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dreamsmasher
816 Posts
On March 02 2013 23:55 zbedlam wrote: He's talking about sexual attractiveness from an evolutionary perspective you stupid pleb. This is not an artsy sociology debate. seems like you're the stupid pleb. most of these 'evolutionary theories' relating evolution to other aspects of our life are about as scientific as astrology. | ||
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Tien
Russian Federation4447 Posts
On March 02 2013 03:28 Kyrillion wrote: I don't see your point. A man expressing his desire for a woman with money won't be judged ? It's not the same. Men don't have the nagging thought of having to lose half a decade, to a decade of their lives career wise if they want to raise a family. Women make that monetary sacrifice. | ||
Jibba
United States22883 Posts
On March 03 2013 03:56 Demonhunter04 wrote: Oh? Please explain. Because breast size isn't an impediment to the amount of milk a woman can produce, and in many animals, such as chimps, they're relatively small. In humans, large mammaries can also be extremely disadvantageous depending on one's life style such as within nomadic tribes. They're a secondary sex trait that doesn't actually reflect reproduction and they don't serve a functional purpose, outside of attracting more attention in certain cultures. It could be evolutionary within a single culture, but there isn't a biological basis for it being attractive.I'm sure you know the evolutionary advantage of large mammaries Pro female basketball players are almost certainly not in the 99th percentile in terms of fertility. The hormonal makeup that lends itself to reaching the top level of such a sport is relatively masculine and is quite different from one that maximizes fertility. ]As for using models as examples of ideal beauty within a culture, it may seem like a safe choice, but it's important to note that the people evaluating the models may have different standards than the general population. A large number of fashion models have rather androgynous bodies (which are therefore unattractive to straight men). This brings me to an attribute that is almost purely hereditarily preferred - the hourglass figure. You're already pre-supposing what men find attractive, based on evolutionary psychology bullshit. What men find attractive differs from culture to culture, include waist-to-hip ratios and assuming an hourglass figure is the most fertile (of which only correlation has been found in a small amount samples), it's quite likely that fertility only plays a very minor role in what men find attractive. Furthermore, the ability to reproduce depends on many other social factors besides fertility, which is why women with wider waists (who may be less fertile) tend to do better in countries where women have economic independence. You're basically saying "men find hourglass figures most attractive, therefore supermodels, who don't have an hourglass body shape can't be attractive," when really what you should be thinking is that "men today no longer find hourglass figures most attractive." Look at this very site and the Kpop idols people fantasize about.I've noticed that many people who try to explain things in terms of cultural influence do not take into account that culture arose from our nature and living conditions. Culture continues to influence and be influenced by our genetics, so attempting to take a side in the nature vs nurture dichotomy is somewhat pointless. There is no doubt that culture arises from circumstances, which is why it's impossible to say there is an inherent, ideal form of beauty that's universal to all cultures, as sunprince tried to say. That is not to say biological factors were never a factor, but often times, especially in modern societies, they have been overridden by cultural norms. A woman with an hourglass figure may be more fertile, but that doesn't mean she's more likely to survive, more likely to reproduce or inherently more attractive to a given culture. | ||
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zbedlam
Australia549 Posts
Men like attractive women, women like powerful men. This does not apply to all people, and what people find attractive varies from person to person. Dominant males will generally go for submissive women with hourglass figures and likewise attractive women will normally go for dominant males. Men like women with larger breasts because breast size is directly related to estrogen levels, dominant males (read high testosterone) want women with high estrogen levels for reasons not worth going into for this topic. If you are androgynous, a manchild etc do not expect to follow this norm and likewise if you are an ugly girl (by common perception) do not expect to either. Directly on topic though, money = power so women liking men with money is not even remotely uncommon or socially unacceptable. Women gouging men for money however normally is. | ||
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gruff
Sweden2276 Posts
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rusedeguerre
121 Posts
On March 03 2013 04:08 dreamsmasher wrote: seems like you're the stupid pleb. most of these 'evolutionary theories' relating evolution to other aspects of our life are about as scientific as astrology. Everything about humanity has been determined by evolution. It is pretty dumb to suggest it has nothing to do with our lives... The reference to astrology is quite ironic. | ||
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ziggurat
Canada847 Posts
