Surveys show gentlemen do not prefer blondes

A new study adds weight to the belief that British men prefer the ‘girl next door’ to platinum blonde pin-ups – unless they’re out on the town.

Research just released appears to disprove what women have long believed – that men prefer blondes. A study by the University of Westminster and recently reported by the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology suggests that men view brunettes as being more attractive and intelligent than blondes. Unless, of course, we’re out on the town.

Researchers sent a woman to three London nightclubs with her hair dyed either brunette, blond or red and observed the results. They then asked 130 men to rate pictures of her sporting all three looks. The result? She was chatted up most frequently when she had blond hair but rated higher for attractiveness and intelligence when she had the appearance of being brunette.

This appears to support the results of a survey conducted by Badoo in 2011, which revealed that British men prefer brunettes to blondes.

Badoo asked 2,000 British blokes to state the physical features they find most attractive in the opposite sex.
Contradicting the old adage that gentlemen prefer blondes, almost a third of the men polled (33.1%) said they find women with brown hair most attractive. Blondes (29.5%) edged out women with black hair (28.6%) for second place while redheads were preferred by a meagre 8.8% of the men surveyed.

For men in the UK, women with blue eyes still rule the roost with a massive 40.2% of guys preferring blue eyes over brown (29.2%), hazel (13.1%) and green (17.5%).
The survey also uncovered another slightly surprising result: 38.8% of the respondents said their perfect woman would have a dress size of 12-14. Only 10% of the guys surveyed cited sizes 6-8 as their preference, suggesting that, while skinny models fill the majority of pages in magazines, the man in the street is actually more attracted to women of average build.

After collating the results, Badoo applied their findings to the world of celebrity and, combining the physical features that scored the highest marks, deduced that Lauren Goodger, star of reality show The Only Way Is Essex, possesses all of the attributes that men in the UK said they find most attractive.

Her brown hair, blue eyes and average build give her the perfect combination for being the prototypical girl next door.


International preferences
Badoo also ran the study in France, Spain, Italy, US and Brazil with surprising results.
French men said they preferred their females skinny with all other nationalities saying they prefer average to curvy women. In all of the countries surveyed (apart from the UK), black was the most popular hair colour. The UK was also the only country that opted for blue eyes, with brown and green topping the table around the world.

Lloyd Price, from Badoo, said, “I was amazed that blond hair and size 8 did not top the list. Magazines are full of skinny blond models, so it is nice to see that in reality guys prefer the girl-next-door look. Mark Wright is clearly a lucky man in the eyes of the nation.”


Source: http://him.uk.msn.com/sex-and-dating/new-surveys-show-gentlemen-do-not-prefer-blondes

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Women are attracted to your personality as much as your body. But what, exactly, are they looking for?

We all know what women want in men, right? They want a muscular body (or was it a slender one?). They want long legs (or was it arms?). They want blonde hair (or was it black?).

OK, maybe we don’t know for certain, but what we can be sure of is that it’s not just about looks and physique. In fact, study after study has shown that, while women do value looks to some extent, they don’t prioritise them in the way men do.

Instead, women place a higher emphasis on personality, and the character traits that show you’re a good catch. And that’s true for short-term flings as well as long-term relationships. So here are the personality traits that women go for and how you can show them off.


Kindness

Think nice guys finish last? Think again.

A study published in the British Journal of Psychology found that women hunting for dates viewed kindness and generosity as a priority.

Over 300 volunteers were shown dating profiles, some of which had been adjusted to suggest that the subjects were altruistic. For example, some of the profiles included lines about helping others or volunteering.

Overwhelmingly, the women showed a preference for more altruistic men. “If a man is kind and generous towards others – even strangers – then there’s a good chance that he’d make a good and generous parent,” explained Dr Pat Barclay from University of Guelph, Canada, who conducted the study.


Confidence
It stands to reason that women are attracted to confident men. Confidence is a sign of success, or at least potential. Confident men can get a woman what she wants.

And a study published last year found that women are more sexually attracted to brooding, proud, confident-looking men than their jollier counterparts. In fact, they tended to find shiny happy blokes a bit of a turn-off.

