In other words, do we find certain people attractive more because of social and cultural influences, or genetic/evolutionary reasons? I’ve heard there are certain constants across all cultures, but there seems to be a wide range of individual variation. For instance, I personally do not find Marilyn Monroe, Christina Hendricks, or Anna Nicole Smith to be that attractive. Audrey Hepburn, Michelle Waterson, and Natalie Portman, on the other hand…
So why might someone end up preferring certain builds, facial structures, hair colors, and skin tones over another when seeking sexual partners? Learned preferences, attraction to markers of genes and traits that would complement yours, or a mixture?
It’s always a mixture. Always. Cite: it’s always so!
Nature: lots of evolutionary psych here, much of it may be bullshit. Stuff like waist-to-hip ratio. Certain skin tones may indicate health or reproductive ability.
Nurture: some things are not universals. There is one culture (in Cameroon I want to say) who prefer larger women as a whole. Passing that up to nature, weight is indicative of the ability to get nutrients/resources. Some of skin tone, height, weight, hair color can be culturally mediated but also individual differences abound.
For that matter, it varies a lot over time within the same culture. For exsamplw, the women in Rubens’ paintings would be considered large (even ‘fat’) by many men now, but they were the height of upper class ‘sexy’ at the time.
It’s a little bit like asking how much of the surface area of a swimming pool is due to its width and how much to its length. We simply don’t get to see either without some influence of the other (especially since culture influences us as the non-impartial viewer of any data that we interpret).
The standard answer is - what do men and women look for?
Women look for a guy that can provide; men look for good breeding stock.
So women are looking ofr a guy with a big wallet (nowadays) and men are looking for young and healthy-looking with the characteristics that say able to have lots of babies, able to feed them, for years to come. Weak and helpless and “needing manly protection” are also appealing traits to many men, suggesting an explanation why depression and other such psychological problems are more prevalent in women. Of course, we’re not that shallow here. No. Not at all. Honest.
I remember some article, I think it was Popular Psychology from the 80’s back when it was slightly serious. Discussing things like fetishes and homosexuality, etc. the one psychologist said there is something you could call a “sex map” in our brain. Nobody is sure what it is that sets it, whether it’s inherent or triggered by experiences, but at a relatively early age exactly what attracts a person, what will turn them on, etc. is determined.
Certainly there are physical cues that indicate “healthy”. Fat in men used to be associated with rich. There’s the famous hip-to-waist ratio which has survived quite a few studies, suggesting that at least below Reuben-sized, that is a major determinant of attractiveness of women. Another study I recall suggested that we are a lot more sensitive to asymettry than we realize - imbalanced features, especially in the face, are subconsciously noted. Imbalance usually indicate sickness during development and growth, which is another indicator of a less healthy individual.
But this is largely cultural because virtually every place in the world has men who provide and women who care for children. We’ve never had a real-world experiment in which men were banned from the workplace and required to stay at home with the kids.
I think is is due to several factors,not just one.We all have our own preferences,I personally do not find Natalie Portman attractive,but do find Audrey Hepburn.So there you go,we all have our own tastes.I think Monroe,Hendricks,and Smith were somewhat attractive,more so than Portman.
But is that cultural or evolutionary? Women didn’t hunt (originally, chasing down prey through endurance running) because for a year or two after birth and several months before, they were not particularly suited for it. Plus, they were better equipped to feed the kid than hubby or even grandma, in the days before Gerbers. If you consider that through most of their post-puberty life they were likely tied up for much of the time with serial child-rearing, odds are hunting was something left to the guys. Besides, gathering roots and berries and making loincloths and weaving baskets and dozens of other survival tasks could just as easily be done at a fixed camp while watching Junior and Juniorette.
The difference is that women invest a lot of effort to produce one child, while with men it’s possible to “fire an forget”. Thus men are looking for indicators that the time spent producing a child will ahve good results. Women are looking for (a) indicators of good genes and (b) ability to provide. There are some studies that show they are willing to have both, if they can persuade (b) it’s his child while producing one with (a).
Look at what women want today and you have a better chance of answering this question. As opposed to imagining how things were eons ago when we were barely walking upright.
Now that women (in the US) have almost the same access to financial independence that men do, what they demand is a mate has changed. Rich guys still have an advantage over poor ones, no doubt. But for a man to be considered a “good catch” it’s no longer enough that he have a steady 9 to 5 and a working car. His personality, his interests, and his looks also significantly count towards his desirability, in addition to things that probably were a lot less important to women back when we were living in caves.
But it’s always been that way. I’m sure there was a cave-woman who chose a cave-man even though he didn’t have a cave-job and always brought home less cave-mammoth steaks than his cave-neighbor, who had much better cave-attributes on cave-[del]paper[/del]writing skin.
The idea is that it is a pressure to choose the rich/successful one, but that many women aren’t interested in those attributes does not necessarily mean that the preference for men with power/status is gone. Just that it’s more likely to be a factor in women’s interests than men’s.
Polynesians tend to prefer their women on the ample side, with Samoa being the extreme example.
I remember being invited to “tea” by a Rarotongan family (which turned out to be what I’d call dinner). They had teenage son and daughter. The daughter looked healthy, but in today’s high schools she’d be peer-pressured to lose 20 lbs. Her brother teased her by calling her skinny, and she did NOT like it!
The Polynesian preference might be due to surviving long ocean canoe voyages. I suspect that the fuss about thin women didn’t happen until most people didn’t have to worry about hunger.
Again, I think according to Mr. Pinker and others, women go for men with high status, men go for women that … um that … move.
Male reproductive success is maximized by mating with the maximum number of partners. Female reproductive success is maximized by bonding with the best provider, and cheating with higher status males.
I don’t think female’s attraction to power is completely gone, but the fact that it’s lessened in importance as women have acquired more rights and freedoms is evidence that culture–not biology–has a lot to do with what we see in this area.
Right now, the balance of power still tilts towards men. Men are more likely to be politicians, be CEOs, star in movies, make millions of dollars as pro athletes, etc. But if we were in a society where those in power and in the spot light looked more like that population as whole, I think women’s preferences would be less power and status oriented.
Men and women are increasingly looking for the same qualities in a mate (aside from physical ones, of course). Just like women are less likely to define a “good catch” by how well he’s able to bring home the bacon, a man is less likely to define a quality mate by her youth, beauty, and domestic skills. The reason we see this convergence is because of culture.
