The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
And the studies of oral contraception and men finding women more attractive at certain phases of their menstrual cycle, and women finding men more attractive at certain phases of the women's menstrual cycle point to the incredible power of those deeper biological mechanisms.
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Native comments, Twitter mentions, and Reddit threads about this claim — surfaced together so the conversation isn't fragmented across platforms.
Bookmarking — the dossier-vs-overview split is the right call. Most of the time I want overview; sometimes I want receipts.
Would love a "what would change this verdict" RSS feed. Sign me up if it exists.
And what they found was if a woman is taking oral contraception, it prevented that peak and perceived attractiveness by the men, meaning men no longer perceived a woman to be more attractive at a particular phase of their cycle. And also women taking oral contraception no longer preferred the odors of more symmetrical men during the pre-ovulatory phase of their cycle.
So the simple way to put this is that there seems to be something special about the pre-ovulatory phase of a woman's menstrual cycle that makes men rate them as more attractive during that time and women rate men as more attractive during that particular time as well.
Now I want to make sure that it's especially clear that it is not the case that oral contraception reduced the perception of a woman as attractive, that did not happen in these studies. It reduced the further increase in a male's perception of her as attractive.
It will just change your day to day peaks and troughs in libido and attractiveness.