mac_philo

I've read of several advantages:

1.Symmetry corresponds with attractiveness and beauty. Our evaluation of whether or not someone has a 'pretty face' depends heavily on how symmetric their face is, and phenotypic symmetry is correlated with good health. Dennett talks about this in Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
2.Attractive, full heads of hair correlate with being healthy and well fed; it shows you have nutrients to spare.

tronvillain

Plus there's the observation that the average face is considered more attractive than the faces used to create it - there's a central tendency for beauty. Of course, you can make it even more attractive by accentuating certain features such as eyes and lips.

Nialler

Am I the only one here that appreciated the wonderful conjunction of poster's name and the sentiments expressed in the posting?

I nearly choked to se JC enthusing over playmates.

pseudobug

Hey, I'll bet old JC had a good time hosing Mary Magdelene 2000 years ago, too.

Valentine Pontifex

Give them time... Southern Cal will try to have beauty genetically engineered so that potential future actresses can be born "destined" to be beautiful.

;-)

Tristan Scott

luvluv asked:

Why do we recognize beauty and why is the lack of it so detrimental to our reproductive efforts?

I think we percieve beauty differently when we are young than when we are old. As we get older we see beauty that we may have missed in our youth. Diotima says it best:

He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty, a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and-foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven or in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.

Dr Rick

As Ms. Russo said to Mr. Brosnan after an evening of wanton abandonment in The Thomas Crown Affair: "Damn, I hate being a foregone conclusion".

That which is considered attractive in humans varies from culture to culture and from time to time and doesn't seem to consistently reflect the health status of a potential mate. The Rubenesque Western ideal of feminine beauty has given way to the lithe waif of modern fashion in just a few generations. There is no evidence that this relatively recent shift in aesthetics is attributable to random mutation and natural selection,and it also runs counter to the notion that a "healthy'" appearance is innately attractive.

While the Western ideal of human beauty has recently changed, it appears that the attraction of avian tail feathers has remained constant during the same time period. What induces a female Peacock to mate with a particular Peacock male has not, to the best of our knowledge, changed in the past few hundred centuries, and so it's not entirely clear that we should be drawing parallels between a female peacock's attraction to a male peacock's tail feathers and a Western human male's fascination with female human breasts.

Oolon Colluphid

How so? Why might it not be that we have a natural tendency to find something attractive (at it’s most basic, it would be the male or female form), but that what we find attractive may be hugely affected by culture? Not superficial differences, but underlying tendencies which manifest in different ways according to culture, producing the differences. IOW, what do you think is the cause of attraction itself. Not what we are attracted to, but why are we attracted to anything?

Yep, but we have culture and they don’t. So?

As you say, Rick, it’s not entirely clear that we should. And it’s not entirely clear that we shouldn’t either. What are we to make, then, of those things which seem to be cross-cultural standards? Things, as already mentioned, like evenly proportioned faces, clear skin, generally healthy appearance (whatever that is considered to be, eg a ‘healthy’ tan), and so on. Why should deformity, or severe acne, be regarded as unattractive? (The corollary being of course that if one can identify deformity as unattractive, then the least ‘deformed’, the most ‘perfect’, automatically become the most attractive.)

There’s two elements here: are there really any ‘universals’ (and other posts above seem to indicate so, and your peacock analogy isn’t necessarily appropriate because of the huge influence of culture on human preferences), and if so, what do we call what drives these preferences? Why is any particular, and strongly culturally influenced, feature, eg breasts, buttocks, considered attractive? My instinct is to say instinct, but feel free to find a different word for it if you think that inappropriate.

Cheers, Oolon

Dr Rick

Oh, for crying-out loud; haven't I argued against drawing analogies between avian and human behaviors? <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Dr Rick

...or, maybe not:

Thinness and body shape of Playboy centerfolds from 1978 to 1998.
Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord2001 Apr;25(4):590-2 Katzmarzyk PT; Davis C
School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University, North York, Ontario, Canada.

"...Based on current recommendations for the classification of underweight (BMI&lt;18.5 kg/m2), 70% of the centerfolds were underweight. Further, 77.5% of [these] centerfolds were &lt;85% of their ideal body weight. CONCLUSION: Given the perception of Playboy centerfolds as culturally 'ideal' women, the notion that 70% of them are underweight highlights the social pressures on women to be thin.

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