> >Mae West could not get photographed to save her life these days,
Sure but Mae West was a comic, not a classic beauty of her day,
sorta like Bette Midler today. {8^D Bette is funny, but I wouldnt
consider her beautiful.
> Anders Sandberg wrote:
> The waist/hip ratio might be one of those things that we tend to seek
> supernormal signals for, while the face seems to be one we seek the
> pefect average.
I may have an explanation for this. Surely sexual preferences are
hard wired in our brains, by some mysterious means. Isnt it curious
that in general men prefer women who are thinner than the average
woman, but women prefer men who are closer to the average man?
First of all, in your opinion, is this observation correct? If so, then:
We can imagine a population of chimps wherein there is initially
no overall preference for females with narrow waist, that is to say,
half the males prefer females with small waist, half the males prefer
females with large waist. Over many generations of chimpy
behavior, the thin-female-preferrers would have a slightly greater
chance of passing on his hard-wired preference, for the thin
waisted females are less pregnant, that is less likely to be *already
carrying* the offspring of a different male. Over time, the population
might as a whole prefer the thins.
I do not see any correlation for female sexual selection of males,
so the chimp population would not necessarily select for fat or
thin males.
I have written a little Monte Carlo sim to model this phenomenon,
but I am not sure if it is valid. Still working it.
If this can happen in chimps, could it not occur in humans?
What say ye? spike
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