"This is a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl"

There’s a sweet simplicity to those words sung by James Brown. They appeal to whatever innate desire we have to order the world into a natural, sensible hierarchy. The question, however, is: is it true? Is it a man’s world?

I got to thinking about what, if any, natural hierarchy exists. What I came up with are not absolutes, but general tendencies of who trumps whom. That is, who tends to get what they want, and who tends to have to settle. These are the ranking as I see them:

Alpha Male
Queen Bee
Average Female – High Achieving Beta
Beta Male
Omega Male – Fugly Woman

The alpha male will usually win out over the queen bee. This is due to two facts: women tend to have a higher proclivity for monogamy, and men tend to age better. It’s uncommon to see any woman past their early-twenties continue to snag high status men and dispose of them at their leisure; whereas, this is somewhat common among alpha males. Two exceptions that come to mind are Madonna and Angelina Jolie, and they tend to be more alpha male than queen bee in their overall demeanor.

Nature is a cruel master, but fair. If things seemed skewed in favor of men at the heights of the social hierarchy, they move in the opposite once we get into the middle. The average female should be able to run circles around beta males. This has everything to do with sex. For men who don’t regularly get laid, women remain a mystery. Since the average woman has a level of social intelligence miles ahead of the average man, she can easily use access to her ‘holy-of-holies’ to keep control of interactions and relationships with beta males. Once, however, people reach their mid-to-late twenties, and some men have started to get significantly less awkward and begin to come into their own, things can even out for high-achieving betas. This is especially true once a woman’s biological clock starts its inevitable countdown. I would still give the tie-breaker to the average female. High-achieving betas often see their achievements as an explicit means of attracting women, so they remain in the role of pursuer, whereas alpha males are those who have managed to reverse the natural order and become the ones being pursued.

I would say something about the bottom of the pile, the omega males and porcine women who both populate and comprise the audience of most daytime television, but who cares. If you care to know about them, watch an episode of Maury.