Review
Who's the fairest of them all? Beauty probably has been the subject of
fairy tales and mythology ever since humans began telling tales, but Nancy
Etcoff's book Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty may be
the first scientific analysis of the controversial subject. Some try to
ignore it; others try to pretend that beauty is an arbitrary judgment that
exists wholly in the eye of the beholder. In The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, the feminist writer Naomi Wolf goes so far as to assert that beauty does not exist.
Nancy Etcoff, professor at
Harvard Medical School, contends that the pursuit of beauty is a basic instinct and a biological adaptation to help ensure the survival of our genes. In this book, she examines what we find beautiful and why, and she seeks to disprove the assumption that beauty is an arbitrary cultural convention.
"Western cultures have been accused of placing extreme value on physical beauty," according to Etcoff, "but . . . people in more than one third of the non-Western and non-North American countries placed more importance on the looks of their mate than did college students in the United States. . . . Prevalence of parasitic disease and not exposure to super models was the key factor in determining how much a culture valued physical beauty because beautiful features such as a glorious mane of hair, clear skin, and a lean muscular body are visual certificates of health."
Etcoff's analysis of beauty begins with a look at why we find babies
irresistible. Konrad Lorenz first suggested that the soft skin, huge eyes,
chubby cheeks, and small noses of infants trigger tender feelings. Our
innate reaction to babies' cuteness ensures their survival. It also shows that our reactions to beauty are automatic. Stephen J. Gould discusses how our innate preference for a baby's features drives the evolutionary tendency
toward more juvenile features in human evolution.
From our love of babies, Etcoff turns to love between the sexes. Not
surprisingly, both sexes care about their lover's looks, but men care more.
Why? "The answer is sex," she says. "The biological purpose of sex is
reproduction. . . . Its final aim is really of more importance than all other
ends in human life . . . the survival of the species."
Men are typically excited by a woman who is fertile and healthy, and who hasn't been pregnant before. A woman's fertility is at a peak from age twenty to twenty-four, but declines thirty-one percent by her late thirties, and much more steeply after that. Men are most attracted to women who show evidence of peak fertility, and women try to mimic the appearance of a woman in her late teens or twenties.
What do females look for in males? The top male animals use their colors and songs to attract females and also intimidate rival males with their size, or, for instance, with their antlers. Among humans, the best-looking men are often dominant. Men appeal to women through
displays of status and resources. Women valued wealth more than did men in
36 of 37 cultures studied, and they valued ambition in 34 of the cultures.
Biology is the reason behind different values in mate selection. In one
sexual encounter, a male invests a few minutes and some easily replenished
sperm. A woman, on the other hand, risks pregnancy, childbirth (a
significant risk of maternal mortality during our evolution), and at least 14 years of child care. A woman can bear a maximum of ten to fifteen babies over a lifetime. A man can father hundreds.
Differences in the costs of reproduction result in different mating
strategies. Males focus more on looks, which indicate whether a female is
healthy, fertile, and able to complete a pregnancy. Women focus not
only on fertility - men remain fertile through most of their lives - but
also on whether the man can provide resources to feed and raise the child.
After explaining why beauty is important - for sex and reproduction - in the
first three chapters, Etcoff devotes the next three chapters to different
aspects of beauty: skin and hair, facial features, and physique. People
like youthful faces - with a small, delicate jaw and chin and relatively large eyes. "The aging face looks increasingly masculine. . . . to look feminine is to look young. . . . Our beauty detectors are really
detectors for the combination of youth and femininity," Etcoff writes.
Etcoff relates the case of a man with prosopagnosia. As a result of a head
injury that damaged parts of his right hemisphere, he is unable to
recognize a single human face. Yet in tests, he rated people's beauty much
as did everyone else. "He may not know who a person is," she writes, "but
he knows when he finds her attractive. Natural selection has kept these
circuits at least partially separate."
Etcoff maintains that being beautiful is not a social evil. Although
enhancing beauty takes up time and resources, "the idea that women would
achieve more if they only didn't have to waste time on beauty is nonsense.
Women will achieve more when they garner equal legal and social rights and
privileges, not when they give up beauty."
There are only a few errors in the book. On page 116, Etcoff writes that
"the body converts sunlight on skin to vitamin D, and then to calcium." On
page 138, there is some confusion as to which cultures she means - "The
two cultures developed independently, yet all five had local beauty
standards." On Page 199 there is a minor error, "50% of the obese
females . . . and more than 70% of the overweight females" - I presume she
intends one of these to read "males." Etcoff mentions dietary restriction
in rodents, stating that "recently . . . scientists have found these
food-restricted animals live longer." This research began in the 1930s.
She states that the diet-restricted animals don't reproduce, but studies
have shown that while animals on restricted but nutritionally balanced
diets have a later onset of reproduction; they produce more offspring in
their lifetime than do those fed ad libitum.
Overall, Etcoff's book is well researched, with 41 pages of
footnotes and 23 pages of references. She shows not only that beauty is
real, but that standards of beauty are surprisingly consistent across
different cultures and that all are deeply rooted in evolutionary biology.
Sibylle Hechtel is a freelance writer whose articles' topics include science and rock climbing.
