Oh, heavens, how creepy.  (Needing the gory details for no good reason) Was this from an actual woman-looking-for-mate or someone who knows a WLFM?  Or worse, from someone who runs an agency? 

OK, I'll have to admit to my little contribution to sluthood.
Alla was a predator in person.  She had been in UK, in Portsmouth, for a year on a fiancee visa but her intended had got cold feet.  Lyudmila had met her through Lubov Youssopova (whom I mentioned ages ago), I think Alla was couriering some money for her or v/v, I don't know more than that.  Anyway she had been to stay with us for a couple of weeks that summer.  I had to meet her at the station.  I asked Lyuda how to recognise her and Lyuda said "Oh, she's about 40, fairly nondescript, but she'll be wearing a canary-yellow jacket".  Of course she wasn't on the train expected, and when after about an hour and a half, a tall attractive titian haired lady with a stunning figure walked up to me, it was a little while before I noticed the yellow jacket. (The hair was dyed but the figure was natural).
Lyuda told me quite a lot about her, like she reckoned Alla was gold-digging, and that she was frustrated because she wasn't getting an effective sexual relationship with her fiancee who was, to be fair, about 60.  The fiancee phoned me a few times for support.  He seemed a reasonably nice guy, but totally naive in chosing and making relationships.
So when the funeral came she was still in UK and was of course on the guest list.  I suggested she stay and help sort out Lyuda's papers because I badly needed a bilingual assistant and she was at a loose end, having only a couple of weeks left on her visa.  So she came (her fiancee even paid the train fare) and was a great help.  She was of course hoping that I would be able to keep her and extend her visa, but the immigration authorities would not have permitted that anyway, and all else being equal I was not in any position emotionally or financially to take on another dependent (let alone dependent family - she had a 15yr old son in Russia) at that time.
I was not surprised six months later to hear she was now married to some guy in the Southwest UK, presumably someone she met while living there.  Good luck to both of them, I suspect they'll need it.

They (the former-Soviet women) seem so desperate, too.  I would feel slightly icky about it -- as if I were taking advantage of her -- even though, in reality, she would be taking advantage of me.  

Its a trade.  It is mutual supply and demand that is the binding force of relationships.  If both are taking advantage of each other then that makes a strong bond.

Hmm.  Sounds as though you need an attractive Russian au pair, and let the chips fall where they may.

The chips tend to fall in the wrong places and stick there.  I had an 18yr old Russian student lodger for a month.  That was OK, but 18yr olds don't turn me on, and I doubt if I turn them on either.  I saw this as a female version of Artyom.  With an au-pair, even if I could find the space now Artyom is back, the chances are I would just find myself living with someone who was a complete irrelevance for an extended period.  Statistically I would have to do that several times before anything stuck, so it would take several years and the clock is ticking.

 Yes.  At this distance, I am proud of the way you and Natasha seem to have come through this terrible experience with everything more or less intact.  I think that's a tribute to your child-raising technique, and perhaps the level head on your shoulders.  I think you are entirely due some feelings of satisfaction.  You realize, of course, that this will all fall to sh*t when Natasha is 15.  (wide, evil grin)

Yes, I feel that even that degree of normalcy would be vindication.  I hope she is stunning and breaks lots of hearts - payback time!  Seven is a wonderful age and I am enjoying it while it lasts.  Old enough to talk to you, not old enough to talk back.  I wish she could stay seven for ever and ever.

Yes.  I have often said that I would consider being a mother if it could start at age six or seven.  I consider that the age where they become real people.

These things all help I'm sure, but the best schools can't make an idiot intelligent, and its hard to fake good skin, which is something I particularly notice (possibly because, being short-sighted, girls' faces were in focus when kissing.), and hence carrying years well.

(Gasp!  You kept your eyes open during kissing?!?  You broke The Code!)

I wouldn't say "kept open", just "opened".  I do get bored easily and start looking around for something interesting to think about after a while. 

You were undoubtedly a weird teen boy. :)  The ones I messed with seemed quite happy to do nothing but have tongue in mouth.  I thought it was the girl's job to get bored.

