How to Get a Date 101: Stay Off the Pill?

Headline: "Is the Pill giving geeks an unfair chance?"

According to The Globe and Mail, a study done by the University of Sheffield (hmmm...not exactly Oxbridge, are they?) has shown that "by doing away with ovulation, a woman's most fertile phase, the Pill may...make women less attractive to men." It could also make women "more likely to pick provider types over aggressive, masculine specimens – a course that could potentially affect the health of their children."

This article troubles me in so many ways. First of all, the health of a child (a child that someone is not conceiving, being on birth control) depends on a woman meeting and mating with some Cro-Magnon type who has more testosterone than brain cells? Yowza! What kind of people are we attempting to breed here? I happen to like geeks, thank you very much, and would much prefer smart children to brawny ones. Apparently, in the "this is your brain on the Pill" scenario, women are more likely to choose partners who resemble their family members, thus potentially leading to dangerous inbreeding. Umm, excuse me Freud? So I'm not allowed to have sex with tall dark-haired white men just in case they happen to be somehow distantly related to me? Sorry guys, but I kinda was married to one of those.

Secondly, I'm supposed to not take the thing that allows me to have sex without worrying about getting knocked up (and considering that I'm bloody poor and still in school, that's a scenario I'm so not interested in) so that I can mesmerize some guy into sleeping with me through voodoo and ovulation pheromones, but then have to worry about getting knocked up? These scientists actually seem to believe that a woman's myriad personal charms (both physical and intellectual) are somehow cancelled out by some subconscious animalistic male desire to procreate. And their big set of data? Strippers who are ovulating get tipped more. Now I don't know about you, but I didn't realize that tipping strippers and choosing a girlfriend were equatable activities. Most guys I know aren't about to bring a stripper home to meet mom, whether she's ovulating or not.

And what's the Globe's critical stance toward this load of crap? "Critics say the research cited in the current paper glosses over a litany of social, cultural and individual factors that help determine partner choice today." Thanks, Globe. Nice of you to point that out. And we wonder why we don't yet have a cure for cancer--precious research money is going toward this sort of nonsense. And newspapers report it like it's actual news. Why am I surprised?