When I wasn't feeling well I started working my way through episodes of the long running science fiction television series Stargate SG-1. Over the years I'd seen episodes here and there but not in any particular order. I chose it on hulu.com because, since there were 10 seasons and six of them are on hulu, I figured I wouldn't run out of episodes to watch before I recovered.
In the first season there was an episode called Hathor in which a Goa'uld (alien being) has taken as its human host a beautiful woman and the identity of the Egyptian goddess Hathor. Of course the actress playing Hathor is dressed in typical television science fiction sexualized garb and of course all the men fall in love with her. But they fall a little more in love with her than usual. Hathor uses a version of a (fictional) brainwashing drug to cause an intense infatuation that gives her control over all the men. She plans to use them to build an army to work her will on the other aliens and on earth. But, eventually, the women on the base (who are unaffected by the drug) take control of the situation and defeat Hathor.
In the television series,Hathor would come close to the men, gaze into their eyes, whisper endearments and then breathe on them. Her breath would release the drug which the men would breath in. They wouldn't notice the strange fog eminating from her mouth because they were too busy gazing into her eyes. As I watched I thought the writers probably could have written the episode without the drug component and gotten pretty much to the same place just by the eye contact, the sexy clothes and the endearments.
This isn't a new plot of course. Al Capp, the creator of the comic strip L'il Abner, used it when he created a character called Stupefyin' Jones who is so beautiful and so shapely that she can freeze any man who looks at her in his tracks.
Well, according to the Telegraph, a new study validates these plot lines:
... men use up so much of their brain function or 'cognitive resources' trying to impress beautiful women, they have little left for other tasks.
Or as I often put it in my day-to-day life, put a hot babe in the room and the men's brains turn to mush and they become blithering idiots.
Oh. By the way. According to the study: Women, however, were not affected by chatting to a handsome man.
