Our overall appearance is what we present to the world, but we see each other first in bits and pieces. When we meet a new person we look at the mouth first, specifically at the teeth. Why? Because the teeth can hurt us, they bite! This is an early protective mechanism, developed long before we could speak, to identify friend from foe. Today we smile to assure the person we meet that we are friendly, our teeth are not in a biting position. (You can laugh with your mouth open, but try to smile with your mouth open, it looks ridiculous.)

Next we look at the eyes to make sure the smile is real. A lower face smile is a fake smile. If the eyes do not light up with a smile, we are put on alert that perhaps this person is not hostile, but is not friendly either. After checking the eyes we look at the skin of the face, then the hair on the head and finally the rest of the body is given a quick once over. All this is done for two reasons. The first is for protection, and the second is for reproduction. We shall decide in a matter of second whether or not that person will be a sexual, or non-sexual partner purely from appearance sake. If you have already made a life long commitment to a mate and yet find the other person attractive, your higher brain center will say to you, "Back off, this is a non-mate". If you do not heed this instruction immediately you have set yourself up for trouble. But you already know that.

The need for approval is the need for acceptance, for humans are not designed to live alone. To live alone, without daily human contact and without love, is a slow, destructive process except for a relatively few people who are solitary types. The need to be attractive is an inborn sexual mechanism that stays with us for life. As noted above, every animal has some sexually attractive feature, be it bright feathers or a lion's mane, it is always there. Humans have developed very subtle sexual attraction mechanisms, but our skin is one of the most important of all.

The attractive person gets the best job in most instances, gets the most attractive mate and usually makes the most money. Every woman I have known, including my wife, has a sense of insecurity about how she looks. No matter how beautiful she may be, the insecurity is there. I am now convinced that this is truly a genetic mechanism specific to women. While men surely are aware of the importance of appearance they are, as a group, less occupied with how they look than women. This may be a burden to women, but I believe God in the design of women, has given each woman a very special appeal, unique to her and to her alone. If women could sense this special trait and maximize it, perhaps then they would spend less time worrying about how other women look.

One Last Item: The knowledge gained by scientific research has opened new frontiers. I say frontiers because that is all they are. We are only at the beginning of great discoveries in our understanding of biological mechanisms. Our knowledge of biology, while awesome compare to 50 years ago, still is quite primitive. This is not said to downplay the significant discoveries that have been made, but to emphasize that the best is yet to come, every true scientist knows that quite well. Aging is tied to sexual activity in a complex way, more complex than we can enter into in this book. My goal is that you will have acquired the basis to appreciate the relationship between attractiveness and sexual activity, and how a longer happier life can result from maximizing both of these marvelous gifts of God.