Evolution, Sexual Arousal & Beauty
What we have Evolved to Find Beautiful. Health, Youth, Hair, Breasts, Bottom, Naked Body, Fitness / Strength, Fertility, Wealth

'A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light.' (William Wordsworth)

Hello. Thanks for visiting our evolutionary philosophy of human sexuality pages. We are currently researching good quality sites relating to our biological and cultural sexual evolution - as a way of collecting and presenting the most important / latest knowledge and research.

This web page is a collection of information and studies on beauty and evolution, male and female sexual behaviour & attraction (body, face, hair, symmetry, nudity), symbols of fertility and wealth, health reports, feminism and the beauty industry.

It is very interesting to apply Evolution (biological and cultural) to Beauty and Sexual Attraction. Why do we find certain people attractive? While we may think we are exercising our personal choice, we are in fact largely driven by our primitive instincts.
Health and youth are characteristics attractive to both sexes. From an evolutionary perspective, (which is based upon sex and survival of offspring) it makes sense to find a mate who can produce healthy offspring and help to protect them in life. A youthful woman can have more offspring than a middle aged woman. A strong, fit, dominant man offers better survival of offspring than a sickly, weak man.

The Beauty Industry is founded upon keeping women 'looking young' with expensive products and mysterious elixirs (gold dust, the 'fountain of youth' etc.). Advertising predominately uses pictures of young women with big eyes (youth), clear pale skin (health), big lips and breasts (which some evolutionists suggest symbolise the vagina and bottom).
Confirming the power of the industry, the following internet search results show 'beauty salon' is the top search.

beauty (5,684), b.. salon (10,467), b.. and the beast (3,629), b.. product (2,916), health and b.. (2,578), b.. supply (2,379)

beautiful (6,714), b.. woman (4,861), b.. women (4,037), b.. girl (2,000), b.. agony (1,732), youre b.. (1,651)
(For comparison also see: Internet Search Results - Top 200 Internet Search Terms)

Some other ideas to explore / research:

Different notions of beauty in men and women (female - female, female - male, male - female, male - male).

Different cultures and history.

Extreme examples of modern society eg. obesity (as a symbol of wealth) and anorexia.

Darwin's theory of sexual selection. Why do peacocks have such lavish tails?

Other animal and plant species.

We hope you find the following articles & websites interesting & informative. See our webpage on The Art of Seduction - to improve your seduction success based upon our evolved instincts and the signs of sexual arousal.

Karene Jade Howie

Beauty of Skin Color: Pale Females, Dark Males

A couple of decades ago, I began noticing that the leading lady in a movie was almost always fairer-skinned than her leading man.

It appears filmmakers and their audiences subconsciously associate lightness of complexion with femininity.

... Medieval Europeans referred to women as 'the fair sex,' but in contemporary discourse, skin color is associated only with race, not with sex. ... Audiences famously want their leading men to look 'tall, dark, and handsome' (a phrase first applied to that epitome of male glamour, Cary Grant) when they embrace their leading ladies. But, apparently, 'dark' is even more important than 'tall'.

In his foreword to Fair Women, Dark Men, U. of Washington sociologist Pierre L. van den Berghe summarizes:

'Although virtually all cultures express a marked preference for fair female skin, even those with little or no exposure to European imperialism, and even those whose members are heavily pigmented, many are indifferent to male pigmentation or even prefer men to be darker.'

Beauty of Skin Color: Pale Females, Dark Males
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050612_blondes.htm

Why Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: Where the Women are Beautiful: Evolution, Economics, Environment

A simple and interesting discussion on the Beauty of Women and the impact of environmental / economic factors upon attraction.

From the website:
'I would like to propose an evolutionary explanation for 'why gentlemen prefer blondes' over brunettes in Western culture. Several authors have suggested that florid displays of secondary sexual characteristics 'inform' the female that the suitor is healthy and free of dermal parasites. I suggest that being blonde serves a similar purpose. Anemia (a common symptom of intestinal parasites), cyanosis, jaundice and skin infection are much easier to detect in fair-skinned individuals than in brunettes. Also, the skin of blondes 'ages' faster and more visibly than that of brunettes. Fertility in women declines with age and with disease, so men may gravitate toward blondes, in whom such signs are easier to observe.' (A letter to the editor in the Feb 1996 issue of Scientific American, Professor V. S. Ramachandran, University of California at San Diego)

