Why Are Women Pretty? Or, Why Do Men Like Porn?

Why isn't it men that wear makeup?
Why is that when you walk down the makeup aisle, the hair aisle they aren't monopolized  by products for males?
Why do department stores have a vastly disproportionate amount of female apparel and clothing?
Why is it that 87% of all plastic surgery is performed on women?
Why don't men go and get their nails done?
Why aren't men the ones that are most likely to have long, expensive, complicated, time consuming hair dos?  Why isn't it that men are the ones that take FOREVER to get ready to go somewhere?
Why isn't a diamond a guy's best friend?

Or, why is the human mating system so different from the vast majority of other animals?

Nearly across the board it's the males of a species that display.  They come in every shade and hue conceivable.  They hum, honk, buzz, vibrate, dance, sing, knock antlers, bash horns, strut, display...Their males are, simply put, pretty.

It isn't that human males don't have their own system of showing off--muscles, sports, status displays, material wealth, etc.  It's just that you'd kinda expect men to be prettier if they were like seemingly all other animals, but it's the females of our species that are beautiful, that preen, that strut and that display and not the males.

We seem to have everything backwards.

Why?

1)  Males that were picky had offspring that were more likely to survive and reproduce.

2)  Females that had certain attributes could communicate some perceived advantage and make them more likely to mate.

3)  There were enough females that males could be choosy.

4)  Being able to care for a child is much more critical to humans than it is to other animals.

Let's look at some of the human female attributes that men find appealing and parse them a smidge.  Hopefully, what we can learn is how that we're distinct from other animals.

Breasts - Why not start with the obvious?  We're the only ape, let alone mammal that make a display out of their mammary glands when they aren't lactating.  This, like several others to follow highlights a theme that child rearing is unusually difficult, costly, involved, prolonged in humans.  Our children are ridiculously vulnerable when they're born.  Wildebeest newborns need to be able to stand within a few minutes or they're abandoned.  Human newborns can't even lift their head or roll over and won't be able to walk for an entire year!!!  Animal Kingdom wide, that's shocking!

Nearly a third of a mother's resting metabolism goes into breast feeding.  So, men want women that can hack that Herculean task.

Hips - "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children." --Yahweh

Humans run a fine line between wanting speed and ease of locomotion, which has been linked to narrow hips and wanting wider hips for bigger brained babies.  Wide hips might be a more recent desired trait that shows a shifting emphasis on braininess.

Buttocks - Fat.  Glorious fat.  Energy reserves = successful pregnancies and ability to provide enough milk.

Taken to the extreme this produces a condition that's known as steatopygia.  

Eyelashes - why is having long eyelashes considered feminine?  That's an interesting question.  It might have something to do with youthfulness, which we'll talk more about below.  Or, maybe something to do not with eyelash length, but in eyelash prominence.  Maybe masculine foreheads that have pronounced brows might conceal eyelashes, so obvious eyelashes indicate feminine skull structures.  I have no clue, though...

Eyebrows - Why do women pluck their eyebrows to make them thinner?  Well, because big bushy eyebrows are masculine.  Why?  Because it externally communicates something about the internal hormonal balance.

Lips - We're the only ape to really have lips - red, puffy, voluptuous lips.  I've read some anthropologists speculate that this is some kind of throw back to the red, puffy, engorged vulvas that our ancestors were wild about (like a whole host of other simians have today).  That may or may not be, but it is possible to see this body part, like many, as a dip stick - it lets you know the health of the organism.  Moist (think lip gloss), red (rouge) lips contrast dry, pale or blue lips.  Doubtless, there is also a hormonal connection - it's known that higher estrogen levels = fuller lips.  Maybe it's yet another communication adaptation - red lips make for more obvious lip expressions.

Or, what if lips evolved simply for kissing?

To kiss.
To be kissable.

Sclera - This isn't specific to women, but it is interesting.  We're the only ape that has white scleras (the whites of the eyes).  Other apes have brown or dark sclera so as to camouflage their eyes.  The whitening of our sclera could have happened as another dip stick adaptation (white shows you don't have jaundice, bloodshot eyes or malnutrition of some kind) or as yet another adaptation to increase our expressive abilities.  One study showed that human babies look where the tester looks, as opposed to how tested apes look where a face is pointing.

