Men are all the same. And women too (Part II - the women)

Since I tried to explain 'what fancies men', I should also try to answer 'what fancies women',, right?!

Women also assess male beauty based on genetic traits. The face-torso-age Trinity. But, consistently, women consider these factors less important than the personality and the social (or hierarchical) status.

Men put up the physical characteristics of personality over status when evaluating women; women do not.
The only exception seems to be the height. Worldwide, women find tall men most attractive than short men. It is estimated that in less than 1% of human couples the male is shorter than the female. As a consequence (or perhaps a reason) it is estimated that every 2 cm in height is worth $ 6,000 a year in salary for a man in North America.

Women also bring this preference in the hardware (the metaphor I'm using to identify a genetically selected behavior). And again, it has to do with our monogamous society.

In it, a woman often chooses his partner much before he has chance to become a 'boss', to reach a high position in the social hierarchy. But she has to to be able to evaluate his future potential, and for that matter, his 'past achievements' do not count a lot. The good indicators of future success are personality traits such as balance, self-esteem, optimism, perseverance, courage, decision, intelligence, ambition - these are some of the characteristics that make men reach the top of their career in their professions. And not coincidentally, these are the characteristics that women find most attractive in a man, the evidence of his future status.

These preferences are confirmed by studies such as Buss and colleagues, who analyzed 37 modern societies, or Low and collaborators, who analyzed 200 tribal societies, all showing that the 'beauty' of a man depended on their skills and bravery rather than its appearance.

Body language is definitely an important factor for a man to be considered sexy. But while it is related to his personality, the 'symbols' that he exhibits speaks of his social status.
For some authors, these symbols have always been present on clothes and male ornaments. Nowadays, Armani suits, Rolex watches and BMWs are stark evidence of hierarchy, as were in the past patent stripes of a general or the headdress of a Yanomami leader.
But wait?! So women that were genetically programmed to seek personality and status are now seeking the Armani-rolex-BMW triad that exists for no longer than a human generation? Is it possible?

Is that what is genetically selected is not the symbol itself, but rather the 'search for a status symbol', whatever it may be at that time and place. Modern women have a mental mechanism, evolved during the Pleistocene period, which allows them to figure out which symbols correlates with status in men, and find these impressive.

So... Any neuron lit? Noticed any trend?

Something that changes according to the time and place is almost a precise definition of FASHION! Fashion is not important to enhance beauty, it is important to identify status symbols.

I'm not the first to come up with this idea, nor it is a new one. Several studies of art historians show that fashion, until recently, was tied to competition between the classes: first simulation of the aristocracy by the bourgeoisie and then of the middle class by the proletariat.

Then we come to a paradox. Evolutionists and art historians agree that fashion is a matter of status. Women look for status indicators in men that change with fashion, and men look for fertility clues in women that do not (rather with age).

Biologically, men should care less about what women wear, as long as their skin is smooth, they are slender, young, healthy and, preferably, single. It is women that should be extremely careful about what MEN wear, because it tells them a lot about its history, its wealth, social status and his ambitions.

So why women avidly follow clothes and accessories fashion while men care much less (much, much less) about it?

Angie Dickinson said: "I dress for women and undress for men." It's a tremendous catchphrase, but not in the light of evolution.

This is a question that science, currently, cannot answer. What appears is that our fashion today is an aberration that appeared some 200 years ago. During the Regency period in England, the reign of Louis XIV in France, the European Christian Middle Ages, in ancient Greece, or even between modern Yanomami, men followed the fashion as much as, or more than, women; wearing bright colors, fluttering clothes, jewelry and luxurious ornaments, beautiful uniforms and armor decorated with sparkles.

What we can say for sure is that being 'fashionable' is certainly a status symbol among women and therefore "any little detail that signals the ability to follow fashion trends" is a sign of status of a woman.
What could generate such freak? It is still open to discussion. Maybe, while in the past this status could be associated with the rank or wealth of her male, with emancipation of women, it could simply be correlated with her own status. Perhaps it is the unforeseen result of each sex to behave according to their instincts, in the belief that the other sex have the same preferences. Women care more and more clothing and accessories and men care less and less, but instead of trying to influence the opposite sex to their interests, they try to influence the sex itself.

An interesting experiment was done at the University of Pennsylvania. Scientists presented for the subjects, male or female, simple drawings of male and female figures, and asked to indicate, in the figures of their own sex, which one they believed that resembled its present physical form, your ideal fitness and the physical form they considered more attractive to the opposite sex. And the figures of the opposite sex, asked to indicate which physical form they considered more attractive. In general, the subjects could correctly identify their own physical form, but while men put their ideal physical form very close their current physical shape (showing that men are satisfied with their bodies), women always choose leaner pictures as their ideals. But when researchers crossed the results of "What is the physical form of the opposite sex more attractive to you" with "what physical shape you think attracts the opposite sex the most?" the results did not match! Men think that women prefer their men stronger than they actually do, and women think men prefer their women thinner than they actually do.

Fashion creates yet another paradox, which is the standardization of beauty. In evolution terms, in a monogamous species, beauty can be anything but uniform!

Charles Darwin had said that "if all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de Medici, we would find it charming for a moment; but soon we would like variety; and so us obtaining the variety, we would wish see certain characters in our women a little exaggerated beyond the existing common standard."

Bell said that "It is incredible that the habit of dressing in a certain way, which consists of irrational, arbitrary and often harsh laws; imposed without any formal sanction, are met with such docility."

In Brazil, where fashion is followed much more than the law, the fate of more and more fashion designers could be the national congress.

Excerpt from the book 'The Truth about Dogs and Cats'. Back to the syllabus