On March 03 2013 09:06 Jibba wrote: Oh? Please explain. Because breast size isn't an impediment to the amount of milk a woman can produce, and in many animals, such as chimps, they're relatively small. In humans, large mammaries can also be extremely disadvantageous depending on one's life style such as within nomadic tribes. They're a secondary sex trait that doesn't actually reflect reproduction and they don't serve a functional purpose, outside of attracting more attention in certain cultures. It could be evolutionary within a single culture, but there isn't a biological basis for it being attractive. Yes. The point of the example was that both super models and athletes are poor in that regard, yet we view one as extremely attractive and the other as unattractive. You're already pre-supposing what men find attractive, based on evolutionary psychology bullshit. What men find attractive differs from culture to culture, include waist-to-hip ratios and assuming an hourglass figure is the most fertile (of which only correlation has been found in a small amount samples), it's quite likely that fertility only plays a very minor role in what men find attractive. Furthermore, the ability to reproduce depends on many other social factors besides fertility, which is why women with wider waists (who may be less fertile) tend to do better in countries where women have economic independence. You're basically saying "men find hourglass figures most attractive, therefore supermodels, who don't have an hourglass body shape can't be attractive," when really what you should be thinking is that "men today no longer find hourglass figures most attractive." Look at this very site and the Kpop idols people fantasize about. There is no doubt that culture arises from circumstances, which is why it's impossible to say there is an inherent, ideal form of beauty that's universal to all cultures, as sunprince tried to say. That is not to say biological factors were never a factor, but often times, especially in modern societies, they have been overridden by cultural norms. A woman with an hourglass figure may be more fertile, but that doesn't mean she's more likely to survive, more likely to reproduce or inherently more attractive to a given culture. 1. What makes you think that Victoria's secret models aren't fertile? Are you basing this on something or is it just a hunch? 2. No one is "presupposing" what men find attractive. Everyone knows what men find attractive. If you have any doubts, flip open a men's magazine. It's not exactly a secret. 3. Where do you get the idea that the desirable waist-to-hip ratio varies between cultures? Everything that I've seen suggests that it's pretty consistent across cultures. 4. Why do you say that supermodels don't have hourglass figures? Pretty much all of them have a waist-to-hip ratio of .7, which is quoted is numerous studies as the ideal. 5. I'm pretty confident that most kpop idols have waist-to-hip ratios very close to .7 as well. 6. In every culture that I'm aware of, men tend to be attracted to women who are young, healthy, with symmetrical features and waist-to-hip ratios near .7. This is biology at work. | ||
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Jibba
United States22883 Posts
2. Read the actual post before you post. He says exactly that models have a specific body type that all men find unattractive, and his proof is that it doesn't fit the hourglass form. He's beginning with his answer in mind and trying to connect data to make it work. 3. This is wrong. Singh's study was flawed when he made it, and its publicizing is even worse because he never made the exact universal claim about .7. http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hbe-lab/acrobatfiles/preferred waist.pdf Female waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is widely cited by evolutionary psychologists as an example of an evolved male preference. Although many studies have found men prefer a low WHR, almost all have been conducted with college students. We tested men in a foraging society and found that they preferred high WHRs. We interpret this as a preference for heavier women, which we think should be common where there is no risk of obesity. Based on these results and others, we suggest that WHR preference varies with ecology. http://www.academia.edu/296731/Is_Beauty_In_the_Eye_of_the_Beholder As in Yomybato, males from Shipetiarigrouped female figures by weight and thenby WHR, preferred ‘overweight’ figures,and considered high-WHR females to behealthier (Fig. 2). However, Shipetiari malesconsidered low-WHR females to be moreattractive and more desirable as spouses(Fig. 2). Note that Shipetiari males didnot consider the healthiest females to bethe most attractive or the most desirablespouses, suggesting that WHR preferencesmay be changing 4. They don't, they've actually steadily risen from .6 to now .7+. You can actually track the rise through Playboy models since the 60's, where "ideals" like Monroe and Welch were much more severe than .7 (closer to .6), to today where it's getting clser to .8. Women like Megan Fox and Kate Upton are perfect examples of it. There's variation all over the place regarding today's most attractive women and their hip-to-waist ratio, which gets to the next point: 6. Further research finds that hip-to-waist ratio also isn't very important at all. http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/m.j.tovee/Malaysian-paper.pdf Two purported cues to perceived female physical attractiveness are body mass index (BMI) and body shape as measured by the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). This study examined the relative contribution of both cues in several culturally socioeconomically distinct populations. Six hundred and eighty-two participants from