It’s my understanding that humans evolved a taste for beauty to help them select mates which will provide their offspring with a higher probability of survival. If this is the case, one would expect that people who others describe as ‘beautiful’ would be healthier. Have there been any studies to confirm this?
Are attractive people healthier? Are they more fertile?? Are they more intelligent??? Are attractive people’s offspring healthier???
Thanks.
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Well, I haven’t had a cold in years!
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More thoughtful response - can your question be taking this premise a little too far - no offense intended, simply curious. Yes evolution would make sexual selection for symmetrical features, shiny hair, good skeleton and musculature, etc. desireable, but it seems like that degree of selectivity is a blunt instrument. In other words, can those indicators of attractiveness lead to greater resistance to specific diseases, genetic conditions, etc?
Perhaps they could - but I suspect our preference to attractiveness is meant to get adults to child-bearing age and has limited effect on genetic or older-age conditions like many cancers, etc…
I also think our preference for attractiveness has been blown out of proportion in recent centuries as Man has tuned into our basic instincts that much more and point them at capitalism…just look at little girls of today wanting to put on make up at such an early - did little girls from centuries ago do this? Probably a lot fewer…
Beauty standards are particularly strong identifiers of age. In other words, signs of age are held against a person’s beauty. Wrinkles, gray hair, dry skin, saggy musculature, eyeglasses, coarsening of the voice, bending of the posture, slower gait. And in caucasions, the natural transition of light colored hair to darker or gray (why blondes are so popular – they look younger).
Looking “old” is held against women more than men because it is associated with fertility and menopause. For a man, his ability as a provider is more important, since age is not necessarily a barrier to his fertility.
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“the natural transition of light colored hair to darker or gray (why blondes are so popular – they look younger)”
I have personal anecdotal evidence of this (I was blonde until 20, now at 31 it’s “dishwater brown”), but is this progression universal, or if not, how common?
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Thanks
I think it’s the other way around: healthy people are more attractive.
What about those of us who have black hair from birth?
Urban Ranger beat me too it. I think that people are attracted to healthy looking people. Someone who if fit and thin is often seen as more attractive then someone who is out of shape and overweight. Someone with tan skin is seen as more attractive then someone who looks sickly and pale.
But pale skin used to be considered very attractive, as well as a mark of status. If you had creamy, plae skin, it signified that you didn’t have to work outdoors.
And, given that prolonged unprotected exposure to sunlight can cause melanoma and other nasty conditions, a pale person might be healthier than someone with a deep tan.
There is a confusion here between having untanned skin, and having unnaturally pale skin, which might indicate anemia or malnutrition. Even in the days when fashionable ladies powdered their skin white (whether Elizabethan England or Jacksonian America), you can still find in the literature of the era references to a deathly pallor being unattractive and a sign of sickness.