It could be that male displays of pride – even if that’s only shown by facial expression – suggest confidence and status, and women are hardwired to look for high status men. Other studies have found that smiling can be associated with a lack of dominance, and subservient men are not likely to be high up the pecking order.

So if you want to attract women, make sure you’re friendly, but don’t stand around grinning like a lunatic.




Humour

It’s not just a cliché: a good sense of humour really can help in the dating stakes.

A study by the University of Northumbria revealed that women who find men funny also consider them more intelligent and honest than their less amusing counterparts. Men who wrote the funniest descriptions of themselves for lonely heart ads were seen as brainier, more genuine and a better bet for a long-term relationship, according to the research.

“The findings provide evidence that women use humour as an indication of a guy’s intelligence,” said Kristofor McCarty, from Northumbria University, who led the study.

“Intelligence is a very attractive quality as a clever man should be more able to provide resources for his offspring.”

But put those cheesy chat-up lines away. The study also found that only genuinely funny men could laugh a lady into bed. Bad gags were given the thumbs down.


Self-delusion

OK, maybe self-delusion is the wrong term. Maybe we should say overblown self-confidence.

A study published in the journal Psychological Science found that ordinary looking men often ended up with attractive women because of sheer persistence and a mistaken belief in their own attractiveness.

The research, from the US, discovered that men could make up for their lack of physical beauty by trying their luck with an increased number of women. They may receive a lot of knock-backs, but they also have the occasional success.

Of course, this self-delusion isn’t an attractive trait in itself, but it does lead ordinary looking men to at least try to charm women with other traits, like their intelligence, wit and generosity. The only lesson to be taken is that, whatever you look like, don’t be put off by rejection. The harder you try, the luckier you’ll get.




Intelligence

If women prize humour as an indicator of intelligence, clearly intelligence must be a prized trait in men.

Other studies have confirmed that women are attracted to brains, regardless of humour. For example, when a team from Elon University in North Carolina showed female students videos of men performing athletic and mental tasks and asked them to pick favourites, the women tended to go for the most intelligent men.

In other words, it’s worth bigging up your academic achievements (subtly, of course – women don’t like boasting) on a first date or even on your internet dating profile, waxing lyrical about culture or society (without hogging the conversation) or maybe just arming yourself with a really good joke.

So there you have it. If you want to increase your chances of attracting the women – or woman – of your dreams, science suggests that kindness, confidence, humour and intelligence – along with perseverance – are the keys to success.

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53 secrets girls don’t want guys to know

1. When we get whistled at in the street, we feel uncomfortable and we’ll always tut and roll our eyes. But we’re awesomely flattered and we’d be gutted if it stopped.

2. We will never grow out of our fascination with pop stars. A guy can be completely ordinary-looking, but we will fancy him if he’s in a band.


3. We are more likely to fancy a guy if his ex-girlfriends are really pretty.

4. We can be put off a guy by finding out that his ex-girlfriends are a bit ugly.

5. When we look through your Facebook photos, we’re looking to see how pretty or ugly your ex-
girlfriends are.

6. We look through your Facebook photos a lot, and we really hope that you haven’t downloaded anything that reveals who looks at them the most.


7. Here’s how to make us fall for you. One day, come on to us so strong that we’re a bit weirded out by it. Then totally fail to ring us. We’ll wonder what we did wrong, and we won’t be able to stop thinking about you.

8. The above strategy isn’t foolproof. We may just lose interest. It depends on how much we liked you in the first place.


9. We often don’t know how much we liked you in the first place. We may have to wait until you don’t phone us. If we’re disappointed, it proves that we fancy you. If we’re not, it proves that we don’t. It’s like when you toss a coin to help you make a decision.

10. Stop trying to understand how our minds work. Even we don’t understand how our minds work.


11. We constantly change our minds and reserve the right to do so.

12. We love getting a missed call from you. It makes us feel in control.

13. The pleasure of noticing a missed call doesn’t last long. We never know how soon to ring back, and it does our heads in.

14. We are constantly scared of putting you off by seeming too keen.


15. We are constantly scared of putting you off by not seeming keen enough.

16. We will never discuss this with you because we are constantly scared of putting you off by bringing “us” up in conversation.


