I personally wouldn’t find the woman with the guitar any more attractive. I may find her less attractive for showing off.
However, if it was a piano or a violin, ROWR.
I do agree that women find skills in men more attractive then men find skills in women.
In my experience, any man worth getting to know has been impressed with whatever skills I possess. Those who didn’t value that part of me were off my radar, apparently, because I don’t remember meeting them. Or rather, they were off of my radar for other reasons—I never had time to find out that skills in a woman were not something they valued.
I could not imagine spending time with someone who didn’t understand that having skills and interests is a big part of what makes us who we are.
I imagine that the more insecure guys would not be attracted to a woman who was more “capable” than them; however, I’d assume that any guy who has his shit together and is confident of his own skills would also want a woman who is equally skilled.
Unless she was playing “Kum bai ya my lord, Kum Bai ya” the guitar wouldn’t make any woman less attractive. But it wouldn’t be a major
asset either, if she could fix a car though …
didn’t quite make sense in that last sentence.
should be
If on the other hand, she could fix a car … oohhlala
The problem with the hypothetical in the OP is that it essentially forces the chooser to pick based on superficial characteristics. So the girls picking the guitar player are being every bit as superficial as the guys picking based on how much cleavage is being shown or whatever. All this shows is that superficial attractiveness differs between genders. I don’t believe it’s particularly earthshattering to notice that guys, when looking at women at a superficial level, concentrate on physical attractiveness to the exclusion of guitar playing.
But this tells us nothing whatsoever about the relative propensities of men and women to value “skills” in candidates for serious relationships.
Skills are sexy.
I for one am extremly attracted to girls who have actually taken the time, and put in the effort to get good at something. Be it guitar, piano, video games, or sucking golf balls through garden hoses. If she could play guitar beautifully, I’d definitely think of it as a plus, but not only because she has the skill, but because I know she had the drive to get good at something she didn’t have to get good at. There’s a whole lot of blood, sweat, and tears behind beautifully-played guitar notes. On the other hand, I know a good many people who say they play guitar and suck; the ones who took guitar up because they thought it would be cool, and then realized it takes too much work to get good at it, so they stopped before even getting the basics down. If the girl was one of the latter, I wouldn’t look down on her for it (I actually stopped playing for a while the first time I started), but I definitely wouldn’t be as inclined to get to know her as I would a great guitarist.
It would indeed be interesting to run the same poll with the following “creative” variations:
• He/she can do income tax calculations from memory without aid of software, just a spreadsheet and getting the data from forms and receipts
• She/he can paint impressive stuff on very short notice using materials on hand such as cans of spray paint, box of old fingernail polish bottles, crayons melted over candles, smushed hand-collected wildflowers in olive oil, etc
• He/she can fix your plumbing problems and whacks the walls and starts telling you about the quality of the construction of your living quarters, the period it was made in and what they used and why they used it and advantages and disadvantages, etc.
•She/he can take a concept and turn it into a compelling speech or single-column writeup in 10 minutes and emphasize the salient points and explain them in terms that your 94 year old great grandma and your boss and your cab driver and your academic advisor would each find accessible but not insultingly oversimplified.
• He/she listens to your worries and concerns and frustrations and asks just the right questions and then recasts your predicament in terms that make total sense but you never thought of it that way before.
• She/he works an environment chock-full of energetic and opinionated people and comes back at them with a composite “nutshell” summary of what they care about and a plan for how to implement it and delivers the explanation in such a way that they all listen and support the offer of leadership.
There are so many different talents and nearly all of them, sufficiently developed, would attract me like crazy. Wow, look at her go. Look at her do her thing. She’s got a gig and damn she’s good. I’d be always looking forward to our next time together to hear of her latest exploits, or to have the chance to watch her doing her thing.
Women who don’t have a gig are cute little black holes who want to make you, the guy, the center of their universe. And then you’ve got to be everything to them. And they don’t understand how you could have interests other than her. And they suck you in an destroy you, themselves, and the relationship. I’d assume guys of that ilk would be the same way.
Would you like a woman with a black belt in Aikido?
Hell yeah!
::considers idea further::
umm, assuming that she had not taken a strong dislike to me for some reason.
(I’d like to comment that I didn’t get asked this provacative question!)
The guitar playing is extremely neutral for me, because I don’t play guitar. If a girl was really good at harmonica (which I play) I would pick her, because then I could leech some bend techniques off of her. Or if a girl knew more about cars than I do, that’d be so impressive I pick her.
Unless it’s a skill that I spend time honing myself, I really don’t care, but if the other girls didn’t have ANY talent they were really good at, then I’d pick guitar-girl just because she’s passionate about something.
However, during our dating period, I’d be secretely training to get better at the skill than her. Heh, I’m a guy, afterall.
I look for someone with hobbies that are complementary to mine and not competitive. EX: a women who is an aerobatic pilot vs an aircraft homebuilder. A women who enjoys cooking to my gardening (if I ever get another garden). A woman who enjoys history but doesn’t collect the same stuff I do. A woman who enjoys painting as opposed to my desire to work with wood. I would rather date a women who races cars vs my desire to tinker with them (my garage is my castle).
Competition is usually a field of land mines that people need to deal with up front. I plan on taking up guitar but I can see where it would be annoying to the lady who already plays if I become good in her preferred style of music.
I think most people with any kind of life will define themselves by their skills and would not appreciate it if their mate overshadows any or all of their accomplishments. Pride may be a sin but it is also human nature.
There is some truth in this. There might be an “overlap,” but to have almost identical skills is probably folly.
For instance, I think it would probably okay for some couples to have similar skills or skills in the same field, as long as they were different. For instance, the realistic landscape painter might find no problems being coupled with the abstract painter, because their work is so different. However, pair up two realistic landscape painters and there is probably going to be trouble. Or, pair up two “leading actor/actress” would probably be a problem, but pair up one “leading actor” and one “character actor” and it might not matter. Or else, have one of the couple really have no competitive nature to them—in other words, they don’t really give a damn and don’t have a fragile ego.
I am sure you are at least partially in jest about that, because you do realize that it’s silly to do that, I’m sure! Some skills simply will not be something that you can “secretly” work at, and even if you did try to “secretly” get better than her, you’d probably fail.
I’d find it beyond pathetic, for instance, if some guy started to secretly take drawing lessons in order to get “better” at drawing than me. For one thing, it would show complete cluelessness, because it takes time to get good at some things (like drawing) and for another thing, why? Why why why do something lame like that? Who cares?
On a side note, I’ve had guys (fellow artists) who were “bugged” that I was strong in certain skills, and they’d try to “show me up.” The thing was, they couldn’t, but were too clueless to even see it. (Their skills weren’t up to snuff, but their egos just wouldn’t admit it.) Nothing is more pathetic than a guy (or girl) trying to “show up” someone who is way out of their league.