What is the Marilyn Monroe hormone?

A study from the University of Texas has identified what is being called the 'Marilyn Monroe' hormone. Find out what this new hormone suggests about female mating habits and body type in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the Reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told
you forrmhou stuff works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen and Kristin Day.

(00:20):
We're going to start with a topic that really caught
my eye. It was something that got reported in a
bunch of papers. It's a good little blurb kind of story.
It's very eye catching, and the story was about the
discovery of something called the Marilyn Monroe hormone. Interesting. Interesting,
It's interesting for so many reasons. It's interesting to us
because it's about hormones. I love hormone. It's interesting to

(00:42):
the entire world because it's about Marilyn Monroe, ultimate sex icon. Right,
So something's gotta be juicy if they're linking Marilyn Monroe
and hormones, right, right, Molly, Um. This study has to
do with a hormone, a female hormone called estra dial
And this isn't a new hormone. Scientists have known that
it's been around for a long time. It's in women
and also in in female animals as well, and it's

(01:03):
the most important form of estrogen found in the body. Right,
estradial is responsible for things like the growth of the
female uterus, fallopian teops, and vagina. It promotes breast development
and the growth of the outer genitals, and it plays
a role in distributing body fat and women. So that
gets to um. The first thing we know about estradiale
so that it might be responsible for marily Monro's famous

(01:24):
our glass shape. Yeah, exactly. Higher levels of estra dial
and women are are linked to more curvy, the curvier,
more feminine type of a body that we would would
think of tiny waist, tiny waist, big big brists, and
childbearing hips. Right. But it's also an interesting thing. Is

(01:44):
that something you may not know about marily Monro is
her face is symmetrical. Um. Studies have found that symmetry
in our in our face and bodies is more attractive
to the opposite sex. The more symmetrical we are, the
more the more attractive we look, because I think it's
a sign of better health. Right, So estra dial also
plays a role in this symmetry. But the real reason

(02:08):
that people are calling it the Marri Monroe hormone and
making it so juicy is this behavioral correlation. They found
with it right. Researchers from the University of Texas in
Austin UH did a study that found that young women
who produced naturally high levels of estra dial are more
prone to manhop if you will, to cheat, yes, to

(02:29):
trade up for a better model. UH. They think that
this is linked to UH the evolutionary cost of having
a child. These women realize that, you know, they're gonna
need a good mate to be around when they have
a kid, and so they're more apt to look for
better and better mates. So they made this connection by

(02:50):
swabbing the inside of the student's cheek at Texas and
they asked all the students to write how attractive they
thought they were. So, first of all, if you had
very high levels of estra dial, then you thought, you know,
you thought you were really beautiful. I mean, it's good
to have a good self image. So I don't know
if I really I'm going to buy this part of
the test. But then they would ask the mysterious of
questions like you know, are you likely to flirt when

(03:11):
you have a boyfriend or you likely to kiss another
guy if you have a boyfriend, And when they had
these higher levels of estra dial, they were much more
likely to do so, yeah, they were most more likely
to cheat. But the interesting thing is, well, while these
while the women with the higher levels of estra dial
might be more willing to say, carry on a serious affair,
they weren't more likely to have a series of one

(03:33):
night stands. Right, So, there were a lot of troubling
words and stories that came out about the mailman or hormone,
about sort of you know, slutty girls, um loose women,
And that's not what the studies about, right, Well, it's
not about just this this man hopping from one person
to another. It's it's more about these women who aren't
necessarily satisfied with long term partners, like Marilyn Monroe has

(03:56):
been used as an example because she had a series
of three to four or year relationships with a sending
social status. When she first started out her movie career,
she was married to this, uh, this not so successful guy.
Then she moved on to Joe di maggio, and then
she moved on to Arthur Miller, and then possibly had
an affair with one or both of the Kennedy brothers.

(04:16):
So she kept trading up. Is what these scientists are saying,
meaning that the reason she had her affairs was just
an evolutionary search for the best possible mate um. And
it's interesting that the estra dial levels in a woman's
body will will fluctuate across our obulatory cycle, corresponding to
when we're the most fertile and interested in sex. Right,

(04:39):
And that's why I find the study kind of troubling Christmas,
because estra dial is something that's president all of us naturally,
we need it to be females essentially, and other research
has shown that, you know, we become more interested in
the other sex when we're very fertile, like you were saying,
So really, it might just be a hormone that kicks
in when our body is ready to have a baby. Sure,
because there are plenty of curvy, our glass girls out

(05:01):
there who probably consider themselves very attractive and other men
consider them very attractive, who aren't going to cheat. They're
not necessarily going to just ditch their men for the
next like CEO or whoever comes their way. Right, it's
very sort of a sexist study because it's just saying,
you know, but it's all the woman's choice, and there's
a lot of the comments around this article said, you know,

(05:22):
it takes two to tango for one, So if this
hormone just makes women more naturally attractive, then they probably
have more opportunities to cheat. But like you said, there's
just this main women who don't cheat, and they're just
not captured by the study, right only to that point.
The example modern day example of Marilyn Monroe that's been
brought up in a lot of these articles is Angelia Jolie.
But as you uh brought up when we were talking

(05:45):
about this before we record this podcast, Angelina was single
when when she met Old Brad on the set of Mr.
And Mrs. Whatever it was. Smith, you can tell that
I watched that feature film. Um, but Brad was the
one who was married. He was actually to the cheater
in the situation, right, So it's very troubling to me
that they actually compared, uh, Angelina in this article someone

(06:06):
who probably has high levels of estra dial because they're
saying she doesn't really need Brad Pitt, but she wants
Brad Pitt as some sort of evolutionary trade off for
having all these children. I gotta say, it just seems
like kind of a simple excuse for those if you
will women who other women don't like to do well,
she must have high levels of estra dial a little hussy. Yeah,

(06:28):
so I think Kristina are giving the big thumbs down
to the study, no matter how interesting it is to
think of that. You know, maybe we can just blame
cheating on hormone. Yeah, because every woman has it. I mean,
it's it's the most present form of estrogen in our bodies.
Someone just exactly. Um. But I do think going back
to the symmetry that we were talking about, I think
that that's that's a more compelling argument to make that

(06:51):
estra dial does cause more symmetry, and more symmetry might
just make you naturally more attractive. And there you go.
Take it, relieve, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're
going to be predisposed to cheat on your man, hopefully
hopefully so. If you want to know more about hormones
after this daily dose of hormone love, then go to
how stuff works dot com. And if you want to

(07:13):
send Christin and me an email, email us at mom
stuff at how stuff works dot com for moralness and
thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff works dot
com brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready, Are you