Eyecolor - based on the mutation rate of certain markers it's estimated that the existence of blue eyes in humans is somewhere less than 10k years.  That fact alone combined with the knowledge that it's recessive should make it shocking to think that there are areas in Europe where the prevalence exceeds 80%.  So why the proliferation?  It's sexy.  Why is it sexy?  I'm not sure there's a simple answer, but possibly because it was an indicator of desirable genetic diversity (at least initially).  There are some psychological reasons I can't quite put my finger on yet.  Please look at this picture and comment your thoughts.  Blue does seem to accentuate where the eyes are looking (like at your eyes) by giving greater contrast to the eye's aperture.  That might be why they seem so piercing.  Brown, on the other hand seems more doe-eyed and innocent.

Hips to waist ratio - Hormones.  Men prefer women  with a waist to hip ratio of 0.7.  It indicates a desirable hormonal balance.  The difference between men and women's hips/waists can be a dead give away for drag queens.  Notice the below picture.  It's instantly obvious that's a male.  Why?   Because women's hour glass figure is important to communicate internal hormonal states.

You don't have to think twice about it.  This is a male's hips and waist.  Much about hormones is communicated through the shape of our anatomy.

Youthfulness - Young women can produce more children, better nourish them and have less chromosomal abnormalities.  This is not true for men who can actually become more appealing with age (think Harrison Ford and George Clooney).  Old men that are healthy and attractive often have high status (which takes time) and therefore resources and have proven that their genes came make it through the long run.  The emphasis for women is ability to care for healthy children.  The emphasis for men is ability to provide for a child and lack of mutations.

Hair (scalp) - More recently I think hair has communicated less about being healthy and disease free, which it does quite well, but more about personality.  This is a little bit of a pet theory, but I think our head fur (follicles only grow to a certain length and then die) turned into hair (doesn't stop growing) because of what it communicated about the person that could up keep it.  Think about it.  Hair can take an enormous amount of work. Especially long hair.  One of the easiest and clearest indicators of insanity is unkempt, wild, crazy, matted hair.  Maybe, just maybe, human scalp hair developed to show that a person wasn't crazy and could wash, comb, detangle, and fix up their hair.  Something like, if a women could care for her hair, which is time consuming and difficult, she could care for a child.  It's a thought.

I've included a clip of a women crying after getting a nastey hair cut.  I watched the rest of the show and to my recollection there were several women that refused to get their hair cut.

Women communicate with hair.

Works Sighted [sic] :

http://thesymbiont.blogspot.com/2010/05/are-humans-evolved-for-polygamy-or.html
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E38279704E9EA499
http://soar.wichita.edu/dspace/bitstream/10057/2357/1/LAJ+2008-p18-34.pdf
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15625720/
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/14/health/main623083.shtml
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091215160851.htm
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/LOCAL-ONLY/FHC/FHCL1495-6.html
http://wikidoc.org/index.php/Steatopygia
http://www.cultbeauty.co.uk/blog/2010/02/page/2/

Why Women Date A%@holes - An Evolutionary Perspective

Redneck A&%hole Doorbell

According to some surveys, 51% of women fantasize about being raped.

If you're anything like me, that's shocking.  Utterly shocking.  Some women, on some level, seem to want to be hurt? That's seems crazy!  WHY?!

That's not the only shocking thing about women.  Think of your single female friends.  How often do you hear a woman say, "How do I always wind up with @$$holes?"  You know how it goes.  Nice guys always finish last.  Women seem to like bad boys, jerks, cocky womanizers, sleeze balls.  Why is that true of so many of our female friends?  

Why do women date a#%holes?!

Furthermore, as a heterosexual male who's interested in what women are attracted to, I find it strange that women are so magnetically attracted to men that are funny.  When you think about it, it really can be as shallow as men liking big boobed bimbo beauties - both are just forms of entertainment, one visual, one mental.  Why is it that a guy can be a shallow, two-faced, gutter louse, but if he can make a girl giggle he can have her?  And does evolutionary psychology have anything to say about this subject?  Of course!

Quick evolution review:  Living organisms want to do two things: survive and reproduce.  When picking a mate you want two things from their genes: that they'll help your offspring survive and reproduce.

Survive.

Reproduce.

Survival is easy to understand - pick a mate that shows signs of being healthy - ornate plumage, coloration, antlers, capable of physically demanding displays or competition, etc.

Picking a mate that will help your offspring reproduce is quite a bit more complicated.   It's a surprisingly farsighted way of thinking for some lowly animals.  You aren't just thinking about the next generation.  You're actually thinking ahead to your children's children (completely unbeknownst to them, of course).  At that point it isn't just picking out what you like. You have to think about what other females want, sometimes for seemingly arbitrary reasons.  This is called the Sexy Son Hypothesis.  You want to pick a father that isn't just healthy and has good genes, but you want to pick a male mate that will produce sons that other females will think is attractive so that they'll reproduce and your genes will continue on.

