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Handsome men evolved thanks to picky females
New Scientist ^
| 5/12/04
| Andy Coghlan
Posted on 05/12/2004 4:08:11 PM PDT by LibWhacker
click here to read article
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To: Snerfling
How many heinous women are lezzies?
![](http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1999/yearinreview/top.stories/01/link.hillary.clinton.jpg)
How many times have you seen a ugly chick and thought that's she's too unattractive to breed?
![](http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2001/breaking-news-reporting/works/jreno0423.jpg)
I believe I answered your questions.
Do I get an 'A'?
:-)
41
posted on
05/12/2004 4:37:39 PM PDT
by
Condor51
("Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments." -- Frederick the Great)
To: tacticalogic
Okay, how about the beard? Most men, left to their own devices in the wild, would be well-bearded. Yet the women usually insist the beard should be gone down to raw and often bleeding skin. If the women's preference meant anything, seems like the beard would have evolved to extinction.
42
posted on
05/12/2004 4:38:06 PM PDT
by
RightWhale
(Destroy the dark; restore the light)
To: Betis70
"'do' pretty much anything that moves."
"Do" tell...
To: RightWhale
Okay, how about the beard? Most men, left to their own devices in the wild, would be well-bearded. Yet the women usually insist the beard should be gone down to raw and often bleeding skin. If the women's preference meant anything, seems like the beard would have evolved to extinction.I don't know. Is that a universal sentiment among women, or a social affectation? Maybe the right genetic combination that gets you out of shaving without screwing up royally somewhere else just hasn't come along yet.
44
posted on
05/12/2004 4:42:08 PM PDT
by
tacticalogic
(Controlled application of force is the sincerest form of communication.)
To: Condor51
And as these beasts evolved into handsome men, they became doctors and "large breasts" evolved.
45
posted on
05/12/2004 4:42:31 PM PDT
by
Sacajaweau
(God Bless Our Troops!!)
To: LibWhacker
Well, one aspect that's ignored is that those who are deemed most attractive are also those who are the most physically "average" - meaning they have features not too big, not too small, not to wide, not to thin, not too asymmetrical, etc. etc.
As a general rule, to say that women had the luxury to select out "attractive" men is merely to say that women selected men whose features were the least uneven looking, and therefore the most 'healthy' looking (i.e., average = healthy = attractive).
46
posted on
05/12/2004 4:43:11 PM PDT
by
AntiGuv
(When the countdown hits zero - something's gonna happen..)
To: PatrickHenry
Ping!!
47
posted on
05/12/2004 4:43:36 PM PDT
by
AntiGuv
(When the countdown hits zero - something's gonna happen..)
To: tacticalogic
I think he's saying there's got to be more to it than just the cosmetics. Particular physical features need to have some intrinsic property generally associated with them that is actually a benefit to survival. Well, let's put it this way. It probably wouldn't have made its way into womens' body-chemistry/psychological makeup to value men who are "good-looking" (whatever that means) if it hadn't been true, somewhere along the line, that women who had this value ended up more likely to pass along their genes, than women who didn't have this value.
Why would women who valued "good looks" have been, at some point, more likely to pass along their genes? Let's remember that in this discussion "good looks" is taken to be synonymous with "not mean-looking" and the opposite of "having long teeth and being able/willing to fight off rivals". So that gives us some guesses:
-maybe those who didn't prefer the "non-aggressive" mates, but rather were equally happy with the "aggressive" ones, got murdered by their (generally more aggressive) mates more often in violent rages, accidental bitings, etc, and thus had less of a chance to reproduce.
-similarly maybe the "aggressive mate" women had their offspring murdered more often..
-maybe those who stuck with the "aggressive" ones, ended up in large harems (since their mate was fighting lots of rivals and taking their mates..), which meant having a mate less likely to pay attention to their offspring in particular, leading to a higher infant/child mortality rate among such women
-meanwhile those who selected "less aggressive" ("good-looking") mates, were with guys who were less able to obtain and defend large harems through fighting... thus had more attention paid to them and their offspring... which as a result made it into adulthood at a higher rate.
