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Are Women Getting More Beautiful?
FelxH writes "Scientists have found that evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.
The researchers have found beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern." I just thought my
standards were changing as I got older, but it turns out it's just science!
This seems like the guppy phenomenon. Under a lack of predation the guppies self select to breed for beauty. Under heavy predation they breed to survive and quickly become plain. We are the guppies. We have no predators. It just takes longer to show up with us because our life cycle takes longer.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Because beauty is a subjective matter, how do you hope to measure this in an objective, scientific way.
>while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.
Really? You mean those 5-foot-1 suits of armor at the museum were worn by the same 6-foot-5 monsters who grace our modern football fields and armed forces?
I guess men from the Renaissance were the same as us, except highly compressible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v_azJv50KQ
Amazing what 4 hours of makeup and 4 hours of photoshop can do.
More data, damnit!
Evolutionarily, you'd expect that a species would gravitate towards more attractive members due to the increased ability of those members to reproduce. But consider that the likelihood of an ugly set of people to actually reproduce is much higher than a set of very attractive people to do so.
Humans are an interesting species. We are able to actually avoid evolution. In several tens of generations, humans will likely be all near-sighted due to our glasses and Lasik technology. Likewise, very attractive people know they have an increased likelihood of mating. This mating, for many of them, is a recreational activity instead of a procreative activity. So the use of prophylactics among attractive people actually prevents evolution from taking its course.
So why do we seem to have teenage girls blossoming so early? I'd wager that it is the use of hormones in cows that has artificially accelerated the aging process among humans. Since it is very easy to determine accelerated physiological changes in girls (larger breasts, wider hips, etc) than in boys (facial and body hair, etc), the incorrect assumption may be made that only girls are being affected. However, the use of hormones in our food affects all who ingest it.
Employers pay for (among other things) experience. Spending less time at work in order to be a primary caregiver reduces the amount of experience you can gain and offer to potential employers.
It's called "getting older". When you're 20, almost all women over 40 are unattractive, when you're pushing sixty most of the 40 year old woman are good looking.
Free Martian Whores!
Women aged 20-29 were nearly 29 pounds heavier on average in 2002 compared to 1960.
Women aged 40-49 were about 25.5 pounds heavier on average in 2002 compared to 1960.
That's not my true in my case. When I was a teenager I thought a woman was beautiful all the way upto 40 (think classmates' attractive moms)
Nowadays I often think 30 is the cutoff point...sometimes even as young as 25 if she lets herself get fat... from "cute" to "porky" in just a few years. For example I might look at Britney Spears and think, 'She used to be hot, but now she has jumbo thighs and a beer belly." Ditto Ashley Simpson or that Ghostwhisper girl. I often find myself thinking younger is better.
I blame the internet. Whereas I used to think "girl == hot" and I really didn't care if she had saggy breasts just as long as she had some, now exposure to literally millions of photographs has made me prefer small, firm breasts. i.e. I'm more picky and shallow.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
That it is the curvature which men find most attractive, the 0.7 index - women a hundred years ago were heavier, but the attractive ones still had the "right" aspect between hips and waist (ie, that which makes for best reproduction)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Similarly, before the industrial revolution it was unfashionable to be tan, since being tan meant that you were working out in the fields. After the industrial revolution, it became fashionable to be tan, because that meant that you weren't in a factory all day.
Lost: one sig, witty, 120 chars, sentimental value. Reward offered.
Not really. The average marrying age for girls used to be 13-20. If you made it past then, you were either on your second marriage already or were desperately trying to find a husband.
Today's standards of beauty follow the same premise. The difference is, women are getting married later in life -- due to how much preparation is given before they are considered adults -- and thus, desire to be unnaturally skinny in order to resemble young girls in the 13-20 range.
Biologically, this makes sense. Human males are attracted to just post-pubescent girls as that is their most fertile time. I'd say that it isn't so much the standards of beauty that are changing, but rather social views of when a woman can be viewed as sexually attractive.
If you mention to someone in the 1920's that one can get arrested for photoshoping a pic of Miley Cyrus (16 years old), they'd look at you funny.