I was watching a special last night on TLC called The Science of Beauty, narrated by the scientifically beautiful Sharon Stone
Anyhoo, the suggestion was put forth by one Mr. Ron Harris, owner of ron’s angels, that by choosing the most beautiful physical characteristics for our children (through egg and sperm donation and dna manipulation or whatever) that we’re actually helping evolution along by perpetuating the most beautiful of the species.
First of all, is ron’s angels for real or not? I thought it was revealed to be a big joke last year? And yet here he was being portrayed as some sort of reproduction/evolution expert on a cable show.
Second of all, is the process of natural selection dependent on beauty? I was under the impression that we pick ideal mates based on strength, intelligence and fertility and that sometimes, surface physical beauty happens to go along with that.
And if the forwarding of our species is completely dependent on surface beauty, why are so many beautiful, physically attractive people stereotyped as stupid, airheaded and generally a detriment to the species (evolutionarily), rather than the saviors of our population?
Finally, isn’t plastic surgery going to have a small yet crazy effect on the evolution of humans, by portraying us as something we’re not?
My best understanding is that Ron’s Angels was a hoax.
And the OP and SexyWriter are correct, there’s no one to one correlation between adaptive traits and “beautiful” traits.
In fact, sometimes “beauty” traits are maladaptive: the peacock’s plumage, so attractive to a randy young peahen on the make, are a hindrance to his going about his peacockly business.
For that matter, women tend to prefer taller men, when it’s easily demonstrated that a taller human race would be less healthy and shorter-lived.
But anyway, evolution is pretty much over for humans, at least as a response to natural selection. We no longer adapt to our environment; we adapt it to us. I predict that within a few generations, everyone will be as beautiful as Laura Petrie or Maggie Cheung, because they can. But within a generation or two after that, plain or asymmetrical-looking people will be more prized, because they’ll be so rare.
Pretty people get sick less and because they are generally the same on the left side as on the right it shows they are less likely to mutate your genes when you pass them on.
Think about it, millions of years of disease has meant that we put a high premium on survival.
Humans stopped evolving - as if !
Evolution works by the frequency of certain genes ’ think traits ’ in the population of the species.
Humans who are able to attract a mate and raise children breed, the rest die out.
The only way we could stop evolving is if everyone had the same number of kids, and they do not.
Sexywriter thinks this is a joke. I, for one, can’t believe it is because jokes have to at least make sense before I would consider them funny. What does having a similar left and right side have to do with how much you get sick? What does having a similar left and right side have to do with the chances of your genes mutating? What does your genes mutating have to do with how often you get sick? Look folks, an illogical trifecta!
I’m thinking most every species on the planet puts a high premium on survival. Dying tends to ruin one’s day. But I think I’m failing to grasp your point, once again.
It’s such a simple sentence, and yet…I’m lost. What? Huh? what’s a think trait?
Gosh I’m glad this is the last thing. I’m really wearing a hole through my head with all the scratching I’m doing. Are you saying that if everyone had 2 kids there would be no more evolution? I’m extremely curious as to what dart board you were throwing to to get that conclusion.
I couldn’t agree more. I have a couple comments to add though.
If we started going for a more “beautiful human race”, wouldn’t we humans adapt, and start to only accept the absolutely PERFECT people as the beautiful ones? I think that the more someone gets used to something, the more we learn to accept it. So, eventually we would be back to our regular old “ugly” selfs, but million of $$$ down the drain to get no where. hmmmm…
This is not correct, but you’re on the right track.
Bilateral symmetry (being generally the same on the left side as on the right) is not an indicator that your genes will not mutate, it’s an indicator that your genes have not already mutated. Many, many harmful mutations are expressed as a lack of bilateral symmetry. In the cold, cutthroat world of reproductive success, choosing a mate who is bilaterally symmetric greatly improves your chances that your offspring will not be carrying any harmful mutations than if you choose a mate who is not bilaterally symmetric. Thus, those humans whose inherited psychology favored bilaterally-symmetric mates had better reproductive success than those humans whose inherited psychology did not favor bilaterally-symmetric mates, leaving us with the “bilaterally symmetric = beautiful” conundrum we have today.
Dude - When I read your post, I had to laugh out loud. WTF was that? Some attempt at linguistic absurdism? Seriously, are you just screwing with us? I must say that is the most enigmatic post I have ever read on this board. It is so beautifully syntactically sensical yet devoid of meaning. You could be a politician. Please provide us with a key.
SW - as for wide hips being socially unattractive. I really don’t know. I like wide hips and a healthy figure. Most men I know seem to like that and have girlfriends that fit the profile. I know society and media pushes the anorexic look, but I don’t know too many guys who go for it. Sure, some do, but I’d still wager that the average man in the world, not just the USA, would prefer a girl with a little meat and nice hips over a toothpick. I could be wrong, but my WAG is that biologically men should prefer wider hips, but social conditioning (aka hardcore media brainwashing) will occassionally override this.
Dammit. So what you are saying is that I should dump my girlfriend since she will mutate my genes? Damn, I always told her to part her hair straight down the middle, now it is going to lead to mutating genes. This bites!
OK. So dinosaurs were genetically imperfect. So what does disease have anything to do about evolution? If I was right in thinking, and I pretty much am, then we should be immune to just about every disease out there since we have been surviving such for “millions” of years.
Wait a minute, then this must mean that the cast of Survivor is the peak of human evolution! Alright! Now all we have to do is breed w/ all of them and we can breed a perfect race of humans.
Umm…no comment.
I would like to respond back to this quote, but I honestly do not want to go through pounding my head with a brick to be able to fully grasp it.
We are humans not pandas. We are not dying out for a while.
The Discovery Channel (I think it was?) recently ran a series on human sexuality. I saw an episode which dealt with this question of what really attracts us to our mates.
One of the factors they suggested was the hip-to-waist ratio in females (i.e. the circumference of the hip compared to the circumference of the waist.) They (or someone whose work they referenced) had looked at number of different cultures and the type of women that men tended to find most attractive, as well as specific cultures and the “trendy” examples of attractiveness. While these various women might look very different at first glance, they all proved to have a very similar hip-to-waist ratio. As examples, they compared the winners of the Miss America Pageant. While fashion has dictated that the winners have become increasingly slender over the years, their hip-to-waist ratios have remained constant. Another example was Marilyn Monroe and Kate Moss-very different body types; equivalent hip-to-waist ratios.
There seems, they theorized, to be in this ratio an indication of fertility or ease of birthing that men seem to be able to detect subconsciously. I apologize for the lack of cites, and I don’t know if this person(s) work has been duplicated, but it is an interesting theory.
Yep. A woman with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 supposedly has a much better chance of delivering a viable newborn (and not being injured in the process herself) than a woman with only a slightly higher waist-to-hip ratio of 0.8.
This makes sense. And I in no way meant to insinuate that “All men like X!!!” I guess I was just thinking of the sort of socialized fashion trends that say that one week curvy is in and the next week waif is. It was silly of me to make a comparison between those socialized preferences (when and if they exist) and any evolutionary/biological reasons for them.
I was really only thinking out loud. Aside from the “wider hips” issue, I was wondering if there were OTHER things that tend to be standards of beauty that make no sense with regard to biological hardiness.
(1) Evolution has no preferred direction. Therefore, you cannot help it along.
(2) Beauty does not necessarily give a survival/reproductive advantage (which is the key of evolution). But beauty may lead to more reproductive opportunities. And humans probably associate healthy traits (which does have a survival/reproductive advantage) with beauty.
