In a recent study published by the University of Helsinki, using information gathered from men and women in the US who were subjects of a 40 year investigation, researchers concluded that beautiful women had 16% more children than plainer ones. From a Darwinian point of view, if beauty is getting selected for, then women will be becoming more attractive. The study showed that the same is not true for men. The selection pressure for them is to be successful.
If the conclusions of this study are correct, and I suspect they’re not, it’s a bit depressing. Because if women are getting selected for their looks, where is the genetic incentive for them to become more intelligent? Are we evolving Barby in our culture? And if history teaches us anything it is that the urge for men to strive, and succeed, and accrue power, has been at the heart of most of what ails this planet.
As Cognitive Hypnotherapists we so often see clients who suffer from self-esteem issues because they feel that they’re not keeping up with the expectations they feel are put upon them, or that they’re not valued as individuals, only as objects. If this study is correct, then it’s likely that we’re going to be busy for as long as this culture lasts.
You can read a newspaper article about this research here.
Of course, just because the women were seen as more attractive doesn’t mean that they weren’t intellegent also. I assume that as it wasn’t mentioned that it wasn’t something that they mesured?
“Your Daddy`d rich and your Mummy`s good looking” as that great insurance salesman Iggy Pop once sang. Looking around us we may well believe this to be true, but any study that claims to have “objective assessments of physical attractiveness” is on pretty dodgy ground in my view.