While reflecting on a male friend's persistent questions about whether another acquaintance's breasts were "real" or "artificial," Brunettes Blog blogger Ginny comes up with a much more plausible... and mundane... explanation for beauty standards (which are remarkably plastic over time and culture) than simple "evolutionary fitness signaling:" scarcity. (Emphasis mine.)
Another possibility ... is that exacting standards of beauty are not primarily about evolutionarily-coded fitness signals, as we’re so often told these days. Instead, they’re about status and acquisition. Women with lovely faces and perfect bodies are rare, especially as today’s “perfect body” is tiny with large breasts, not a common naturally occuring combination. Anything rare can be assigned a high value, and gaining possession of a rare valuable grants status to the possessor… especially when competition comes into play, as it seems to do with partner-choice. If a naturally-perfect body is a diamond to shine on the arm of a victorious male, then a surgically-enhanced perfect body is cubic zirconia: just as lovely, but easier to come by and therefore less valuable.
Source: The Brunettes Blog
You know what? Even if the stwatistical correlations of hip/waist ratios and ovulation detection were true it still wouldn't explain the much, much larger (but usually very much more critical to local cultures and times) distinctions of skinniness in women when food is abundant, corpulence when food is scarce, flabbiness in women when physical labor is obligatory, buffness when most work is done at desks, pale skin when most women laborers do field work, tans when most labor is factory or office work, and, especially, blonde women when blondes are scare or "exotic Asian women" in those parts of the world where... there are nearly two billion other Asian people. Oh, and women with clear, flawless skin when insects, acne, and sunburn was prevalent, and women with lots of tattoos, brandings, and piercings once sunblock, benzoyl peroxide, and sunblock become de rigueur.
Feel free to point out that evolution might have biased humans to equate that which is scarce with that which is beautiful. We're certainly evolved creatures (as opposed to what? Spontaneous generation?) But a preference for that which is rare is a very different matter than straight up sexual selection.
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Hmm... interesting idea you
Submitted by chaucerchu (not verified) on Wed, 2011-04-27 21:05.Hmm... interesting idea you quoted, but I think there's something more nuanced going on. Certainly there are lots "normal variations" in physical traits that are rare and considered attractive (green eyes are the rarest, per Wikipedia). But there are lots of other traits which are rare but not attractive (red eyes seem like they wouldn't be so highly desired). Drawing a solid line between "normal variation" and "abnormality" seems like it would be pretty hard -- one person's normal is another's abnormal.
To me, it's always seemed like the "perfect ideal for beauty" (whatever that may mean) is a far more random cultural construct that may well have nothing at all to do with any kind of innate psychology at all, beyond "attractive = things not too far from being familiar". I would think if you asked a bunch of people in a hundred countries around the world about their ideal for beauty, you'd get at least a slightly different answer each time. And trying to figure out a good reason for why everyone's answer is different seems like it would be well-nigh impossible.
I'd guess it's rarity which
Submitted by Ali m (not verified) on Thu, 2011-04-28 10:38.I'd guess it's rarity which is not correlated with ill health. I always think of red eyes in connection with albinism, which is not, overall, going to become the beauty standard because it does indicate a certain amount of genetic unfitness. But without something like that, there's no reason that a rare trait can't be held up as attractive.
I think that's right.
Submitted by figleaf on Thu, 2011-04-28 11:26.I think that's right. Objectively speaking one person's red eyes should be no less intriguing than, say, Elizabeth Talylor's equally distinctive lavender blue ones. But for better or worse most (though by no means all) people associate albinism with poor health (possibly unfairly.) Thanks, Ali. --fl
My pet theory is that most of
Submitted by ozymandias (not verified) on Wed, 2011-04-27 22:47.My pet theory is that most of the beauty standard/what people find attractive can be boiled down to three categories:
a) Early positive association-- if your first girlfriend or boyfriend's a brunette, you will probably grow up at least a little more inclined towards brunettes.
b) Social signalling-- glasses tend to signal intelligence, for whatever reason, so guys who like intelligent women are more likely to like women in glasses; tattoos symbolize rebellion and nonconformity, so women who like these traits are more likely to like tattoos."
c) Status games-- "Look at me, I can attract a skinny blonde", "look at me, I can attract a well-muscled man with Brad Pitt's chin."
Here's how I see it. A
Submitted by DoctorJay (not verified) on Thu, 2011-04-28 09:53.Here's how I see it.
A person who is thin in a world of plenty of food signals that they are powerful. They have the time and energy to not only do their work, but to work out, and to seek out better food than the most convenient McDonalds. Now this signalling isn't completely reliable, sometimes people are thin for other reasons.
But this logic works for the reverse. In a world where food is scarce, corpulence denotes power, vigor and health. So rarity matters, but it's not primary.
Bear in mind though, that there are lots of other ways to signal power/fitness. Thinness isn't the only one.
I think that's true -- we're
Submitted by figleaf on Thu, 2011-04-28 11:32.I think that's true -- we're easily cued for status... or I think more precisely the implied leisure time afforded by status. So someone who can afford not to workout when everyone else labors, or, a few decades later, can afford to workout intensively when everyone else is sweating two jobs, implies we're drawn to status. But that's pretty different from the more common but insufficient rump speculations that men "evolve" preferences for beauty but not status and women "evolve" preference for status but not beauty. Instead it sure looks a lot like both men and women are just drawn to status in whatever context it happens to be available and expressed in. Thanks, Doc. --fl