Why Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: Where the Women are Beautiful: Evolution, Economics, Environment
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/11/a_simple_theory.html

Feminism, Women's Bodies & the Beauty Industry: Germaine Greer Quotes

Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful. She also knows that whatever beauty she has is leaving her, stealthily, day by day. Even if she is as freakishly beautiful as the supermodels whose images she sees replicated all around her until they are more familiar than the features of her own mother, she can not be beautiful enough. There must be bits of her that will not do, her knees, her feet, her buttocks, her breasts. Even if all these are fine and flawless, she knows that within she has guts full of decomposing food; she has a vagina that smells and bleeds. She is human, not a goddess or an angel. (Greer, The Whole Woman, 1999, p.19)

Women with 'too much' (i.e. any) body hair are expected to struggle daily with depilatories of all kinds to appear hairless. Bleaching moustaches, waxing legs and plucking eyebrows absorb hundreds of woman hours. A woman who disported herself in a bikini out of which a bush of pubic hair sprouted would be regarded as a walking obscenity. ... Such insecurity has been instilled into women over generations; we have made not the least headway in the struggle to dispel it. Every issue of every women's magazine exploits women's anxiety about 'unwanted hair'. Readers are not counselled to love their hairiness but to resort to depilatories or electrolysis and even to check that they don't suffer from the very rare thyroid disorder that causes hirsutism. (Greer, The Whole Woman, 1999, p.20)

As cellulite will neither kill you nor go away it is a goldmine for doctors, nutritionists, naturopaths, aromatherapists, fitness experts and lifestyle managers. The manufacture of creams, exercise equipment, skin brushes and dietary supplements all make a bundle out of women's carefully cultivated disgust with their own bodies, scarfed about as they are by 'unsightly fat cells'. (Greer, The Whole Woman, 1999, p.21)

Conditions that practically all women 'suffer from' are spoken of as unsightly and abnormal, to make women feel that parts of their bodies, perhaps their whole bodies, are defective and should be worked on, even surgically altered. ... Preoccupation with her appearance goes some way to ruining some part of every woman's day. Multi-million-dollar industries exploit both her need for reassurance and her need to do something about the way she looks. (Greer, The Whole Woman, 1999, p.22)

Brazilian Waxing & Beauty Salons

From the website: "With Brazilians, people love that every bit of hair is gone, they want it to be very clean looking, so we keep on waxing until every hair is gone. .. If it's a client's first time they can get embarrassed and scared, so we reassure them that there's only two peaks that really hurt and that's at the top of the vulva. .. My younger clients say that men of their age just expect it, and they think it's not right if the girl does have pubic hair."

Read More: Brazilian Waxing & Beauty Salons

This Page Title: 'Biology of Human Sexual Reproduction: Meiosis, Fertilization, Gametes, Male Sperm, Female Pregnancy'.
The main sexuality pages on the evolution of our diverse sexual behaviors have good content and are well worth browsing (see links at top of page). And the list of related sexuality terms that people actually search is informative (to say the least!).
Want to be Involved? Join us in this research, which provides an excellent opportunity to present to the world the latest knowledge about the thing we all find most interesting - sex! The work will not just benefit humanity, it will profoundly enhance your own sexuality as you learn more about our complex and diverse sexual evolution.
We seek help in finding the latest scientific (evolutionary) research on our biological and cultural sexual evolution and distributing content (overviews / summaries) to relevant pages.
This site is well respected. We are listed as the Top Philosophy Website on the Internet with around 500,000 page views each week. So your contributions will be seen and read, and will be providing humanity with a great source of wisdom about a very important subject (that currently suffers due to cultural / religious myths).

If you would like to be involved (or have comments about this website) please write to us using the form lower on this page. Many thanks! Karene

Analyse any human emotion, no matter how far it may be removed from the sphere of sex, and you are sure to discover somewhere the primal impulse, to which life owes its perpetuation. ... The primitive stages can always be re-established; the primitive mind is, in the fullest meaning of the word, imperishable. ... Mans most disagreeable habits and idiosyncrasies, his deceit, his cowardice, his lack of reverence, are engendered by his incomplete adjustment to a complicated civilisation. It is the result of the conflict between our instincts and our culture. (Sigmund Freud)

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Related Search Terms & Number of Searches
Evolution, Sexual, Beauty, Beautiful, Health, Youth, Hair, Breasts, Body, Culture