Men's Reactions to Women in Bikinis
Brain imaging is now being used to study the ever elusive topic of what happens when a man is sexually aroused. In my opinion, checking out the lower brain of a man might yield more effective results, but researchers at Princeton think otherwise. The researchers checked men's reactions to digital images of women.
According to a recent study referred to in the Guardian, a special censor within a straight man's brain is ignited when he sees either a tool or the image of a bikini-clad woman. I am not a scientist or linguist, but I am 100% certain that this is where the term "screw-driver" comes into play.
The part of the study that has deeper ramifications is the fact that the part of a man's brain that uses empathy is used less when men look at bikinis, which should come as no surprise to most women, who according to a different study, enjoy sex more if they are "spiritual people" (which is something I am not quite sure that I buy into).
The study is definitely stranger than it looks on first glance. Susan Fiske, the Princeton scientist who gave the study, showed ten men digital images of women in various states of undress and checked the brain scan for digital results. The most memorable pictures for the men included shots of women in bikinis whose heads had been digitally removed. Hello! Can we say disturbing? That image might stay in my mind, too and I think that it has absolutely nothing to do with the bikinis and more to do with the fact that decapitated women (or men for that manner) just might stay in my mind to terrorize me. I don't know. Call me weird, but this does not exactly sit right with me.
The scientist, who may not be the brainiac that she thinks she is said that, "They're reacting to these women as if they're not fully human." Again, hello! WTF? If you take the occasional serial killer out of the picture, most men are not that into the female equivalant of Nearly Headless Nick. Also, I really want to know what headless women in bikinis have to do with screwdrivers? Or for that matter, why was this study even performed in the first place? Couldn't research money be used in other ways that are slightly more productive to society than just testing men's reactions to Zombies?
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