Not too many months ago, a young boy said,"I bought this perfume to make Mom more attractive to Dad". It was just an offhand remark and didn't seem to indicate much in the way of tension or Oedipal or anti-Oedipal drives or anything else. It is just one step in the slow and steady process of a youngster getting a grip on the strange and quirky way that animals create additional animals.
When I think of amoeba or spiders or duckies or chipmunks, it doesn't seem at all surprising that they have ways of making new members of their group. I can see that there are always mechanics involved, sometimes referred to as slot A and tab B. Sometimes, the mechanics involve no body contact, as when one sex lays down a layer of eggs on the ocean floor and the other one sprinkles fertilizing sperm bits over that layer.
But looked at from the inside, where I actually live, and looking around among groups of 70+ year olds, it is easy to see the connections between who we are, who we think we are, and drives built deep inside us. Most women at that age do not feel that they are beautiful although there are plenty of men around them who think those women are indeed beautiful and find themselves uplifted by those women's faces, voices, mannerisms, ideas and reactions.
The process of becoming a fully-accredited member of one's gender group clearly involves social and religious learning but it also involves learning to wear new glasses that are especially built to find and highlight members of the other group. It looks to me that attraction to some members of the other group never ceases.
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
