Men get more disgusted as they age? It’s only a matter of time before my husband sees the real, slovenly, me | Emma Beddington

Research shows that while women experience feelings of revulsion from a young age, men catch them up in later years. Maybe I should stop scraping the mould off the jam …

What disgusts you? I hope it’s not inexpertly summarised research, because I have been intrigued by the recently reported finding that men get more disgusted as they age. Researchers at the Institute for Environmental Decisions in Zurich found that while young women generally “experience more disgust than men”, later in life the difference between the sexes narrows, and “men and women will reach similar levels of disgust when they get older”.

I don’t think anyone who has encountered young men’s bedrooms either in person or through the @boyroom social media account (a festival of coverless, unwashed duvets, defrosted bags of Ikea meatballs left to fester and stockpiled used tissues) will be surprised to learn that male disgust doesn’t kick in early. However, the theory is that as physical vulnerability increases with age, it makes survival sense for men to become warier of potential contaminants. For women, disgust stays stable – high in their fertile years (perhaps an evolutionary safeguard for potential pregnancies) and high post-menopause too, as they become more susceptible to disease.

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