Women are getting more beautiful

[bananas]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6727710.ece

From The Sunday Times
July 26, 2009
Women are getting more beautiful
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

*

FOR the female half of the population, it may bring a satisfied smile. Scientists have found that evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.

The researchers have found beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern.

Over generations, the scientists argue, this has led to women becoming steadily more aesthetically pleasing, a “beauty race” that is still on. The findings have emerged from a series of studies of physical attractiveness and its links to reproductive success in humans.

In a study released last week, Markus Jokela, a researcher at the University of Helsinki, found beautiful women had up to 16% more children than their plainer counterparts. He used data gathered in America, in which 1,244 women and 997 men were followed through four decades of life. Their attractiveness was assessed from photographs taken during the study, which also collected data on the number of children they had.

<snip>

[denem]

1. No Brainer: The AbShaper, HydroxyCut, Implants and Botox have been around

since recorded history. Beautiful by what standard exactly:? Conceptions of female beauty have varied considerably over time. It's a snapshot NOT evolution. Female babies, beautiful or plain, are preferred in India and China too. NOT.

[azurnoir]

2. I wonder what Darwin would say n/t

[comtec]

3. hey! I objecto to that!

I've seen some pretty DAMN cute guys!
OK so I like the more feminine looking guys *shrugs*
I've still seen some damned cuter guys than what i've seen in pics from the 50's.

Comparing us poor men to cave man, that's just low!!

Sounds like the writer has a few issues about good looking men to me...

Also FWIW... I think women looked better before the 80's. Breasts weren't as massive, and had a much more pleasant 'swoop' to them :)

[fasttense]

4. As if beauty were some quantitative value you can measure.

This drives me crazy. All these scientists trying to imply that beauty is measurable or a constant throughout all societies and history. Beauty is purely subjective.

Have they forgotten the plump round women painted by artist in the 18 hundreds or those fat female statues from ancient Greece and Rome? Do they not know about the South American people who prefer very hairy women? Are they so stupid they don't recall the flatheads who purposely deformed their children's head to make them appear flat and beautiful? What about the shriveled deformed feet of women whose feet were bound in Japan? What about the neck rings of some African tribes that deform a woman's neck, making her more beautiful to the men? All these are considered beautiful within that society. Beauty is distorted and manipulated by every society.

To claim they can measure beauty is to claim they can measure infinity.

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

[HamdenRice]

6. Actually beauty is objectively quantifiable

It does vary by culture, but there are underlying beauty values that are universal.

For example, you mentioned that some cultures value plump women and others don't. That's true. But anthropologists have found that all cultures value the same proportions (mathematical ratio of hips, waist and bust) in women whether they are thin or plump.

All cultures prefer symmetrical facial features. All cultures prefer child-like features in women.

Taking your overall point into account -- that aesthetics of beauty vary radically across cultures -- anthropologists designed studies to find the underlying unities in beauty.

So your criticism is well taken if the study is saying that women are looking more and more alike in their beauty. A better way of putting it is that women are getting more and more desirable in accordance with certain underlying cross cultural concepts of beauty.

[redqueen]

17. "All cultures prefer child-like features in women"

IMO that is sick and disturbing.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. Footbinding was practiced in China, not Japan

Shinto was big on maintaining the integrity of the body. Traditionally, the Japanese didn't even have anything as minor as pierced ears, and tattoos were considered a mark of the criminal classes. They never practiced footbinding or any kind of genital mutilation.

[ejpoeta]

5. that explains a lot, for some reason. Figures that women are the ones that

go all out to look attractive while guys don't have to do a damned thing. uggh.

[TZ]

7. although there is some agreement that beauty=facial symmetry...

To me, this kind of research is pretty useless and superficial and subjective. I wonder if this is related to the group that says that the blond gene will be extinct in x amount of generations.

[customerserviceguy]

8. This is what happens when you give science grants to dateless geeks

Imagine if the Howard Wolowitz character from "Big Bang Theory" were to direct where the products of his engineering abilites were to go, he'd hunt down "Barbarella"!

[timeforpeace]

10. Correct! Scarce research money well spent.

[semillama]

9. ...and Leon's getting larger!

[BlooInBloo]

12. That might be my fav comedy scene in any movie.

[laconicsax]

11. This stinks of bad science and bad journalism.

"their attractiveness was assessed from photographs taken during the study,"

As we all know, it is impossible to alter one's physical appearance. :sarcasm:

"The measurements include objective assessments of physical attractiveness."

Like what, exactly? Granted there are some very general things such as symmetry and body proportion that may be cross-cultural, but every culture has had it's own standards of physical attractiveness and those standards change over time. Hell, the Maya used boards to reshape infant skulls to conform with their standard of beauty. Would a person raised in that manner be considered objectively attractive for the purposes of this study?

[Ganja Ninja]

14. Putting aside the beauty issue for a moment.

We're all part of the same gene pool regardless of sex. There isn't one gene pool for men and one gene pool for women. Any changes the women are going through are also being passed on the their offspring male and female.

[laconicsax]

15. There's that too.

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

13. I don't think 40 years and evolution should ever be used ....

.. in the same sentence.

[Salviati]

19. unless, of course, you're talking about fruit flies :)

40 years is about 7500 generations, the equivilent number of human generations would take about 230,000 years.

It's no wonder they use fruit flys for genetic research.

[redqueen]

16. Ugh

:puke:

[bananas]

20. The author of the paper speaks:

‘Women are getting more beautiful’ - Getting the story right

Having your study publicized by the media is nice. Having your study misrepresented and misinterpreted in the process is not. The media coverage of my paper on physical attractiveness and having children had a bad start and even worse follow-up. The origin of the problem: Times Online news article sexing up the finding a bit too much (I wasn’t interviewed for this article at all and heard about it only after it had been published). Then things got worse with other journalists copying & slightly modifying the Times Online piece. Naturally, things were further muddled by the If-I-were-a-movie-critic-I-would-rate-movies-without-seeing-them-and-just-by-relying-on-discussions-overheard-in-a-pub columnists, the I-haven’t-read-the-paper-but-here’s-my-take-on-it-anyway bloggers and the ever so alert This-research-is-nonsense-I-want-my-tax-money-back-even-if-the-research-was-not-funded-by-my-tax-money readers.

Here are some clarifications and corrections to the press coverage. If you feel too exhausted reading it all, just try to focus on the words printed in bold. The original article can be found here.

<snip>

On the more amusing side, the media flurry did have one funny unintended consequence. The Fox News covered the story by telling the viewers that evolution is driving women to become even more beautiful. A note to future historians: when tracing back the turning point at which conservatives begun to believe in the theory of evolution, please cite my article.

<snip>

Via http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/08/markus_jokela_speaks_women_get.php
who writes:

<snip>

The original paper is here. Jokela says that the Forbes piece was accurate. The rest of it, not so much, and he points out that the Times Online story spread virally and was the original source of the misinformation.

Since I got carried away and didn't read the paper before commenting, I apologize. I have a general rule, "beware of tales told in British newspapers" (most because of all the made up stuff they printed after 9/11), but I forgot that here. Live & learn. Jokela's response is thorough, so please check it out. Or, read his paper, which he has placed on his website.

[PVnRT]

22. The media misrepresenting a paper to boost ratings/sales?

I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.

[Vidar]

21. I'd agree, but it's hardly science.