Seek parity........... 8 Seek parity........... 9 17
Tall women seek short men. 0 Tall men seek short women. 0 0 Short women seek tall men. 4 Short men seek tall women. 0 4 Medium-sized woman seeks Medium-sized men seek tall tall man................ 1 women .................. 8 9
Seek disparity........ 5 Seek disparity........ 8 13
Men of unknown height seek tall women.............. 5 5
Most people who will carefully introspect their own feelings and ideals in this matter will find that they are not attracted to persons of the opposite sex who are strikingly unlike themselves in pigmentary characters. Even when the abstract ideal of a sexually desirable person is endowed with certain pigmentary characters, such as blue eyes or darkness,--either of which is liable to make a vaguely romantic appeal to the imagination,--it is usually found, on testing the feeling for particular persons, that the variation from the personal type of the subject is usually only agreeable within narrow limits, and that there is a very common tendency for persons of totally opposed pigmentary types, even though they may sometimes be considered to possess a certain æsthetic beauty, to be regarded as sexually unattractive or even repulsive. With this feeling may perhaps be associated the feeling, certainly very widely felt, that one would not like to marry a person of foreign, even though closely allied, race.
From the same number of the _Round-About_ from which I have extracted the data on stature, I have obtained corresponding data on pigmentation, and have embodied them in the following table. They are likewise very scanty, but they probably furnish as good a general indication of the drift of ideals in this matter as we should obtain from more extensive data of the same character.
Fair women seek fair men. 2 Fair men seek fair women 2 4 Dark woman seeks dark man 1 Dark men seek dark women 7 8
Seek parity.......... 3 Seek parity......... 9 12
Fair women seek dark men. 4 Fair men seek dark women 3 7 Dark woman seeks fair man 1 Dark men seek fair women 4 5 Medium-colored man seeks Seek disparity....... 5 dark woman ........... 1 1 Medium-colored man seeks fair woman ........... 1 1
Men of unknown color seek dark women ........... 3 3