Quickies

Skepchick Quickies, 12.28

Jen

Jen is a writer and web designer/developer in Columbus, Ohio. She spends too much time on Twitter at @antiheroine.

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9 Comments

  1. Even though the article title also suggest that research proves that make-up helps, the research itself merely states that somehow men are able to tell which women have higher estrogen levels. As far as I can tell, the research doesn’t even mention make-up.

    As far as make-up goes though, that it’s used in an attempt to make one more attractive is already obvious.

    That make-up therefore makes one more attractive is NOT a guarantee though.
    I’ve often wondered if perhaps this is my European cultural baggage (accentuate, don’t distract), but I find women who cake on way too much make-up a bit of a turn off. Like there’s something so hideous underneath that it took this much make-up to hide it.

    I guess that what precisely constitutes “subtle” is dependent on who you ask though. In my opinion, if you splash your face with water and suddenly look like a different person, you’re definitely on the not-so-subtle end of the scale. In fact, I suspect that if you need more than 15 minutes to draw your face on, you’re overdoing it …

  2. I found the bit about learning styles interesting, largely because it was pushed so hard when I was teaching, and I was so lousy at doing anything but verbo-linguistic… and the time I did do a kinesthetic activity, the principal walked in on me having a paper fight with my kids (but they damn well understood the concept of feudalism).

  3. @exarch:

    Yeah, the link to the actual study within that article is broken, so I’m not sure what they mean when they say that women with higher levels of estrogen have “more color”. What color, and where? Green ears? Purple dimples?

  4. @jtradke:

    Yeah. The link to the original study appears to point to a cosmetics website though, which to me suggests it is at least marginally related to cosmetics. But even so, the wording of the study’s concept/results suggests to me that they merely studied hormone levels and general attractiveness (not just men as I erronously claimed earlier).

    As far as we know, it could be as scientific as the study of lipstick content from a while back (all I have is memory to draw from). Also done by a cosmetics company, which later turned out to be marketing, not science …

  5. jtradke, estrogen activates the estrogen receptor which causes activation of nitric oxide synthase which makes nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is what causes vasodilatation, so it is the simulation of vasodilatation that mimics the effects of increased estrogen. Other primates use signals to indicate estrous.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18786539

    It would be surprising if humans did not.

  6. @daedalus2u: estrogen activates the estrogen receptor which causes activation of nitric oxide synthase which makes nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is what causes vasodilatation, so it is the simulation of vasodilatation that mimics the effects of increased estrogen.

    I bet you say that to all the girls.

  7. Archeology’s Greatest Hoaxes: Hey! What about the Book of Mormon? Oh yeah, that wouldn’t be polite, would it.

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