THE EFFECT IS NOT THE CAUSE OF THE CAUSE
or, You Can't Wish, Shame or Explain Away the Power of Being Hot
In just one paragraph in chapter 3 of The Evolution of Desire (1994), Dr. David Buss performed a sleight of hand, executing reverse engineering on the controversy about the legitimacy and primacy of female attractiveness re: male choices about mates; page 57:
“Because of the many cues conveyed by a woman’s physical appearance, and because male standards of beauty have evolved to correspond to these cues, men place a premium on physical appearance and attractiveness in their mate preferences. Within the United States mate preferences for physical attractiveness, physical appearance, good looks, or beauty have been lavishly documented. When five thousand college students were asked in the 1950s to identify the characteristics they wanted in a future husband or wife, what men listed far more often than women was physical attractiveness. The sheer number of terms that men listed betrays their values. They wanted a wife who was pretty, attractive, beautiful, gorgeous, comely, lovely, ravishing, and glamorous. American college women, at that time at least, rarely listed physical appearance as paramount in their ideal husband.”
We can, at least in the context of this discussion, set aside the known fact that human beings tend to prevaricate in the direction of how they want to be viewed even in a seemingly-anonymous questionnaire to the degree that their answers are more a reflection of promoting preferred personas than of full sincerity. Dr. Buss even hints at that when he says that, “at that time at least,” college women “rarely listed physical appearance as paramount in their ideal husband.” The intervening decades have demonstrated an increase in women emphasizing physical attractiveness in mate choices now that they have societal permission to declare their preferences and even their own levels of libido as well.
We can also set aside the fact that part of what, out of sexual performance paranoia, so strongly compels men to insist on physical attractiveness in a mate is the immense social pressure on them to limit marital partners to one at a time. In cultures in which polygyny (one husband/multiple wives) is more acceptable, men do not emphasize mate appearance quite so intensively, because access to variety has the potential to trump baseline attractiveness. We can assume, though, that Western Civilization is not in any imminent danger of being overtaken by polygyny.
We can then stipulate that, despite any effects created by polygyny taboos or suppression of female expression of sexual preferences, men do indeed prioritize attractiveness in a mate far more highly than do women.
What can’t be stipulated, however, is the notion promoted by Dr. Buss – and popular among evolutionary biologists, psychologists and others with insufficient knowledge about microbiology who remain persuaded by Darwinian evolutionary theory – that “male standards of beauty have evolved to correspond” to “the many cues conveyed by a woman’s physical appearance,” causing “men [to] place a premium on physical appearance and attractiveness in their mate preferences.” This is a case of correlation with mistakenly-asserted causation. Men have not evolved to possess preferences for physical attraction. In fact, all evidence supports the notion that such male preferences have been ubiquitous throughout human history.
Men are simply hardwired to adore hot women, and – while some of the fine tuning of that may have evolved, through natural selection – given that they prioritize that so highly, if anything it may be the case that females have become more and more attractive as time has proceeded, because men have predominantly chosen the women they consider the most attractive to marry and thus be more likely to reproduce with — not to mention women becoming increasingly adept at false presentations that create the illusion of increased attractiveness. Men aren’t evolving; they just like having sex with women who excite them sexually; it’s in their nature and is to no significant degree a matter of reacting to cues that indicate other things besides attractiveness. No doubt some of those sexual cues are linked to characteristics possessed by women more likely to successfully produce numerous attractive offspring free from genetic defects, but men aren’t primarily concerned with that.
Men just want partners who will more quickly get their dicks hard. They always have (such reasons were in play to explain why Jacob preferred Rachel over Leah), and they likely always will.
Statements asserting that men’s preferences are being evolved by women conveying changing sexual cues are less science and more wishful thinking in the march to inappropriately ‘confirm’ Darwinian evolutionary theory, not to mention improperly elevate proof for Girl Power.
