If you're a bloke and the woman of your heart's desire is acting like you don't exist, take heart. It could just be the wrong time of the month. Women's preferences for certain male faces change with the stage of their menstrual cycle they're at, new research has shown.
Women seem to prefer more masculine male faces when they are mid-cycle and most likely to conceive.
But if the woman is on the pill, which masks the normal hormonal pattern, she's unlikely to show any preference variation throughout her cycle at all. When asked to pick the most attractive face for a short-term sexual relationship, the women tended to favour the most masculine faces, while their preferences were more stable when choosing Mr Long Term. This raises the prickly idea that a woman might be unfaithful so she can snare the best genes for her child, while keeping her long-term partner, the better carer, to raise them. One of the researchers, Professor David Perrett, from the University of St Andrews in Fife, conceded this was a possibility. But in an interview with the BBC, he said we could not be sure how women's preferences for faces as measured in the lab would affect their behaviour in real life.