Britain and Malaysia were asked to rate a set of images of real women with known BMI and WHR. The results showed that BMI is the primary determinant of female physical attractiveness, whereas WHR failed to emerge as a significant predictor. The results also showed that there were significant differences in preferences for physical attractiveness along a gradient of socio-economic development, with urban participants preferring images of women with significantly lower BMIs than their rural counterparts. ... It is also not the case that the relative ranges of BMI and WHR values in these studies are unequal, as whenTovee et al. (2002) used images of female bodies where the range of BMI values was strictly controlled, WHR still failed to emerge as a strong determinant for attractiveness These findings suggest that one simply does not need to be very sensitive to shape cues. Tove´ e et al. (2002) have argued that the linkage of WHR with fertility is far weaker than that of BMI and fertility, and this may be one reason why WHR is a poor predictor of attractiveness. For example, there is a considerable overlap in the WHRs of populations of normal women and anorexic patients (Tove´ e et al.,(1997). The latter group are amenorrhoeic, and so a woman with an effective fertility of zero can have the same WHR as a woman with normal fertility. Past research supports the finding that shape cues are not a salient factor in female physical attractiveness—the ‘ideal’female body in Western society, as depicted by fashion models, has become thinner and less curvaceous over time He goes on to posit that preference in BMI (which is significantly more important than waist-to-hip) varies most predictably by level of modernity and socio-economic status. | ||
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rusedeguerre
121 Posts
‘ideal’female body in Western society, as depicted by fashion models This is what happens when people conflate transient social status with ingrained biological attraction, and when they conflate publicity with commonality. For example, there is a considerable overlap in the WHRs of populations of normal women and anorexic patients Obviously the data will be skewed towards BMI if you are rating the attractiveness of WHR of a starving woman.... | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
edit: yes, by seeing what's superficial as 'natural' behavior, you remove that stigma. but that's a different but interesting story | ||
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xM(Z
Romania5281 Posts
On March 03 2013 17:04 rusedeguerre wrote: Obviously the data will be skewed towards BMI if you are rating the attractiveness of WHR of a starving woman.... i think the point there was that if women with 0 fertility have the same WHR as fertile women, how can you use WHR as a measure for fertility?. | ||
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Arctic Daishi
United States152 Posts
On February 22 2013 04:02 slappy wrote: it depends... it's like I want a woman who is going to do a good job raising my children and has qualities that are beneficial in that regard. Naturally, a woman will want a man who can provide, that's kind of the flip side of that coin. I never really looked at it that way before. What you're saying makes sense, though I think that if money or looks alone are the sole deciding factors for a relationship, then that is "shallow" and "superficial." | ||
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sc4k
United Kingdom5454 Posts
On March 03 2013 17:04 rusedeguerre wrote: This is what happens when people conflate transient social status with ingrained biological attraction, and when they conflate publicity with commonality. Wow...you really hit the nail on the head there with that sentence. This is what jars me about everything Jibba is talking about to do with society shaping your tastes. Also, fashion models aren't supposed to be ideal beauty, they are supposed to wear clothes well. | ||
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Jibba
United States22883 Posts
On March 03 2013 17:04 rusedeguerre wrote: This is what happens when people conflate transient social status with ingrained biological attraction, and when they conflate publicity with commonality. No, this is what happens when you don't follow the conversation and his argument about models of all generations displaying the same biological characteristic (even though it's not true.) And you still haven't shown how ingrained biological attraction is measured. Assuming there is both an ingrained biological attraction and a socially instilled attraction, how would you distinguish the two? The only studies we have pursue a single, unified "attraction" and they've found that it is not universal across cultures. Could it be that socially instilled attraction, obviously derived from different cultures, overrides the ingrained biological attraction that's universal to everyone? It's possible, but how would you isolate that? The only studies they've done have involved showing people silly pictures, often hand drawings rather than real photographs, and asking for their preference. Tovee's study found that the different hip-to-waist ratios didn't help them predict which picture was viewed as most attractive. In other studies, they found it was helpful for prediction but only within a single culture. So really, we don't have data to suggest that men judge attractiveness based on fertility or even perceived fertility. All of this is based on Singh's study's finding of .7 among Western college students at that time. It may turn out that a hip-to-waist ratio of .7 and a certain range of body fat % produce most optimal fertility, but we haven't shown a universal preference of hip-to-waist nor a universal preference of BMI (which isn't exactly body fat %, but close enough for the discussion.) We only have evidence to the contrary. Obviously the data will be skewed towards BMI if you are rating the attractiveness of WHR of a starving woman.... So you didn't actually read it, but decided to post anyways. I will give evolutionary psychology credit for having more merit than astrology,.^ | ||
