Diverse genes - diverse spins?

       If you’re the kind of girl who likes a little diversity in your love life, new research shows that it may reflect the diversity in your genes.

       The journal "Animal Behavior," reported that scientists from the University of Australia studied the DNA of 150 college students, primarily looking at the genes influencing their immune system since more diverse genes there the stronger the person’s immunity. They also quizzed them about their love lives and found that those with more “varied major histocompatibility complex (MHC)” also had a more partners.

       Sweat also plays a part in a girl’s ability to reel ‘em in. The scent of a woman’s sweat also holds clues to the strength of her immune system, signaling to potential partners that her offspring would be more resistant to illness.

       So could it be that the need for variety is more nature than nurture? How much influence does our upbringing and culture actually have over our romantic proclivities?

      

       Very interesting stuff, but even more interesting are the ways the story was delivered from source to source. The New York Daily News headlined the piece with Secrets of attraction may lie in immune system DNA that's sensed through sweat: scientists,  focusing the piece on the way sweat that signals disease resistance attracts partners and consulting a relationship expert. Where I first read about the reserach, on My Fox Atlanta, the headline was Study: Women's Gene's to Blame for Short-Term Relationships, a very different spin that decides short-term relationships require  “blame” rather than being a choice or just a trait that might have a genetic basis. It’s illustrated with a mosaic heart, which implies multiple breaks. The subsequent text from MyFox National, starts out with "Unlucky in love? Blame your parents," but then goes on to be ambiguous about whether attracting more partners is the unlucky or the lucky part, but the damage is done with the headline.

       The London Daily Telegraph was the worst, though, with Parents to blame for women 'unlucky in love', claim scientists, with the subhead “The reason why some women remain without a long-term boyfriend appear to have been solved by Australian scientists.” Now not only is having more partners a cause for "blame" but the woman who commands it is also “unlucky,” a hapless pawn of her potluck lineage. The unlucky woman they use as an example? Jennifer Anniston.

       Let’s see….beautiful, talented, wealthy, well-thought-of, stylish, bankable, with long-term popularity and a romantic past that includes Brad Pitt, Paul Rudd and Vince Vaughn. If that’s bad luck put me down for a two cases. I wonder if she blames her nightmarish life on that lousy DNA of hers.
       On a nicer note, London's Daily Mail saw the research thus:  'Irresistibility' gene that makes the fittest's sweat smell sweet to the opposite sex, and showed a voluptuous pic of Christina Hendricks on the cover of New York magazine. Like the Daily News, this piece touched on the theory that maybe women with more diverse genes seek out more diversity in partners and that it might make them more picky about their ultimate choice.
         Interestingly, these stories all worded much of the research in similar ways. It just shows that news reading has become a game of  pin-the-tail: if you're going to keep your bearings, you have to stay conscious of how you're being spun.

         By the way, it's theorized that the reason we're attracted to people with different sweat smells than our own is so people wouldn't be attracted to family or others who are too similar genetically.
        Men's MHC doesn't effect their attractiveness.
        I'm going to totally avoid spin here and let you decide what does.