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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!
It's called Photoshop.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Until these females develop an interest in Linux (and know that it's really GNU/Linux) plus a preference for subterranean dwelling, nobody here is likely to notice.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Women get more attractive. Men develop bigger wallets.
Deleted
I'm confused, how does this help the average slashdotter? Perhaps you are just reminding the readers that an even higher proportion of women are out of their league. Salt in the wound, my friend.
If more attractive parents have more daughters and if physical attractiveness is heritable, it logically follows that women over many generations gradually become more physically attractive on average than men.
Except that the standard for "beauty" changes over time. I'm not sure I'm buying this.
Proverbs 21:19
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.
What downside? That's what the Internet is for.
Thanks to technology, you can see more boobs in an hour than your dad had in his entire stack of Playboys, and than your grandfather did during his entire life.
As a male, let me just say that it is sometimes good to be in the minority. The downside is that unless you are a dirty old man, there is no way to take advantage of the beautification of the female portion of the human race.
Rich. Not dirty, rich.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
I'm going to use this as an excuse when I break up with my 50 year old wife,
"Sorry it's not you it's evolution, younger women these days are just much more attractive".
Women have always been beautiful enough for evolutionary purposes, just as men have always been sufficiently whatever-it-is-women-want for evolutionary purposes. Every parent of a teenager knows this, and every teenager does not.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Are beer sales up?
>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.
It's just selection making sure that desirable traits get passed. Just like bloodhounds were selected for their ability to sniff out game, their descendants grew to have the most reliable nose of all breeds. Similarly, if intelligence was the greatest traits looked for in a mate, our race would become smarter with each passing generation... and suddenly this explains a lot, doesn't it?
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.
Not in Liverpool. Looking at the women on dating sites for this city is like looking at a freak show. Seriously.
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.
So easy a caveman can do it.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If evolution is making women more attractive, does creation have the inverse effect?
While characteristics that define somebody as "beautiful" VS "plain" may vary, there are quite a number of things that are considered "ugly" to the majority of a given area. So, while women may be on average no less "plain", perhaps they're less "ugly"
Then again, so aspects of beauty have been fairly consistent over the last while as well, so perhaps evolution has had some chance to catch up on that, at least on a regional basis. My own standards are a little different than the pack, so really I'd worry about my own chances with 'regular' women, but as long as guys that look like Ron Jeremy can get some, I suppose I'll be fine.
If anything the reasons a woman has a baby has nothing to do with her looks and everything to do with her sense of well being, security along with cultural beliefs. Women are plenty attractive enough to get some sort of a sex partner and I'm trying to identify a time when that has not been the case.
In today's day and age, culture matters for birth more than looks. There are some women out there having nearly 10 children simply because they feel it is a christian thing to do. How does evolution account for that, unless it accounts for obvious social influences. On the opposite end of the scale, you have some green women who are deeply concerned that bringing too many children into the world might somehow compromise the planet.
It's almost like environment plus culture need to be considered as a holistic system in order to really understand human evolution.
This is my sig.
Agreed. If you look around, those cranking out the most rug-rats are either frumpy welfare queens or religious fanatics. You'd have to believe heavily in magical Godly rewards to have 8+ screaming barfing kids.
Table-ized A.I.
Thanks to technology, you can see more boobs in an hour than your dad had in his entire stack of Playboys, and than your grandfather did during his entire life.
Speak for your own grandfather. My grandfather was part of the army that liberated Paris. I'm told that the French were most appreciative..... ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
There are only two physical traits with universal sexual appeal cross-culturally, symmetry you mentioned and clear skin. All of these ratios and such are measuring the current cultural zeitgeist with regards to beauty, and those standards are largely culturally plastic. Little better in methodology than phrenology.
This thread is useless without pics
They used old photographs in the study of people from past generations and their method of "objective" measurement of beauty were to have modern-day people judge them.
It seems almost a foregone conclusion that people in modern times would find the women of modern times more attractive; standards of beauty change.
So, how many millihelens per century is beauty incresign by?
My personal experience is that the more beautiful a woman is, the less she likes to, um... procreate.
The article does not mention the participants having cosmetic surgery. If the surgery was something like breast augmentation or the like, then the genes for "ugliness" would be carried forward. I would call it genetic false advertising. This would progress into the further generations becoming dependent upon surgery to be beautiful. That is until the definition of being beautiful changes, perhaps being polydactyl will be the rage in 2100.
Huh. I had no idea that watching my wife grow in beauty over 15 years was watching evolution in process. Nice.
This discovery has lead to the solution to a particular slashdot meme.
a. Yes, this post is sappy and sentimental.
b. Yes, I am sending my wife a link to this post.
c. Yes, the kids are going to bed early tonight.
d. Profit!!!
Life is short; think quickly.