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Recognizable
Netherlands1552 Posts
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Demonhunter04
1530 Posts
On March 03 2013 09:06 Jibba wrote: Oh? Please explain. Because breast size isn't an impediment to the amount of milk a woman can produce, and in many animals, such as chimps, they're relatively small. In humans, large mammaries can also be extremely disadvantageous depending on one's life style such as within nomadic tribes. They're a secondary sex trait that doesn't actually reflect reproduction and they don't serve a functional purpose, outside of attracting more attention in certain cultures. It could be evolutionary within a single culture, but there isn't a biological basis for it being attractive. You're right that the size of a mammary gland is not a large factor in its potential maximum milk production rate, and that they serve no additional function while adding weight and consuming resources. The extra weight on the front of the torso is even more detrimental for humans than for other animals because we walk upright, and our spines and lower backs are placed under more strain than ideal as a result. This begs the question as to why they are so much larger in humans (as a proportion of total body mass). Large breasts, as with low waist-hip ratio, are an indicator of a high estrogen: androgen ratio, which usually means higher fertility. Other indicators of health and fertility include: -Clear skin: Androgens stimulate production of sebum, which increases acne, and growth of thick hairs (as opposed to "peach fuzz"). -Fat distribution away from waist, towards breasts and hips. This, along with body fat percentage, is a major contributor to a low WHR. It also helps that being attracted to women with low WHR reduces the chances of her already being pregnant. Note that the WHR of a woman with genes causing such a fat distribution would still increase if her body fat increases, because the decreasing volume: surface area ratio makes it highly impractical to maintain WHR. -High voice pitch: Androgens cause development of the vocal chords, lowering pitch. -Facial structure: I'll quote my previous post: Men on average have a taller and wider masseter, more angled jaw, wider cheek bones and eye sockets, bushier eyebrows, larger noses, more sloping forehead, more prominent brow ridges, and squarer chins. Once again, this is effected by androgens while in the womb, very early childhood, and in puberty. -Symmetrical features: The brain is responsible for creating and maintaining symmetry in development, and symmetry is a reliable indicator of a healthy brain. Intelligence and symmetry are positively correlated. Further, since about half of all human genes play a role in the brain's development, symmetry indirectly demonstrates the absence of harmful mutations or unfavorable genes. While not perfectly reliable, as demonstrated by conditions such as AIS, it was only possible to determine fertility through superficial means, so that was the best option. Men that prefers a low WHR, for whatever reason, will have higher average fertility than those who prefer high WHRs. If genetics has anything to do with WHR preference, then the male population will, over time, start to favor low WHRs, and this process has been going on for a very long time, longer than culture has existed. This applies to any of those features considered universally attractive. Unless you can show that genetics has an extremely weak or nonexistent connection with what a man finds attractive, your position on this topic is tenuous. I won't comment on the fertility of models because they vary quite a bit in WHR, bust size, etc, but I noticed you used Kate Upton as an example - her WHR is her weakest point as a model, but she compensates for that with her other attributes, and the same could be said of Megan Fox. These two examples do not make a dataset, and all else held constant, it is likely that the majority of men would prefer a low-WHR version of Kate Upton/Megan Fox. But of course, this is only true assuming men prefer low WHRs. I already addressed the variation in WHR preference due to socioeconomic status. The brain treats money the same way it treats food, so people with less money consume more food and prefer women with more body fat. Women who accumulate fat more easily are more likely to survive and provide enough sustenance for offspring in utero when resources are scarce. This is why poor people are more likely than average to be overweight/obese, and rich people are less likely to be (the rich sate this urge by buying things). Since body fat accumulates disproportionately around the waist for most people, a small change in body fat causes a large change in WHR. Furthermore, the ability to reproduce depends on many other social factors besides fertility, which is why women with wider waists (who may be less fertile) tend to do better in countries where women have economic independence. This is a little ambiguous. Do you mean that they do better than high WHR women who lack economic independence, or better than low WHR women when both have economic independence? I'm fairly certain you mean the former, in which