17. “I’m scared of being hurt” means “I don’t fancy you as much as I thought I did.” You know it, we know it, and that is all that will be said on the matter.

18. We say “we’re not manipulative” because we’re really good at being manipulative.

19. We only manipulate your feelings because you manipulated our feelings first.

20. Snoring costs you sex.


21. Your feet disgust us.

22. We shave our toes.


23. We’ve got a rogue hair that needs regular plucking.

24. We went through a phase of shaving our moustache.


25. We leave our legs unshaven on a first date so that we won’t end up in bed with you.

26. We wear big knickers on a first date so that we won’t end up in bed with you.


27. We spend entire first dates fancying the pants off you and worrying that we’ll end up in bed with you, all unshaven legs and big knickers.

28. We don’t actually care that much about the loo seat.


29. We suspect that you like our bodies more when we’re carrying a few extra pounds, but we always feel better about ourselves when we lose weight. However we hate that our boobs look deflated, and we’re disgusted by the injustice of it.

30. We envy you for being able to eat more than us and not get fat. By “envy” we mean “occasionally hate.”


31. If a grown-up woman has light blonde hair, she’s bleaching it*. You can tell that a woman is a 
natural blonde from her mousey eyebrows. (* OK, or she’s Scandinavian.)

32. We trim our nose-hair.


33. Yes we’ve got nice eyes, blah blah. Boring. We are desperate for you to compliment our skin and our necks.

34. We are even more desperate for you to write poems about us.


35. When we’re at a party we clock the sexy girls far quicker than we clock the sexy guys.

36. We find female strippers sexier than male strippers. But that doesn’t mean we want to snog any of them.


37. However we do wish we were gay sometimes, if only to get oral sex from someone who really knows what they’re doing.

38. Size does matter, fellas.


39. What you do with it matters even more.

40. What you do with your tongue matters most of all.


41. We’re really scared that you’ll feel our back zits.

42. During breakouts we get up at 6am and cover our spots with concealer while you’re sleeping.


43. We don’t want you to stay for breakfast. We want you to leave immediately so that you don’t 
have time to register how dog-rough we look in the morning.

44. We want you to text us from your journey home to say how you can’t stop smiling.


45. If you don’t text or call within 24 hours we’ll feel so unhappy that no amount of chocolate and wine can cheer us up. Though we’ll give it a try.

46. We’d happily sleep with your best mate to make you jealous.


47. We’re scared of commitment too.

48. If you’re not very well endowed, your girlfriend won’t tell her friends. She’s as embarrassed about it as you are. However if you dump her, she’ll tell everyone.


49. We fake orgasms so that you’ll stop and let us go to sleep.

50. We aren’t always sure when we’re faking it. In orgasms, the line between fact and fiction can be very thin.


51. We love falling asleep in your arms, for the first few weeks of a relationship anyway. To be honest we’d sleep a lot better if you weren’t there.

52. We find your dark-coloured bedsheets a total turn-off.


53. We’re all little girls inside. You make us cry far more easily than you realise.


Source: http://dating.uk.msn.com/edito/index.php?mtcmk=080519&name=5/114/574-53-secrets-girls-don-t-want-guys-to-know.html

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Love Is A Terribly Beautiful Thing.

Love is a terribly beautiful thing.
It makes you feel,
whether you want to or not.
Love creates a whole entire world specifically for you and your significant other.
That fatal attraction between two souls has been the inspiration for the most beautiful and the most grotesque of art.
It has been the beating heart of the world’s greatest romances and tragedies.

Love, especially true love, makes you feel,
whether you want to or not.
If your love is happy,
your heart soars above everyone else,
bringing you joy you’ve never known before.

However, on the other side of the coin,
there is sadness beyond compare.
When your other half is in pain,
your own heart cries out from your chest in agony.
Their strife is yours also to bear.
You can never pull yourself away from them,
no matter how much it hurts.

Why?
Because this is love.
For better or worse.
Love is a beautifully terrible thing.
You can never truly understand the depths of your own happiness until it had been joined with someone else’s.
Just like you can’t know the true bottom of your soul until you have shared in the pain of another person.
You become one with that other person, and in turn, you yourself become whole.
This is love.
Isn’t it grand?

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