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Schooled as we are by Valentine's Day greeting cards and breath-mint commercials to think of love as something that is expressed in spontaneous, personal ways, we may viscerally reject the idea that what we regard as our innermost, most intimate selves could be governed by something as crass as filthy lucre. Despite the fact that the gospel of romantic love preaches that our love lives are individual and personal, economics has always played a primary role in the choices we make. We are, as Adam Smith wrote, rational actors looking out for our best interests — and if anyone doubts it, they should ask themselves if, all other things being equal, the average middle-class women would prefer to marry a neurosurgeon or a construction worker.
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While the latter may have a certain amount of sex appeal, the former won't get one gossiped about as "could've done better." Heck, just look at the problems Harvard-educated Miranda and working-class Steve had in Sex and the City.
In fact, this "rational choice" theory is one of the basic principles governing all human sexuality, from marriage to casual hookups. Behind our conscious sensation of physical attraction (or lack thereof) are innumerable unconscious calculations: Of what social group are this person's clothes the uniform? What do his or her speech patterns say about their education and class? How will they rank amongst my friends? Sexual attractiveness, as behavioral scientists are discovering, is for the most part based on the amount of social capital a person possesses.
A bit of clarification will be helpful here: "Social capital" — a term invented by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu — doesn't only refer to money, though anyone familiar with the phenomenon of the "trophy wife" knows that money helps.
The pool boy may get to muddy the gene pool.
Rather, it incorporates a host of other factors such as physical attractiveness, command of language and culture, and education. In other words, sexiness directly corresponds to the number and the type of resources you have at your disposal — and thus, how likely you are to ensure the survival of your offspring.
However, this value is not a constant. Because the worth of these resources depends on environment, social capital is not some sort of absolute score, but rather dependent on who you are, where you live, and in what situation you find yourself. What is attractive to college students on Spring Break in Miami won't necessarily fly in the Manhattan art scene or the L.A. movie industry. While the trophy wife might find her high-status neurosurgeon husband desirable in a general sense, she probably isn't creaming in her pants over him — although she may be hot for the pool boy. Yet, while the pool boy might look awfully good on those hot, shirtless summer days (when he resembles what Michelangelo might have sculpted had the Pope asked him to depict the Dying Slave straining leaves out of the Vatican pool), he's much less attractive at an art opening where he brings a six-pack of Coors and insists that Pisaro was Superman's weirdo doppelganger. He's also sure as hell not going to pay for the summer house in the Hamptons. Thus, while the pool boy may get to muddy the gene pool, our protagonist is going to stay married to the neurosurgeon.