Enter trouble.

Think about how this can go sinisterly and utterly wrong.  Evolution can cause women to be attracted to something that's bad for them like rape or being with a manipulative jerk if it means that their male offspring are more likely to reproduce because of having that attribute.  The classic example of this is the one we've already referred to - rape.  Over countless generations women may be selected for that are attracted to aggressive, anti-social, risk-taking, domineering, power-hungry, abusive men if that increases their offspring's fecundity.  Say it ain't so, but it is.  Thankfully that isn't the only or even largest selective force, but it's there and explains a lot about women's choices.

Back to the humor question.  Why are women attracted to cocky quick-wits?

What attributes does humor demonstrate and what's their relevance?

• High IQ - the brain can serve as a 'peacock's tail' and demonstrate genetic superiority.  Half the human genome encodes for brain phenotypes.  If half the genes are good, the rest probably are, too.  Translation: if you can say a good pick up line and make a girl laugh you might have good enough genes to reproduce with.
• Socially savvy - you have to understand people if you're going to be able to work your way up the social hierarchy ladder and have a large harem or high quality monogamous relationships.  Humor flexes your social understanding muscles.
• Confidence/dominance - same basic idea.  Status is important.  It's how you get high quality mates or high quantity mates.  Being funny typically means you're confident, which means you can succeed social (or have), which means your sons may, too.

So, there's part of evolution's answer to a question I've had for a very long time.  Women want what other women want, who want what other women want, who want what other women want, who...ad infinitum.  In other words, women date a*%holes so their sons will also be a#%holes.

Are Humans Still Evolving?

In biology it's very important to understand situations in which evolution will not occur so that you can understand when it does and why.  A system that will not evolve is spoken of as being in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.  Here are the conditions that would have to be met for that and then we'll discuss our exceptions to that.

Humans would have to have...

A huge population.  We got that down pretty cold and are working on improving it.  This is a double edged sword, though.  It stabilizes genetic drift (the random wander of evolution), but it also increases the amount mutations that can be selected for.  More on that below.

Completely random mating.  Condition not met.  93% of marriages are couples who married their own race.  Besides, by in large nerds marry nerds, jocks, jocks, etc.

People are all 100% equally as likely to both survive and reproduce.  This is blatantly false.  Just look at the country demographics.  Some countries in Africa the women have on average 6 or 7 kids while some European countries are in negative population growth.  Furthermore, if you've ever watched the movie Idiocracy you'd know that the less educated are reproducing much faster than the super intelligent.  Also, see Darwin Awards for examples of how clumsy and stupid people generously agree to take themselves out of the mating gene pool. <http://www.darwinawards.com/>

Lastly, there'd have to be no mutations in DNA transfer.  This, also, is of course not met.  Each baby comes out about 2 or 3 mutations different from her/his parents (hundreds of times more than that actually, but since there's so much "junk" DNA in us it doesn't manifest itself).  O, and 90% of those mutations came from your dad.  It should be noted, too, that this will only increase as couples trend toward getting married later and later.

Despite essentially none of those conditions being met it's still a controversial subject.  Hence, why it's nice to be able to put forth some examples of evolution from the recent past to show that, yes, it really is happening.  Lactose digestion is around 8,000 years old and yet in certain countries like Denmark and Holland the percent of people that have it almost reaches 100%.  Based on gene studies, blue eyes are less than 10,000 years old.  That being the case, it should be ridiculously rare unless it had some edge over other colors.  You can look at the skulls of earlier humans and see that our skulls just aren't the same.  Within the last 40,000 years they've gotten measurably smaller by several hundred ccs and higher vaulted to increase the frontal lobe size.  Interesting to note that we exhibit much of the same changes that domesticated animals, like dogs and sheep, skulls undergo - smoother, taller, more spherical skulls.

Next, as a review there are two ways in which true evolution occurs.  One is that a survival advantage is paired with a particular mutation - longer neck makes some giraffes get more food, a thicker beak makes cracking more nuts possible to eat, a variant color moth conceals itself better etc., etc. That's known as natural selection, of course.  But, there's another equally important factor that must be considered in these discussion and that's having a differential reproductive advantage - some people have more babies than others.  This latter factor is by necessity going to have to be the focus of our discussion since modern medicine has such an effect on the former.

