Proofs *shudders*
"...as women wore cologne, men wore proofs: to secure their own sense of themselves, and thus to be attractive" -Wicked (yes, i'm still reading it)
I'm not going to touch on the gender binaries in this statement, i don't wear cologne and well I hate proofs but only because they're obnoxious in the testing format you become ever so familiar with in those intro mathematics classes for engineers.
That being said, I found this statement very interesting (read: true) as far as describing the nature of proofs.
People (maybe insecure people? maybe not) tend to secure a sense of themselves in relation to others. He is cool, therefore Im not, he's wrong, I'm right, they are different, etc. Creating truths about the world allow people to fit themselves into it. Proofs make "truths" seem right.
In your first algebra class our teacher goes to the board and begins writing a slew of unfamiliar signs, random numbers, etc. on the board until she arrives at the conclusion that 42 = 0, or some other such obviously faulty statement. You sit there trying to makeout some error in her ways because your language of logic and everything that is holy (read: true) can't lead you astray like that...or can it?
Anything can be proven. Just because statments have a slew of complex numbers and signs above them doesn't make then more right (but they are oh so much more impressive, so next time you're picking me up with math equations...size matters...jk).
But besides the attractiveness of complex equations (*shudders*) there is something to be said about the attractiveness of people who are secure with themselves/their world. I'm not sure I understand how cologne makes people feel more secure (they know they don't smell horrid unless they put on waaaay too much?) but I do find people (well, person) that are (is) more confident, not constantly looking for praise, and extremely good at proofs (or just math/sciene (read: engineer)) attractive...
