Ok, I’m being serious here. I don’t want a fight. I just want honest answers here, based on science, not opinion. Please don’t think me a jerk for this. I think Science backs me up here. I just want to know if you all agree or realize it.
Ok the question…
Fact: Estrogen levels affect the physical appearance of a woman. Testosterone levels affect the physical appearance of a man.
Women today are encouraged to have a take charge attitude, to take charge of their own lives and to never give control of their lives to anyone, even their husband. Attitude can affect hormone levels and it can encourage certain diets. The usage of supplements also affect hormone levels and women with an active lifestyle might take different supplements to support that lifestyle. Also Women are now doing more things that are associated with higher testosterone levels, whereby in the past (50 years ago or so) they were less active in these high testosterone activities.
On the flip side, men are often taking a more passive role. Again, since attitude can affect hormone levels as well as diet and exercise, one has to wonder if men’s levels of testosterone are dropping.
First, do you think that hormone levels are beginning to shift? Second, if they are changing, do you think that the physical appearance of women and men are going to change to be more homogenous? (Fewer extremely feminine looking women and fewer extremely masculine looking men?)
And finally, are women who pursue men going to be more successful at mating than women who want to be pursued? Women who take charge are generally going to have higher levels of testosterone and their appearance will naturally be affected. So if the gene pool shifts over to more dominant women, will there be a change in the appearance of women (and men) in the future?
My undergrad and grad school work is in the physiology of sexual differentiation and I have never heard of any evidence of that. Your basic facts are right. Sex hormones are the things that most directly determine whether we look like, and more indirectly, act like males or females. However, most of that differentiation in humans occurs in utero and isn’t nearly as powerful after birth let alone adulthood. Furthermore, the idea of a completely feminine and subservient female is a transient phenomenon in history. The exceptions are more common than general consciousness suggests. Idol housewives were a fad for a while but pioneer women and their hearty farmer forbearers lasted much longer than that.
I am not saying your question is impossible. I am saying that the forces at work are much more robust than suggested.
Actually, I think this kind of goes along with what I’m talking about. The question is what is causing the decreased levels of testosterone in men? Is it attitude? Lifestyle? Diet? Supplements? Environmental impact? The change in our gene pool? Or a combination of any of them? Maybe attitude affected the gene pool. Possibly Lifestyle affected diet. Or maybe the environment affected the health of the men and they adjusted their supplements. Any number of factors could be contributing, but I really do believe that attitude (caused by the change in gender roles) is one of those factors.
The gene pool simply isn’t going to change that fast. You are only talking about a few generations here and you know some people that were alive before any recent changes took place. Genetics doesn’t work that quickly on such a large scale. Assuming the article is correct, less manual labor among males would be a more likely idea but, again, male and female traits tend to get set in the womb.
Does the level of testosterone/estrogen in the mother affect the level of hormone in the fetus in the womb? I would think yes. So if a mother’s level of estrogen and testosterone has changed and it has not affected her own physical appearance much, it might still affect the physical appearance of her fetus. And according to you all, that change WOULD be permanent.
Right right. It’s not going to affect the physical appearance of these men, but many of the factors I listed could certainly affect the levels of testosterone in the men.
And anyway, the question remains… eventually, if the change in gender roles becomes permanent will we change physically. It might be a few hundred years, but I would think that the change in gender roles would affect the physical appearance of humanity.
Only if women want to preferentially mate with Pats and the evidence is pretty overwhelming that most heterosexual women prefer fairly masculinized men. I think you’re making a quasi Lamarckian argument that’s going to be difficult to sustain.
Possibly. Maybe the world won’t be as Pat-like as I fear, but maybe it will be more pat-like than it is now. We already ARE more pat-like than we were 50 years ago.
I do also note that a lot of my girly friends are more attracted to men that don’t threaten them intellectually, unlike what natural selection would dictate. These women actually prefer being with dumb men because it gives them some appearance of control over the men. If that trend continues over a few hundred years the intellectual level of humanity is very likely to decrease.
All of your points have a basis in fact and you could find isolated evidence in support of each of them if we tried hard enough. Hormone levels in gestating females probably do affect the development of their offspring according to lots of lab literature. However, this question does not have a factual answer because nobody really knows when it comes to humans. The question is simply too complicated and no reputable scientist would be willing to stake their reputation on it.
There is good evidence that you could make gay human babies at will for example if you wanted to badly enough. It is easy enough to do in rats and I have done some of it myself but almost nobody makes a move to try that on humans so no one can say what will happen. The sexual differentiation hormone cycles are well understood in lab animals and somewhat well in humans but we can’t do those direct experiments in humans so it leaves the question unanswered and will be for the forseeable future. All you can do is cobble enough relevant data together and extrapolate to your questions but that still is not definitive.
Boy I sure would. If we are headed towards a world full of pats, I wouldn’t mind being the one to warn the world about it. Too bad I’m not a scientist.
You keep focusing on men being more sedentary (ie fatter and less fit) = more feminized. This is not genetically determinative in any sense as there are plenty of extremely masculine (behaviorally and attitudinally) fat men.
I am? I don’t mean to give that. You understand that Pat is a Saturday Night Live reference, right?
I mean that men are more passive emotionally than they once were. We are more likely to “give in” to the women in our lives, stand our ground less, and put our foot down very rarely. That’s what I mean by passive. Men are following more and leading less than they were 50 years ago. Women are following less and leading more than they were 50 years ago.
You’re identifying almost wholly cultural behaviors due to the changing nature of work in modernity over the past 200 years. Your ideation of women as physically and socially more passive and men as historically more aggressive is (to put it bluntly) a sociological and historical fantasy.
Men and women have different work roles in industrial and technological societies but these roles have conformed to women as much as women have conformed to them. Women are not passive in any way shape or form not have they ever been. Life is hard and women are just as hard as life requires them to be.
Other way around: Natural selection doesn’t dictate peoples’ choices of mates; peoples’ choices of mates dictate natural selection. It’s not like there’s some Voice from the Sky saying “People should be smarter, so mate with the smartest folks you can find”. If dumb men (or at least, men who appear dumb to their wives) have more reproductive success, then being (or appearing) dumb is evolutionarily advantageous.
I would suggest that you look at who’s actually reproducing a lot. That’s the probable future of humanity and the idea that women can and should do everything that men do is not high on their list of values.
This of course assumes no new technologies. I think there’s a pretty good chance that in not too many years, people will be able to cheaply and safely decide what they want to look like. If women can look however they like, I imagine that most will choose to be ultrafeminine - thin, beautiful, large breasts, etc. Not sure about men, but I doubt many would choose to look more feminine. Probably a lot would choose to be tall, fit and muscular.
I have no evidence to back up this statement other than my own research, but I’ve noticed a tend in physical appearance over the last 100 ears or so, or at least from the advent of photography. Both men and women have become more gracile, and symmetrical in terms of features. Men have also seemed to swing a little prettier in the last 50 years or so. Smaller chins, noses, and larger eyes. Further, I’ve noticed that we seem to be staying younger looking longer. I can’t attribute this trend to any one thing, but if you examine a lot of photographs you’ll notice the trend if you view a lot of people of the same physical ages over time. Of course you have to allow for hairstyles and clothing styles creating a severe look, and farther back you have to account for luxurious facial hair on men. Still I think that the trend is showing a natural progression of normal selection interacting with our ever increasing health standards and lack of manual labor.
