Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, at least when the beholders are European researchers.
Recent studies found that, evolutionarily-speaking, women are growing more beautiful while men are remaining their same scratchy, hairy primordial selves, according to a report in The Sunday Times.
Further, a study from the University of Helsinki found that beautiful women have more children than their less-than-blessed peers.
Sure, if you’re Angelina Jolie. But what explains Octomom?
The research goes on to say that not only do gorgeous gals have more kids, but a higher proportion of their offspring is female. And, of course, those little girls grow up to be multi-child-bearing winsome women, repeating the pattern of attractive dominance, the Times reports.
“If more attractive parents have more daughters and if physical attractiveness is heritable, it logically follows that women over many generations gradually become more physically attractive on average than men,” said British evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, according to Times.
The report focused on inherited attractiveness and didn’t address the role of plastic surgery in boosting looks or baby-making.
The Times states this finding is the result of many studies of beauty and its role in reproduction. For instance, the University of Helsinki looked to a 40-year study of 1,244 women and 997 men from the U.S., which included photos of the participants’ looks as they aged and taking note of how many children each had, with lovely ladies bearing 16 percent more babies other women.
Kanazawa’s work, the Times reports, found that attractive parents were more likely to bear daughters, suggesting that the human DNA was programmed to do so.
Kanazawa pointed to reports from the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which monitors 15,000 Americans, that found attractive parents were 26 percent less likely to have sons (than “unattractive” parents, we presume).
Researchers also found that both sexes agree women are more visually pleasing than men, according to the Sunday Times.
We needed a study to support that?
When it comes to men, researchers found no notable difference in the number of off-spring by hot or homely men. Because let’s face it, a man’s looks are second only to success. Don’t believe us? Ask Donald Trump. Or Howard Stern. Billy Joel. Ozzy Osbourne. Woody Allen. Kid Rock. You get the idea.
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