Small things amuse small minds.  Not so much of the teen though, I didn't get many opportunities to practice as a teen.  Boys' school and all that.

I've always thought that was the problem with Britain.  No wonder you conquered the earth at one time:  your guys weren't tired from adolesence!

A mouth isn't that big a place to explore, especially with the limited reach of a tongue. :)

Limited reach?  Some people seem to be searching for my lunch, or at least my tonsils.  I must admit, though, that I think the role of the tongue when kissing is rather over-rated.  My sixth-grade biology teacher told us that the human mouth was the most filthy place on the body, and that has never left me, sadly.  My sixth-grade biology teacher is a whole different story.

What sort of aliens were you kissing?  I guess frog princes would have pretty long tongues. My husband.  He watches too much porn, and thinks it's sexy.

Did he turn into a prince?

Nope, he's still a frog.

I thought that kissing was a sort of innoculation against the viruses etc. that might later get transferred in more intimate exchanges of bodily fluids. Oh, and here I always thought it was payment for dinner and a movie.

Your sixth-grade biology teacher was not perhaps suggesting kissing another less than clean area at the other end of the alimentary canal instead, as a polite form of a common insult?

No.  I've heard it since.  He meant in contrast to a dog's or cat's mouth.  I believe we have more anaerobic bacteria in our mouths, even though we don't lick the same things the dogs and cats do (or at least, not as often as they do).
Mr. Pahl (Dr. Pahl, now) was a genius.  He had been almost finished with medical school when his wife got horribly sick and he quit so he could earn money.  He ended up teaching biology.  He was a trip!  We had horrible pop quizzes, called bombs.  His exams were called blitzes. 
That was the first year we dissected, and he threw the dissection animals at us when he was handing them out.  They were sealed in plastic bags, but it was still pretty gross and weird.  I was beaned by a fetal pig when my lab partner choked and missed it.
Have you ever seen those tremendously long, flexible antennas that some people put on their pickup trucks?  Mr. Pahl had one of those.  He called it his "nerd knocker."  If you weren't paying attention, you might hear a slight whistling noise and than CRACK that thing bashed the top of your desk.  I'm surprised he didn't put someone's eye out with it.  His aim was true, though.
I still have nightmares about his anatomy pop tests.  He had a skeleton hanging in the front of the room, and he would call you up IN FRONT OF EVERYONE and start whacking various bones with his nerd knocker.  You had to spit out the name of the bones as fast as he was knocking them.  He did the same thing with the muscles, AND we had to name insertion and exertion points.  I'm (or was) good at memorizing things, and I don't have much stage fright, so this didn't bother me TOO much, but still, the awful
anticipation!
Seven years later, I came back to Austin (where I was in college) with a horrible case of strep throat.  My roommate took me to the Student Health Center (otherwise known as the Quack Shack), where they took one look at me and ambulanced me to Brackenridge, the big hospital in the area.  Imagine my surprise and confusion when, through the clouds of delirium and
my 106° fever, Mr. Pahl's face swam into view!  He had, indeed, finished medical school and was in his residency for trauma medicine.  He said, "Catso!" (his nickname for me) "You grew tits!"  I was hospitalized there for four days, and he visited me each day.  What a sweet guy.  And what a prince of a teacher... after 26 years, I can still name most of the bones in the body on demand.

Yes, but idiot children can be put into expensive schools for life if one is rich, and you and I, who suffered through acne with only benzoyl peroxide available to us, would not BELIEVE the stuff that dermatologists have for it these days.  Really, at the first bump on Natasha's face, take her to one.  There's no need for her to have zits.

I do think these things tend to carry through impoverished generations - my father was brought up in poverty in inner city slums and left school at 14, and yet has had hardly any illness until now, and managed to get a Master's degree, partly as a consequence of post-war retraining.  He still looked good enough at about 55 that my girlfriend thought him fanciable.  That's not to say he had an aristocratic ancestry, we have no records beyond his parents, but it certainly suggests that nature had a bigger hand than nurture in his case, and a lot of the traits -do- inherit as his children show.

