain: The biological differences between men and women (Viking, 1997) www.newscientist.com
He’s got the gift of the gab, if not a stick insect’s staying power
MEN BEHAVING BADLY... This explanation for why men attempt abysmal pick-up lines to bag a date points the finger at evolution, writes Deborah Blum
■
MODERN man. Is he a lying, scheming philanderer or a protective, fatherly companion? It turns out he’s all of the above: he’s your typical animal. Although, if I’m reading Faye Flam correctly, he’s an animal that missed out on the really good stuff when it comes to sexual performance. He lacks the potent delivery system of the polyclad flatworm, a ribbon-like sea dweller whose acidic semen burns its way through to its target. He lacks a penis bone, which means that, unlike the walrus, he cannot be – well – ever ready. He also lacks the staying power of stick insects, which are capable of maintaining intercourse for months. And he doesn’t even come close to his primate cousins: “A chimp boasts testicles twice the
48 | NewScientist | 2 August 2008
size of a man’s and a sperm count that makes ours look dismal.” It’s enough to make you wonder how the human species managed to successfully reproduce at all, much less overrun the planet. The Score doesn’t really address that
“Sexual deception is not a uniquely human practice” question, but it makes a good case that, in a social species like our own, corrosive semen isn’t nearly as effective a strategy as conniving one’s way into the bedroom. To emphasise the point, the book centres on a “Seduction Boot Camp”, a seminar for which men pay more than $2000 to
learn techniques for bagging attractive women. Here are a few tips from the book for men: Enter a bar with female friends, so as to look extra-desirable. Be mildly rude to the woman you’ve targeted. Improve on your natural looks. In Flam’s account, the boot-camp instructor wore boots with threeinch soles in order to bring his height above six feet. This made me wonder whether his chosen targets were startled when he stripped for bed and suddenly dropped closer to the floor. Sexual deception is not a uniquely human practice. I’ve always admired ethologist Peter Marler’s work with chickens, which showed that roosters routinely lie to hens in order to improve their sexual odds.
Chickens use a series of simple calling sounds to communicate information, from predator sightings to food locations. Marler found that males will sound a food call, even when there is no food in sight, just to lure a choice hen close enough to be jumped. Apparently it works like a charm. I mention his work not because of the annoyance factor – why can’t those females learn? – but because it illustrates a central point when it comes to discussing the evolution of human behaviour and the influence of sexual selection: we are best understood in context. The most illuminating research helps locate our place in the natural world, explores what we share with other species and what we’ve carved out for ourselves. This is hardly revolutionary; Charles Darwin expressed it far better in The Descent of Man. Thus the flatworm, the stick insect, the chimpanzee and the walrus are among many other species in Flam’s book – a menagerie that helps us to see just what kind of an animal man really is. The Score is at its best when it is exploring the advantages or peculiarities of other species. The author is charmingly entertained by subjects like the corkscrew-esque penis of the Argentine lake duck. But Flam seems to find human males less endearing (barring her boyfriend, who provides “living proof that men are not pigs”), and it shows. Of course, this may be inevitable, deriving from her decision to illustrate the eponymous “modern man” with the wannabe studs from the seduction clinic. If those guys are the end point of human sexual selection then, please, sign me up for a few months with a stick insect. ● Deborah Blum is a professor of science journalism at the University of WisconsinMadison and author of Sex on the Brain: The biological differences between men and women (Viking, 1997) www.newscientist.com