case the disparity is easily explained by the fact that men losing the economic advantage means they lose a major advantage the sexual economy, which forces them to be less selective. So all women have a better chance when they have economic independence. Of course, nowadays, being successful in dating does not mean you are reproductively successful, but that is a topic for another discussion. You're basically saying "men find hourglass figures most attractive, therefore supermodels, who don't have an hourglass body shape can't be attractive," when really what you should be thinking is that "men today no longer find hourglass figures most attractive." Look at this very site and the Kpop idols people fantasize about. Read the actual post before you post. He says exactly that models have a specific body type that all men find unattractive, and his proof is that it doesn't fit the hourglass form. He's beginning with his answer in mind and trying to connect data to make it work. That is not what I meant. I was saying that models are not selected by popular vote, but by a process that does not necessarily reflect the preference of the majority. For that matter, they are not selected purely on their looks. So you cannot take for granted that models are an example of ideal beauty in this culture. I was also not speaking in absolutes, and I hoped you would infer that I mean "most" or "on average". Obviously, not all models have androgynous and overly thin bodies, and not all men prefer low WHRs. Typing that out every time becomes cumbersome. Swami and Tovée also make the assumption that models represent ideal beauty in this study, which you previously linked. In any case, going from the data charts showing BMI vs attractiveness ratings, the results are fairly similar (all groups ranged from 20.79 and 22.78 in peak preferred BMI), and the differences are consistent with what you would expect based on the food=money effect mentioned earlier. Another problem with their study is that the people were rating attractiveness based on black-and-white photographs. It has been found that when looking at women, men focus more on the face and bust when they're still, and on WHR when they're moving. And in photographs, people weigh faces disproportionately. There is a weak correlation between an attractive face and low WHR, so it is not surprising that the correlation between WHR and rated attractiveness is very low. In contrast, body fat affects the full body, strongly affecting facial attractiveness, and produces aromatase, which converts testosterone to estradiol. This might seem beneficial to fertility, but body fat outside the 17-25% range leads to the storage of too much estrogen to ovulate normally. A woman with an hourglass figure may be more fertile, but that doesn't mean she's more likely to survive, more likely to reproduce or inherently more attractive to a given culture. It does mean she's more likely to survive and reproduce, unless she's living in a environment with resources so scarce that a woman who puts on fat more easily is at an advantage. There is no doubt that culture arises from circumstances, which is why it's impossible to say there is an inherent, ideal form of beauty that's universal to all cultures, as sunprince tried to say. That is not to say biological factors were never a factor, but often times, especially in modern societies, they have been overridden by cultural norms. I do not agree that there is a single universal standard of beauty either, because not all cultures are the same in this respect (and what are the odds that they would ever be?). I suspect that culture merely influences the standard of beauty one way or another from a sort of "starting point" or "range," determined by the genetic makeup of the beholder. Cultural influence is also not homogeneous, so its effect varies on people, too, resulting in greater variety. Genetics' significant role in perceived attractiveness is probably the reason why the diseased, old, obese, significantly asymmetrical, outrightly deformed, or handicapped have never been the ideal beauty standard. If culture could somehow, independently of genetics, favor any of those attributes, and actually override innate preferences, it might have happened before. In any case, don't think overriding is the right word. Do you have any particular examples of culture overriding genetics in mind? | ||
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fatfail
United States386 Posts
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theinfamousone
United States103 Posts
It's pretty sad, because this is where we get the celebrity marriage stupidity where they are basically socially pressured to marry other egotistical people and it's a miracle when they last longer than a "Kardashian" (72 days if I'm not mistaken). | ||
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theinfamousone
United States103 Posts
It's pretty sad, because this is where we get the celebrity marriage stupidity where they are basically socially pressured to marry other egotistical people and it's a miracle when they last longer than a "Kardashian" (72 days if I'm not mistaken). | ||
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Slakter
Sweden1947 Posts
On March 03 2013 13:00 rusedeguerre wrote: Everything about humanity has been determined by evolution. It is pretty dumb to suggest it has nothing to do with our lives... The reference to astrology is quite ironic. Standard psychology plays a way bigger role than Biological psychology in modern times. The human brain is just way too complex for us to be simply driven by evolution. | ||
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