First, let's consider natural selection and genetic drift.  For millennia humans would die if they had bad enough vision to not be able to hunt/flee predators.  That's no longer the case.  For just as long humans likewise been offed if they had couldn't fight off a pathogen or deal with a genetic disease.  That's not true anymore.  So, what will the net effect be in our evolution?  Well, it means that genetic drift will take over where natural selection dropped off.  Basically, the mutations will continue to accumulate in parts of our genome that aren't being selected against.  Fined tuned systems like sight, hearing, metabolism, immune system, etc. will start to break down.  We can already see this in play with our sense of smell.  The majority of our smell genes (51%) are mutations that have turned off our ability to smell many, many different scents that were formerly important in our ancestors.  This can account for why some people like some foods and it makes others want to hurl - different mutations.  Another that's made it through the cracks is our ability to synthesize Vitamin C.  Prior to primates our ancestors used to be able to make this vitamin on our own.  It's kind of a handy thing to be able to do, but since our diet often included items that were high in Vitamin C, like fruit, we didn't have to.  Use it or lose it is the name of the game.

We've come to my favorite topic now - sexual selection.  What attributes are being selected for by sexual selection?  Meaning, why do some people have more babies than others?  Well, it might be easiest to contrast this with what used to be the case.

Formerly intelligence was selected for.  Males that were brighter gained more status thereby gaining more mates.  Monogamy is killing this and the career over family focused intelligencia is reversing it.  

It should be noted, however, that this trend isn't unidirectional.  Meaning, it isn't just that smart people are having less babies.  Severely mentally handicapped people are having less, too, (causing stabilizing selection) and thus enters rape into the discussion.  For time and memorial rape has been a sadly significant reproductive strategy for humans.  Couldn't get a mate?  Make one.  Rape selects for completely, completely different characteristics--aggression, victimization, dominance, anti-social behavior and even possibly retarded intelligence.  Nowadays those that are aggressive and antisocial won't reproduce if they can't get a stable long term relationship.  That's big.  Don't underestimate the evolutionary power of that.  I see a glimmer of hope in this.  Nicer, gentler, more social people can reproduce more.  Yay!

What else might be selected for?  Social skills like fluency, empathy, attachment, risk taking behavior that results in teen pregnancy, decreased standards and pickiness, more attractive features, resistance to getting fat (for health and reproductive reasons) from a high carb diet (we've only eaten grain for less than 10k years), horniness and I've read that women that are shorter and stockier are more fertile than the gracile, twiggy models of the run way.

In summary, it isn't possible to summarize because it's possible everything I just said is either wrong or irrelevant because of future genetic modification. haha!  That's not entirely true, actually.  I think the take away summary is that while humans may get both dummer and less healthy we may also become nicer, more pro-social, more empathic beings that may, because intelligence is always communal and synergistic, end up, as a systemic whole, become more intelligent.  But, who knows?  600 million years ago before chordates you never could have predicted the dinosaurs.  65 million years ago when the dinosaurs died out you never could have predicted humans.  We struggle to predict the weekend's weather, 50 million years from now is impossible to predict...but so fun to think about!!!

The Role of Human Hair in Evolution

• Why is a bearded lady so strange that it warrants being in a circus freak show?  Those with one more x chromosome don't get the same attention.
• Why when apparently about half of all men go bald are we so ready to spend thousands of dollars on creams, plugs, inplants, toupees, wigs, etc.?
• Why are we so largely hairless as a species (as opposed to our current day relatives and conceivably our ancestors)?
• Why do we have hair on our scalp that doesn't stop growing?  Why is that hair so distinctly segregated from the rest of our face?
• Why do we have little tufts of hair in strategic spots on our post-pubescent bodies?
• Why is there such variance of hair colors, textures and straightness in different ethnic groups?

To get to the 'why' we'll have to first ask 'how.'  How could they have evolved?

As a review, we'll need to look at this through the lenses of natural selection (it made our ancestors survival advantages) and sexual selection (it gave them reproduction advantages).  With that in mind, let's list out some different hair attributes and consider their potential origins.

Baldness--Allow me to give separate but related example.  Nightingale birds can have as many as one thousand distinct sings.  It's the variety that makes it sexy to the females.  One possible reason that may have come about is that it takes a long time, often years, for a Nightingale to learn that many songs, so a large repertoire of songs means the bird is old.   Old equals sexy.  Why?  Essentially an older bird by displaying age is also displaying how well his genes have sustained him up to that point.  Health+age=good genes.  Isn't it possible that baldness could have evolved as a similar indicator of age/genetic virility?  Just maybe.  Also, as the link below points out, the farther back the hairline the more masculine the appearance of the face.  Could it have been a selection for men that with age become have the appearance of increased masculinity?  Perhaps you've heard that men that go bald have higher testosterone levels.  Baldness could have been used as an indicator to females of men in their status and resource prime that have an accompanyingly high level of testosterone.  
Also, as a runner I know that I sweat the most profusely from my forehead.  Why would I do that?  Because without doing any tests I'd very readily care to bet that it's the site that I shed the most heat from.  Could it be that baldness was a means to shed heat and increase endurance in men for hunting and fighting?  I don't think that's so far fetched.