Yes!  Absolutely.  That's why I think that aristocratic ancestry does not prove anything genetically.  Your dad is obviously one of nature's
aristocrats.  (Sorry... is there any more patronizing thing that I could have said than that?)

In the evolutionary model it would make him a benign mutation.

I don't think it improves the genes, but, for example, a rich mama who eats better food during her baby's gestation is probably going to deliver a healthier baby than a poor mama who eats bread and water.

Sure. I vaguely recall a survey of, I think, grandchildren of women who were pregnant during the Leningrad seige which showed a statistically significant disadvantage in things like birthweight and early development.  While I can't remember the details, it definitely was suggested that deprivation during the -grandmother's- pregnancy can be a factor in the child's development.  So all is not quite so simple as we thought.

Oh, wow.  How very interesting.  (I'm not being in the least sarcastic.)  I must find that study somewhere.  Thank heavens for Google.

Yes, as we now think that we know what all the "good-looking" characteristics mean as far as childbearing. 

Hmm, yes that obviously is not a direct correspondence.  I guess I am assuming that over generations the vaguaries of fashion will average out.

It's basic stuff, like healthy skin and teeth suggest health.  I know that a specific hip-to-waist ratio is what attracts men from many different cultures.  Can't remember exactly what it is right now. 
I've also read that blond hair is attractive to many cultures, as many people have light hair when they are young, and so blond hair looks young.  Also eye-liner... I've heard it explained that many young women have dark circles under their eyes, and so eye-liner is an attempt to look young. 

I thought it was from staying up late.  When I get overtired my eyes get such dark circles that one girlfriend said I looked like a panda.  I thought eye makeup was just to draw attention to the eyes and so the object of their attention.  Natasha has very dark eyes that look like all pupil.  They say that that is supposed to be sexy because pupil enlargement expresses interest.

Yes, hence the use of belladonna drops by ladies in the olden days. 
Some nature article or radio program recently pointed out that most animals don't have 'whites' to their eyes and (genetically) prefer to conceal the direction of their gaze.  How interesting.  I've never heard that, but it makes sense.  Humans are rare in using this information to communicate.  The article suggested that concealed gaze might make predators fear that they had been spotted before they actually had, but I don't think that adds up.  It works better the other way around, conceal the gaze and you camouflage the eyes.  Seeing eyes is a damn good way of finding otherwise concealed animals.  You put an eye, or even just a lens somewhere in an image and your eye/brain will find it ever so quickly.  It is deep-down recognised as a significant object.

Do you know about puffy sleeves?  I have read that men prefer puffy sleeves because they look like shoulders hunched in fear.  Is that weird or what?
Speaking of blond hair, I had about 1.5 cm of hair on my head in a boring, ugly taupe color.  I went to a salon yesterday, and had them bleach it white!  It looks really cool.  The girl who took my money told me I looked like a punk Mrs. Santa Claus.  (Remember, I have very ruddy skin and I'm plump.  I also smile a lot, like a dolphin.  It doesn't mean anything, but it's the natural shape of my mouth.  Ho ho ho.)

Yes, another confusing and inaccurate signal.  A smile is the best turn-on, I guess as an indication of interest, but it is very undirectional, and often has as much to do with the natural relaxed mouth shape as any intent, and I don't really see why it is so relevant.

Introspection suggests that physical attraction is a multi-level process, some features which attract at 50 paces are irrelevant at 50mm.  I don't know what the childbearing implications of a nice smile are.
I know 'received wisdom' is that men are supposed to be attracted to slim blondes.  Well sure, blonde hair catches the eye at a distance, but it soon becomes irrelevant, and it tends to be associated with sensitive skin. 

Huh.  Does the princess in The Princess and the Pea turn men on?  Not as far as I know. Here in the U.S., we associate red hair with sensitive skin.  How interesting. Well, yes I won't deny red-hair skin is even worse

 I once had a slim blonde vivacious girlfriend who at first seemed quite a catch, but she didn't turn me on one bit.   I really don't know why, her previous partner had been aroused if she so much as walked across the room.