For faster analysis go watch the beginning of Idiocracy.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
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.
This thought makes me want to join the army and start another world war. wow. You just completely derailed my day...thanks.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Groucho Marx
"Gee, more women appear to conform to modern standards of beauty, than at any time in the past!"
Mid 19th century beauty can be deduced by portraiture. The pre-raphaelite stuff from Rosetti does a pretty good job of this:
http://www.rossettiarchive.org/img/s356.repro.jpg
http://www.rossettiarchive.org/img/s536.repro.jpg
They'd have seen Jessica Simpson as a freakishly stretched elf - on the verge of starvation.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
It is not only attractive women. What you are saying here is actually known as a social disease. Urban centers, overpopulation etc will have the effect of making woman want to have less kids. If you get those same woman and leave them on less populated places for a few years (6+), they will start wanting to have kids again.
As a father, I can say this doesn't happen only to women. Having a child will actually completes you and make you happy. It is natural for men and women to want to have kids. All the other "career" bullshit (given as a reason for men/women not having kids) is a symptom of a social disease.
morcego
That's true.
What I don't understand is why evolution would self-select for prettier women, but not prettier men. A man who is ugly is not going to get any play or opportunity to pass his ugly genes to the next generation. Right? So then men should be becoming more attractive.
The only reason I can think is that women are being honest when they say, "We don't care what the guy looks like."
What you are noticing is the fact that men are "attractive" to women for different reasons than women are attractive to men.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
Warning: Sweeping Generalisation Approaching: Women aren't in it for looks beyond prehaps looks which show good general health. They are interested in the appearance of success and maybe personality traits which suggest the man might be successful such as humour (shows intelligence, social skills) assertiveness (shows leadship, possibily shows the ability to come up with new ideas although I think middle management is filled with prove this isn't always the case).
One thing I would like the reseachers to investigate is whether men are getting taller (rather than more attractive). Numerous studies show that the higher levels of business structures are over represented by above average height men. There a number of possibly explantions of this, from taller men are more intelligent (bollocks) to taller men being equated to being leaders (think we might have a winner) if only subsciously. Therefore it would seem to me that height could be a physical selector used by women as a subconscious selector of success.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Hey, whatever floats your boat man...I've spent my entire life trying my BEST to avoid having the little 'milstones' around my neck. That's what contraception is for (and abortion if those still fail).
I'm glad people like having kids, but, it just isn't right to say it "completes" you. I've never wanted any, and I feel very complete! I'm not tied down to kids and a wife, I can date as I please, trade to a new 'model' of woman when I feel like it, and I don't have to worry about what I spend my finances on, because little Suzy needs braces. I can come and go as I please, travel, experience life and all it has to offer.
I don't look down on your for your choices, but, to say one must have that 'traditional' home with wife and kids to be a complete person is just plain nonsense. Different strokes for different folks...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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
No battle marks on them.
Those pristine museum pieces belonged to teenagers and various noblemen who never fought anything stronger than a cold, and pranced in the back of the battlefield wearing armour instead of charging at the front.
The ones used by big burly zweihander wielding men mostly ended up rusting in some field somewhere in the end.
Knights died in their armours or if they've managed to retire - were buried in them.
Those things had cost back then as much as a car would today - only they were "tailor-fitted" for each individual. Spares were an option only for VERY rich.
Also... one word... arquebus.
Nobles that trained since their teens to be knights and later charged at lines of peasants who got handed their arquebuses to them whole two weeks earlier - haven't made it home so their armour could be preserved for posterity.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You experience all life has to offer? Really? You're experiencing a very limited subset of what life has to offer. Different strokes indeed, but don't delude yourself. You've traded one set of experiences for another.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Here's a theory for you - perhaps you and your friends have been self-selecting into a group of well-educated, childless folks in their 30s and 40s? Maybe this is more a function of like befriending like. Beyond the well-known fact that well-to-do, better-educated folks tend to have fewer children on average than the working, ill-educated poor.
That latter association in a modern society seems to be based on the fact that unless you are absurdly wealthy, raising more than a few children to the standard of living and education that you and your social class have become accustomed to is just too costly, and even if you can afford it, you can't devote the amount of time and energy to that many children to make sure they are educated and reared properly (private school, tutors, college, grad school, parties, play dates, etc. etc.).
Whereas the lower and lower middle classes have very little in the way of expectations for what you provide to children beyond 3 meals a day and clothing and getting them to and fro from public school.
(Americans, this may blow your mind...)
In Norway, your income, personal wealth and tax paid is public information.
Example:
http://www.skattelister.no/?do=alfalist&fy=03&k=0301&postnr=0571&firstletter=b
(in Norwegian)
Click on one of the names if you like. I'm in that list, as well as every other Norwegian. (Coworkers, managers, the prime minister.)
I lost my sig.