The Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty by Nancy Etcoff, Little,
Brown, 拢16.99, ISBN 0316643718
SOME kinds of design are impossible to overlook. Wings are designed for
flight, eyes for sight. A little research reveals that certain molecules in HIV
are designed to penetrate our cells, and the narwhal鈥檚 tusk is designed for the
mating market. Evolutionary psychology (AKA evil psychology) follows the same
idea into the human mind, and Nancy Etcoff鈥檚 enjoyable, though imperfectly
convincing book, The Survival of the Prettiest, is a
popular evolutionary psychological study of sex appeal. Her aim is clear: 鈥淲e
will look at the argument for beauty as a biological adaptation.鈥�
Strictly speaking, it is the sense of beauty, not the beauty itself, that is
the biological adaptation. By way of analogy, we may find some kinds of
landscape more beautiful than others, but that does not mean the landscape
evolved to please us. Likewise, the indicators of youth and health that Etcoff
discusses are, in her account, not evolved signals, as is the peacock鈥檚 tail,
but the unmodified normal condition of someone who is young and healthy.
(Although for all I know, to a self-conscious peahen鈥攊f you can imagine
such a bird鈥攖hat startling male tail might appear unmodified, just normal
for young and healthy peacocks.) She quotes Donald Symons: 鈥淏eauty lies in the
adaptations of the beholder.鈥�
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At some level, evolutionary psychology is surely correct. We prefer mates of
an appropriate age, sex and species, and natural selection presumably tuned our
preferences to this end. (Human sexuality is, of course, magnificently variable.
鈥淢ate preference鈥� here refers only to a majority preference.) Controversially,
evolutionary psychologists have concentrated on particular facial and bodily
features that may indicate youth or health.
Take symmetry, which may be associated with health: we prefer the look of
more symmetrical bodies and faces. The waist-to-hip ratio of women has a low
value of about 0.7 soon after puberty, and men like the look of women with this
figure, regardless of their total weight. Etcoff has difficulty explaining the
modern cult of thinness, or 鈥渢he slim ideal鈥�. As she says, 鈥渟election should
work against such a preference鈥�, because emaciated women have low fertility. She
is unsure what is going on, but suggests that it is a fashion, driven by women,
rather than a Darwinian adaptation in the eyes of men. Evolutionary psychology,
too, throws in the towel with Kate Moss. But she does point out that Twiggy in
her modelling heyday reached a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.73, even though she
weighed just 42 kilos.
Shave it
Etcoff鈥檚 book is mainly about beauty in women, but she devotes a chapter to
men. Height and a V-shaped torso matter for beauty, but she concludes, after
appropriate study, that penis length does not. She does have a good story about
facial hair, though.
In 1907, a Parisian scientist asked two men, one with and one without a
moustache, to go on a walk around Paris. The next stage of the experiment
consisted of two women 鈥渨hose lips had been sterilised鈥�, positioned in the
Louvre. The men, at the end of the walk, were required to kiss the women (one
each).
鈥淭he residue was wiped off and dipped in a sterile solution and left standing
for four days. The residue from the clean-shaven man contained merely harmless
yeast, but the residue from the moustached man was `swarming with malignant
microbes . . . diphtheria, putrefactive germs, minute bits of food, a hair from
a spider鈥檚 leg and other odds and ends鈥�. Beards never quite recovered.鈥�
And I had supposed that shaving was another piece of youth鈥攎imicry.
Free will rules
Beauty is a politically sensitive subject. It has been argued that standards
of beauty are arbitrary and imposed by patriarchal media to subjugate women.
Etcoff performs a successful demolition job on this theory.
She is less successful, I think, when she comes to the flexibility of
biological adaptations. 鈥淓volutionary psychologists would suggest that instincts
that have worked for millennia will be very hard to stamp out,鈥� she says. They
would do better not to make this suggestion. The expression of genes is well
known to depend on the environment, and the fact that something is an adaptation
tells us nothing about how the genes that code for it will respond to a new
environment. Bacteria switch genes for sugar digestion on and off depending on
the sugars in the environment. In us, the gene that causes the disease
phenylketone ureaia is effectively switched off if the person carrying it eats a
diet without phenylalanine. Genes in our brains switch on and off depending on
the environment. I do not know what (presumably complex) set of genes code for
our sense of beauty, but I strongly guess they interact with our environment: it
would be odd, from general considerations of genetics, if they did not. We are
no more victims of our genes than of pictures in the media.
Etcoff writes pleasantly and is often witty, so The Survival of the
Prettiest is easy to read. Critics might call it shallow, but I suspect the
light touch of Etcoff鈥檚 prose reflects her skill as an author rather than any
paucity of her science. This would make a great beach read for the summer,
where鈥攐ut of scientific curiosity, not lust or envy鈥攜ou can test
your own aesthetic reactions to the height and symmetry, skin tone and hair
texture, V-torsos and waist-to-hip ratios of the bodies that are lying
about.