The investment bank I worked for in Dallas was in a very tall building.  There was a very nice cafeteria on the fifth floor, with a jukebox in it.  I was good friends with a black woman who worked there.  We looked quite a bit alike, though our skins were different colors.  We were the same height, build, etc.  We even had similar faces!  The jukebox was right by the elevators.  We got in the habit of getting off the elevator, selecting the Theme from Peter Gunn, and then we would walk in step together all across the cafeteria to the salad bar, slightly vamping to the music. What a lovely image!
Trelia (the black woman I was and am friends with) still works there, and says guys STILL remember that.  And that was about thirteen years ago. 
Hmm.  Don't know why I included that, except it had something to do with men being aroused when women just walk across the room.  Sorry.  Just bragging on past glories.

It was a shame really because she was quite keen on the relationship.  And what childbearing benefit do anorexia or fair hair have?
I find that there is some conflict between the features that catch my eye and the ones that arouse me sexually.  Despite jokes about men undressing women with their eyes, I actually found it took quite a few years of undressing girls to get any idea how to predict what sort of 'dressed' looks would be exciting when undressed, and it still seems mostly a matter of luck.

Yes.  Bras, etc. seem to make a big difference.  There is a woman in the gym I use who has what I call National Geographic-style breasts: they're flat, long, hang down to her tummy, and point at the floor.  She wears a magic bra that gives her the pointy, looking-at-the-ceiling breasts of yer average fifteen year old.  She's got to be in her mid fifties.  I have a pot belly which is totally hidden when I wear a certain dress.  It's not fair... with men, it's largely WYSIWYG.  I mean it's not fair to men.  Women can disguise ourselves so well, and men can't, really.

Breasts.  Such a noticable indication of a woman's reproductive state. Instant triage immature/nubile/too late. 

I never thought of it that way, but you're absolutely right.  How we must have screwed up evolution, with our bras that support... our Cooper's ligaments are supposed to give out around 35 or so.

I suppose concealment is part of living in high population density, I'm not sure how that works.  It always intrigued me how, in the context of concealment a breast exposed or hinted at is so alluring, yet the charm is so quickly lost in a context of nudity.

On the other hand, you have the Hawaiian chiefs who believed that their sisters were the only ones sacred enough to mate with, and ended up with seven-foot-tall godly-looking offspring.  I don't know how the Hawaiians managed it, as they came from such a limited genetic stock to begin with, and the Europeans commented on how fab and healthy they were at first contact.  I'm sure there were a lot of deformed babies sacrificed in the heiaus.

Wow. That would imply an exceptionally low mutation rate (on a volcano?!), or some very suspect sisters.  Or really bugger-up the theory.  I suppose it depends how long they had been doing it for, and how coherently. 

Well, legend has it that the people who were chosen for the long canoe journey were very large and very healthy, the cream of the crop so to speak.  And even though some of my Hawaiian siblings like to make out that we've been there since the beginning of time, archaeological finds indicate the first people there got there c. 800-1100 AD.  So we haven't really been there all that long.  Also, some ali'i (chiefs) didn't have sisters, some had sisters who didn't get pregnant, and some were gay.  The Hawaiian ali'i also had an elaborate wardship system, where likely-looking boys and girls got adopted into the family, so that MIGHT have had something to do with it, i.e. she may be called my sister, but she's actually from the other side of the island.

I think the suspect sisters is the most likely expanation.

I guess both are statistical samples of one, and are contradictory, so there is no conclusion and never should have been anyway.  Pity, it was nice to think that was why the last Tzar was such a prat.

Oh, I'm *sure* that's why he was a prat.  Well, that and the way he was raised. 
Look at the ancient Egyptian pharoahs... they did the get your sister pregnant thing, and a lot of archaeologists think that Akhnaton (I know I mis-spelled his name) was an example of that.  He was the one who tried to start a new monotheistic religion?  You know?   Anyway, he wanted his portraits done in a more realistic manner, and they show a very oddly shaped man.  There's a lot of speculation about what genetic problems he might have had.

Or what the artist had been drinking.  I didn't know that.