Darwin Doesn't Like Ugly Women?
by MikeGeneFrom here:
HOLLYWOOD'S most beautiful couple, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, are in the grip of evolutionary forces that made it almost inevitable that their child would be a girl.
According to research, attractive parents are 26% more likely to have a daughter than a son as their first child. It is an inexorable process that has resulted in women becoming increasingly more attractive than men.
This is because of differing "evolutionary strategies" that each sex has adopted to survive, claim researchers at the London School of Economics.
While reproductive success for males depends largely on the status of the father (as sons from higher-status families inherit their position and are in turn able to protect and invest in their offspring), daughters' reproductive successes mostly depend on their youth and attractiveness. "We have shown two things," said Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, who led the research. "Beautiful parents have more daughters than ugly parents, because physical attractiveness is heritable and because daughters benefit from attractiveness more than sons.
Researchers rated their beauty according to height, weight and apparent age, all factors that can be used to judge basic attraction levels without subjective viewpoints.
Yes, but did they factor in hunger? 
August 1st, 2006 at 5:56 pm
"Yes, but did they factor in hunger?
"
And did that figure into the decision to have the baby in Namibia?
"This is because of differing "evolutionary strategies" that each sex has adopted to survive … "
Right.
As though either sex could survive without the other.
Comment by Ilion — August 1, 2006 @ 5:56 pm
August 1st, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Now, IF we were to run a few simple logical computations upon these claims — though, of course, if we are 'modern evolutionary theorists' we most certainly can skip that step — are we not left wondering about the fact that the natural (absent being skewed by sex-selection abortions) birth-ratio is about 105 boys to 100 girls?
What does this mean? Does it mean that women still haven't become attractive enough to balance out the ratio? Or, does it mean that at one time men were so dog-ugly (yet, high-status) that most births were of males and that only now, after all these generations, have women's "evolutionary strategy" been able to come close to balancing the ratio?
Let's see … Women in general are more attractive then men. So, apparently, women have a greater chance of their first-born being female then men do of theirs being female.
And, at the same time, every child born (whether first-born or not) is born to a woman. And, every woman who has any children at all will have a first-born, whether she has any others or not.
But yet, the over-all birth-ratio is skewed toward boys. Hmmm … perhaps a higher percentage of men have first-borns than women do — though, that couldn't be the case in cultures in which men keep harems.
Further, every male born has both a female parent and a male parent (we can disregard that single outlier in the dataset who didn't have a male parent). And since, after all, "physical attractiveness is heritable," there would seem to be no reason that men cannot catch a free ride on the "evolutionary strategy" women have "adopted to survive."
Let's see:
My father's mother's first-born was female (but the other four were male). My father's father's first-born was a set of twins: both male and female.
My mother's mother's first-born was male (but the other three were female). My mother's father's first-born was my mother.
My mother's first-born was female (or her 5 pregnancies, two were singleton males and two were sets of twin females). My father's first-born was a male.
My living twin sisters (the first set died before birth) both had daughters as their first-born, and one of these did likewise (though, it should be noted, the one who is gorgeous, rather than merely pretty, has only sons).
My mother's older sister (who was a real looker in her day), had a daughter as a first-born. This girl was take-your-breath-away beautiful — as are her children (including the boys). My mother's next sister had a single daughter.
It all makes sense, now! The reason I find so many of my relatives to be so attractive isn't due to most of my genetic heritage being from south of the Mason-Dixon line, but rather because so many of my female relatives have successfully employed the winning "evolutionary strategy" that women have "adopted to survive."
Comment by Ilion — August 1, 2006 @ 7:02 pm
August 1st, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Those silly folks at the London School of Break Dancing… er, Economics just slay me. Are these jokers claiming that pretty women have learned how to keep Y-sperm away from their egg cells? That men with pretty mates produce more X-sperm than men with ugly mates? What's the mechanism and how does it work? And since the study only dealt with first-borns, what is the precise evolutionary advantage of a girl over a boy in that birth order? Does the mechanism only work once? Are non-white women excluded from the rating system? I ask because a large majority of human women live in cultures that do not value women whether they're pretty or not, and most of these cultures have long practiced infanticide against girl babies. What's the "evolutionary strategy" behind that?
And how come "theoretical biologists" get to ignore biology when they spin these ridiculous Anazi tales?
Comment by Joy — August 1, 2006 @ 10:58 pm
August 1st, 2006 at 11:38 pm
"And how come "theoretical biologists" get to ignore biology when they spin these ridiculous Anazi tales?"
'Cause 18/59 "changed everything."
Comment by Ilion — August 1, 2006 @ 11:38 pm
August 1st, 2006 at 11:42 pm
Be careful, Joy. If you don't embrace these speculations, Art will come along and label you an anti-evolutionist.
Comment by MikeGene — August 1, 2006 @ 11:42 pm
August 2nd, 2006 at 4:45 am
Form main article:
"We have also shown that women on average are more attractive than men, because over evolutionary history the slight bias of beautiful parents to have more daughters has accumulated, so that girls have become more and more attractive than boys."
What does it mean that women on average are more attractive than men? Women are attractive to men and men are attractive to women. If they try to say women are beautiful, that's something different. I don't know, maybe our researchers find both genders attractive!
"Researchers rated their beauty according to height, weight and apparent age, all factors that can be used to judge basic attraction levels without subjective viewpoints."
But it doesn't tell in what way human brain judge upon those basic attraction levels. Can our evolutionary gurus tell what attraction really means? Why some women are more beautiful and some are less. In what terms Evolution™® can put a definition for beauty? Why a fit, tall & healthy female ape is not as attractive as a cover girl?
It doesn't tell anything out about origins of the beauty as well.
If male brain has a built-in device that can detect beauty and select it, they must be able to provide an explanation for that mechanism. It seems human brain is capable to detect beauty even at its first encounter with it. Somehow the mechanism to detect beauty is front-loaded in human brain. Oops! I just used the term front-laoding and it makes me an anti-evolutionist, anti-science, young earth creationist & etc.
Comment by Farshad — August 2, 2006 @ 4:45 am