A NATURAL HISTORY OF LOVE

Beginning with a somewhat interesting history of ancient mythological love, Ackerman's (The Moon by Whalelight, 1991) book quickly degenerates into a regurgitation of stereotypes about differences between men and women. Love is, admittedly, a difficult concept to define, and Ackerman makes a reasonable effort by characterizing it as "the white light of emotion." Beginning with an enlightening exploration of ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman mythologies, she moves on to a discussion of modern love, arguing that it evolved with books and literacy. In discussing Greek romances between youths and older men, Ackerman indicates that homosexual love has a natural place in the history of love. But she later contradicts herself by speaking of the "biological ballet" of romantic love as evolution's way of ensuring that sexual partners meet and mate and procreate. Similarly, while she notes in her introduction that her discussion is restricted to love in the West, what follows appears to be an attempt at a generic description of love. Her not original "perpetuation of the genes" theory has little explanatory power for any differences in the ways men and women love today. At one point, she actually claims that male biology protests against demands for "new-age sensitive guys" because women are "trying to adapt them to a society for which they weren't designed." And it gets worse. Discussing the art of kissing, Ackerman cites anonymous anthropologists who tell us that "the lips remind us of the labia because they flush red and swell when aroused, which is the conscious or subconscious reason women have always made them look even redder with lipstick." Such functionalist arguments cannot be sustained without reputable citations. She should have called this a history of images of love within a few societies, rather than a "natural" history. Ackerman's essentialist notions of love will insult individuals who critically question traditional (and "natural") ways of anything, especially loving.