This year, because the local elections are coming up, my party decided to tag along in the Carnaval parade. This parade took place in a town where the annual parade is a very big thing. There are literally groups of friends who start on building a Carnaval wagon more than half a year before the actual parade. Then they come together, work on the wagon, drink beer and share local gossip stories. A lot is possible there, legally, because people get a lot done by working closely together. The town is notorious for its strong community bond and people support each other. This means that word spreads really fast, which also means word about politics. My party decided to participate since this constituency will be an important factor in the upcoming elections.

Sylvia Holla, researcher working at the University of Amsterdam, observed the mating rituals of teenagers. “The courting ritual customary in discos is a boy and a girl dancing closely against each other. The girl positions herself in front of the boy and grinds her butt back against the boy’s crotch. It looks like dry humping but it is a form of sexual exploration and practice. However, the boy is supposed to take the initiative. When he does not dare to, or is excluded from this practice, this may have long term consequences. One will not learn to act out or speak out for what he likes or prefers when it comes to sex, which may lead to uncertainly within the bedroom.”

Let us now apply this information to the Carnaval parade to test my ideas on sexual market economics. The town in question is not only known for solidarity and group feelings, but also for having many bachelors playing billiards and pool at the local pubs. It is a cliché that these men chase after the few women who stayed there after they finished school, which means that these women have been had by more than one man part of any friends group. Two examples: one of them left his wife (whom he has two children with) for a different woman. However this woman found he became too clingy, left him, and now he lives in a rented place where he first owned a house. Another one finally found a steady girlfriend after remaining single until late thirties. Then, when visiting a sauna, a man started to touch his girlfriend. It turned out she knew this man, that they had had sex together, and that the girlfriend in question was a nymphomaniac. However he had entered into a renting contract with her for his house, so he had to move out of his own home and live in somebody’s attic.

A professor in Cyprus described the difference between villages and cities there as “gorkatiko”, a word to sum up all clichés. Men tend to drink a lot. Their faces turn red easily, they have round, fat noses and skins with dimples. The traditional diet is rich in fat (stemming from the time when labour was manual and intense), with the result that, especially women, take in too much fat and noticeably gain weight. Yet they want to keep up with trends and fashion and thus still wear belly button sweaters and crop tops.

There is a strict social control in such villages. For instance, during a church ceremony everyone wants to be seen, and recognized for the clothes they wear. The Carnaval parade can be seen as an equivalent of this social nexus function. The town also has a yearly tent. I mean a huge tent, where hundreds of people gather to drink beer, get drunk, gossip, dance, and smoke cigarettes.

As I was present in the parade, I took a good look at the people attending it. I instantly noticed the difference with the cosmopolitan circles where I previously operated. Even through the Carnaval costumes, I could see that the bodily forms of the majority of women present were edging toward square, rather than lean and smooth. Even the adolescent ones. If I compare this local town to a cosmopolitan work environment – for instance the Brussels bubble – I see that the majority of the people working there have smoothly skinned faces. The women have soft, round feminine forms; men have open faces and strong smiles with racks of neatly lined teeth.

The result of sexual market economics, is that persons who have a high sexual market value during their teenage years, learn to be outgoing and approach others. Because they are handsome, they are welcomed by others. Owing to this positive experience (compliments and smiles by girls) they learn to approach girls in discos and grind against them. This outgoingness even translates to how you operate in business – whether or not you take risks and go out into the open, outside world. Or whether you choose to stay in the vicinity of your home, take a job in the family business, and stick to things that are familiar.

Your brain teaches you to fear rejection. During an experimental game with three strangers, the participants had to toss a ball around. Then, two of the participants kept passing the ball back and forth to each other, ignoring the third person. The experiment showed a strong pain signal in the brain of this person – the pain of rejection. The same areas lit up that normally lit up during physical pain. This means that your brain prepares you to avoid situations where you can face rejection. “Let’s not go door to door with my business card. People won’t be waiting for this. They won’t like it . . . That girl over there, I think she’s hot. But I don’t know her, so if I start a random conversation with her, she will think I am a creep . . . Those guys over there seem friendly. It looks like they are having a great time. Maybe I could hang out with them. But they don’t know me. So if I mingle with them I will seem lonely and a weirdo.” And other such self-preparatory remarks that echo through your brain when you reflect on approaching strangers.

Ultimately, people with a low sexual market value cling closer to their familiar surroundings. People with a high sexual market value go to the big places. Amsterdam, Brussels, the Hague. You will find them working in higher positions. This is self-filtration. This self-filtration affirms the “Gorkatico” characteristic. Mind you that I am not talking about the politicians working in the European bubble. I am talking about their staff, the administrators, the press officers, assistants, etcetera. It also explains why traditional annual parties play such an enormous role within local communities. Since the townsfolk have a low sexual market value, they are insecure and a bit stiff; they can only comfortably approach potential sex partners once they are tipsy or drunk. And of course being drunk makes the other more attractive in perception.

How do we apply this knowledge to the previous example of women who edge over to obesity wearing belly button sweaters and crop tops? (The nymphomanic woman the sauna was, for example, very chubby)

The sexual marketplace in such towns is a shallow pond, and because the guys that remain are timid, they will not correct the women for wearing clothing that actually looks ridiculous on them. Their strategy in the sexual market place is choosing to stay nice. This in turn further deconstructs the boundaries on the diet of the women. It also ties in to why being nice to women of low sexual market value does not work to get laid. Because many men have tried that before, approaching such women with niceness and compliments, it swelled their ego. Therefore these women will compensate for their low sexual market value by pumping up their ego. Which means by rejecting men who are more desirable than they are, themselves. Women are, more than men, prepared to sacrifice their sexual needs in exchange for a higher status.