Forehead Hairline--check out <http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/faceperception2/index_6f.shtml#> for a very interesting test that points out that a low hair line is feminine and a high hairline is masculine.  Could this explain the existence of bangs?  

Pubic hair--puerile joke from my middle school days: what do you get when you turn 3 blonds upside down?  Three brunets.

I might suppose there are really three things we have to explain here: the location of the hair, the color of the hair (that's what the joke was referring to if you didn't get it) and the curl of the hair.  Location--could be related to moisture aeration and creating space between skin on skin contact, which would could help prevent fungi and other nasties from growing.  It also, clearly, shows reproductive maturity (duh) and could be a through back to the preclothing days.  It also interesting to consider how this might be related to the phenomena of the "little black dresses."  Could it be that the dark color similar to body hair triggers an unconcious romantic response?  Who knows.  Or, could pubic hair have evolved to conceal STDs that might have otherwise prevent copulation?

Glabrous Skin--it's probably just a subjective preference that's been reinforced, but it could also have to do with a preference for youthfulness (or just the appearance of youthfulness), which can be concomitant with less genetic mutations.

Facial Hair--I don't have to tell you of its connection with testosterone levels, which can be paired with higher levels of sperm and muscularity, which can be an aid for strength and therefore defense and hunting.  It could also be something similar to the commonly known 'silverback' status.  Not only indicating a certain hormonal balance (and the beneficial phenotypes therein), but also a maturity as well and concomitantly the experience and stability to provide.    Also, a full beard could be conceived to act has a "false jaw."  The shape and jaw size can actually be used to sex a skull and the larger the jaw the more likely it is to be male and to be perceived as masculine.  Increasing the apparent size of the jaw by covering with the prosthesis of a beard can increase the perceived size and therefore masculinity of the face.

Eye Brows--interesting to think that these evolved to emote.  The ones that had more expressive faces got the date.  It also may be to direct sweat away from the eyes as it descends.  It makes sense that only we have eyebrows since we're natures greatest sweaters.

Gray Hair--is gray hair just a break down of pigment production or could it actually be a sign of age.  In going out on a limb here, but there are times when age can be prefered.  Why?  Well, if an organism has lived to a ripe old age this can be an indication of superior genes.  It isn't easy to survive in the wild for long.  If you've done it, then you must have some pretty good genes.  This can be seen in Nightinggale birds that accumulate songs over time have a corresponding amount of appeal increase.  The balance that sexual selection must strike is the attraction of youth and its lack of mutations which can accumulate over time and the attration of age (think Sean Connery, George Clooney, Harrison Ford) to show superior fitness over time. 

Long Hair-- Did you know that hair keeps growing indefinitely and fur stops at a certain length?  So, why are we the only primate that has hair and in only one spot on their body?  ya, it protects from the sun, but I think it is funner to think about how it could have been used as sort of a sanity test.  In the book The Mating Mind Miller talks about how that the human mind can be analgous to a peacocks tail.  It's a costly, difficult to fake, complex structre that demonstrates a number of things--purity of genes (since, for example, half our genome is brain genes--if a huge chunk is good, mostly likely the rest is, too) and ability to overcome what is known as the 'handicap principle,' which means they can sacrifice resources and still remain healthy (the human brain can burn 6-7k calories a day during intense thought, such as chess grandmasters).  It'd work like this: sanity means a good brain, which means good genes and those that are able to keep their hair either long and unknotted or short and well trimmed it would show a proclivity to better brain and therefore better genes and groups that had longer hair on the top of their head had a superior means to other groups for distinguishing quality from poor genes.   It very easily could have turned into a status symbol for healthiness, cleanliness, sanity,  and culture saviness.

Nappy Hair--I’ve heard that it offers lice protection.  They aren’t able to easily move through the dense mass of curcly hair.

Body Hair--I wonder if a certain amount of body hair might actually catch enough sweat to aid cooling.  Meaning, without any body hair our sweat might simply poor off our body without having the evaporative cooling effect.  Hairs catching the sweat a little might cause more evaporation which might cause more cooling.