So the point is there could indeed be some evolutionary advantages to having, say, brain-chemistry which "prefers good-looking men" as "good-looking" is defined here. And, the original appearance of that brain chemistry need not have some "evolutionary reason" per se, but could have just been a random thing. Like, in my guess #3, the females who first liked non-aggressive mates wouldn't have "known" that This guy will make a better father. She would have just been delighted by the guy's looks by internal factors.
At least that's how I understand evolution-type-stuff.
To: johnfrink
See my post #46.
49
posted on
05/12/2004 4:44:06 PM PDT
by
AntiGuv
(When the countdown hits zero - something's gonna happen..)
To: tacticalogic
An old boyfriend told me after Halloween had passed:
"I threw it over my shoulder and went as a gas pump".
50
posted on
05/12/2004 4:48:26 PM PDT
by
Sacajaweau
(God Bless Our Troops!!)
To: LibWhacker
Let me guess. She believes that God created Adam and Eve.
51
posted on
05/12/2004 4:48:31 PM PDT
by
TheSpottedOwl
(Torrance Ca....land of the flying monkeys)
To: LibWhacker
She says that changes were probably driven by choosy females who began to demand handsomeness, not brute force. Women such as my wife got both.
To: LibWhacker
I guess the irony that the real pretty boys are gay.
To: Dr. Frank fan
I was going at it from the standpoint of "good looking" being a purely subjective determination. The guys that got particular genetic codes that resulted in increased survival ability got, along with them certain physical characteristics, and those physical characteristics then became the "good looking" ones.
54
posted on
05/12/2004 4:50:31 PM PDT
by
tacticalogic
(Controlled application of force is the sincerest form of communication.)
To: Socratic
25 - You are right: "Given the journalist's perspective on evolution, wouldn't it be more likely that the brutish, raping males "chose" females with finer, more delicate features which translated into a more feminine beauty being passed down to males and females alike? Aren't we told that all sex is basically rape?"
This is just more feminist drivel written up by a metro-sexual male. Note (quote from article):
""Our research suggests that in early humans, a face that was attractive as opposed to aggressive conferred an advantage," says Eleanor Weston at the Research Institute Senckenberg in Frankfurt, a member of the team.
She says that changes were probably driven by choosy females who began to demand handsomeness, not brute force. "
55
posted on
05/12/2004 4:50:38 PM PDT
by
XBob
To: LibWhacker
Today's handsome hunks may owe their good looks to a sexual power shift towards the fair sex during primate evolution. That's just plain stupid.
56
posted on
05/12/2004 4:54:16 PM PDT
by
k2blader
(Nick Berg's murder is the equivalent of abortion.)
To: unix
Still trying to figure out your tag line... $710.96 was the price Frederick Douglass had to pay to ensure his freedom due to the fugitive slave laws. Douglass is his psudoname. His given name was Frederick Bailey. Anyway, after speaking in England in the abolitionist cause, he decided to come clean about who he really was. But he feared returning to the U.S. due to those laws.
Well, Douglass had contributors from England who gave him the money to purchase his freedom. $710.96 was given to Hugh Auld, and Auld signed the papers in 1846 when Douglass was 28.
Thus, my tag: $710.96... The price of freedom.
![](http://mars.walagata.com/w/mrswing/__hr_rdb3.jpg)
57
posted on
05/12/2004 4:54:58 PM PDT
by
rdb3
($710.96... The price of freedom.)
To: Sacajaweau
"I threw it over my shoulder and went as a gas pump".If he did that today, he'd need a mask and a gun, too.
58
posted on
05/12/2004 4:56:40 PM PDT
by
tacticalogic
(Controlled application of force is the sincerest form of communication.)
To: Larry Lucido
No --- maybe there is one other route ---- "sensitivity" --- the Alan Alda/Phil Donahue approach. Of course that usually means democrat/liberal also, crying in public like Bill Clinton but the tears don't have to be real.
59
posted on
05/12/2004 4:56:49 PM PDT
by
FITZ
To: LibWhacker
".... the ability to attract a female mate through good looks became may have become more important in the mating stakes than the ability to fight off male rivals, suggests a new study. "
Well, duh ! Some fool paid good money for this study.
60
posted on
05/12/2004 4:59:02 PM PDT
by
Darlin'
("I will not forget this wound to my country." President George W Bush, 20 Sept 2001)
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