https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=EjaoRn9GYmo
The correlation between perceived mate attractiveness with regards to women perceiving men, the correlation between socioeconomic status and perceived attractiveness is about 0.6, which is a higher correlation than the correlation between general cognitive ability and grades. And I use that as an example because that’s one of the most robust and powerful findings in the social sciences. Whereas the correlation between socioeconomic status and perceived mate attractiveness for women by men is 0 or slightly negative. So it’s a walloping difference and that’s associated with the proclivity of women to preferentially mate across hierarchies and up and men to mate across hierarchies and down. That’s relatively well established cross-culturally and the proclivity doesn’t ameliorate much in say the Scandinavian countries, it ameliorates slightly. And then there are other hallmarks of attractiveness on the female side and this is where I want to go with the beauty myth. We know that babies for example will gaze much longer even as newborns at symmetrical faces and there is this doll-like aspect that you described. So one of the hallmarks of sexual attractiveness is neotenic faces and so there’s a proclivity for organisms to evolve towards their juvenile forms. That’s neoteny. It’s such a pervasive tendency that it even characterizes animated characters as Stephen J. Gould was at Pains to establish. It’s quite comical but one of the hallmarks of cuteness is a babyishness of face and you can see that in the plush toys and the sorts of things that are often bought as dolls for kids or for sentimental adults have very large eyes, very small noses, very symmetrical faces. There’s all sorts of hallmarks of beauty from a biological perspective. Many of them seem to be associated with fecundity, particularly on the female side and that is very harsh. It’s a very, very harsh standard and when I read the beauty myth, which was a long time ago by the way because it was published in what, 91? 93, 93, yeah. 93, 93. I was curious about what you made of the biological markers of beauty and how you think that plays into what did you describe, the iron maiden straight jacket that’s placed on women in terms of the ideal of their sexual self-presentation. Right. So thank you for asking. You may be right. I’m very familiar with these arguments and I’m very familiar with David Buss’s work and I think that it’s fundamentally flawed and I’ll get to why. So first let me concede, of course, it’s thoroughly documented that there are markers of health and attractiveness, health and fertility that are often cross-cultural and certainly symmetrical features, rosy skin showing good circulation, youth, all of those are kind of transcendental markers for attractiveness. However, one giant intellectual flaw, respectfully in pretty much all of the studies that I’ve seen of the evolutionary biologists is that they focus on these markers in women and they don’t test for what women find attractive in men. They project or they construct kind of experiments or surveys that prove, tendentiously in my view, that women find wealth or professional accomplishment attractive and that that kind of substitutes for physical beauty. But they don’t ask women who are heterosexual, what are the markers for you of beauty in men or attractiveness in men? And if they did and they don’t, they would find broad shoulders, they would find symmetry, they would find maybe, you know, sorry, penis size, they would find maybe a muscle tone that shows that they can kind of effectively impregnate a woman. They would probably find height as a marker. Right. They have investigated that. I mean, there is a fair bit of overlap in the biomarkers, let’s say, for what men and women find mutually physically attractive. Although the way that’s manifested varies to some degree, as you pointed out, shoulder to waist ratio, for example, is a marker, as you can see in superhero portrayals of men, for example. And the cardinal difference seems to be too, though, you know, it’s also not the sophisticated evolutionary psychologists don’t assume that women are after wealth. What they assume is that women will use markers of wealth as indicators of productive competence. Right, but let me get this, please, because to me, that’s also a conceptual flaw. I’ll get to why in just a minute. But I know I have to note for the record as a feminist analyst that I have literally never seen a study that asks women if they find penis size a marker for sexual attractiveness. And I think scientists don’t want to run that study. Male scientists don’t want to run that study because it would be unpopular conclusions. So I guess to me, the whole field of evolutionary biological studies that conclude that sexual attractiveness is a is kind of gendered female and that for males, there are other proxies for sexual attractiveness is really convenient for men because they don’t have to come up against the raw, brute fact that there are physical things women evaluate men for if they’re heterosexual, just like there are physical things men evaluate for. Let me ask you about that a little bit, too, because you say that it’s convenient for men. And so, I mean, I’m never certain what form of differential perception on the part of each sex is convenient for which sex. I mean, the entire sexual battlefield, let’s say, is fraught with catastrophe and opportunity for both sexes. I mean, one of the things you do see, for example, is that women are much harsher in So women, men rate women, 50 percent of women as below average in attractiveness and women rate 80 percent of men as below average in physical attractiveness. And well, and like I want to be absolutely 100 percent crystal clear here that I am not blaming women for this. I understand why this is, I believe. It’s in the interest of a woman, biologically and practically, to find a partner who is as competent as she is or more competent, because fundamentally what she’s trying to do is redress the differential burden that reproduction places on women. And so the reason that women… Totally disagree with you. I think that’s out of date, respectfully, but I’ll wait for you to finish. Okay, well, so I’m curious about why you would consider that, because consider that out of date, because first of all, one of the definitions of what constitutes female biologically is the female sex, biologically speaking, is almost invariably the sex that devotes more biological time and energy to reproduction than the alternative sex. So you see that even at the level of sperm and egg, because the egg has a volume that is multiple thousands of times larger than the sperm. And even at that level, there’s more resources being devoted to the difficult job of reproduction at the female level. And of course, women have a nine-month gestation period, which is very onerous, and then they They are charged with primary responsibility for infant caregiving, especially during the first year. And we know perfectly well that the differential burden of reproduction on women is such that single women who have a child are much more likely to descend into poverty. And the reason for that, at least in part, is, well, it’s actually very difficult to have a child. It’s a 40-hour-a-week job at minimum, and to add the necessity of working and providing on top of that means an 80-hour work week. So it isn’t obvious to me why the hypothesis that women would be motivated to redress that fundamental biological differential. I don’t understand why that would be an objectionable hypothesis, even from the feminist perspective. Doesn’t it just recognize that women are more at risk on the sexual and reproductive front? I mean, I recognize what you’re saying there. I guess what I would say is there are as many… First let me say, I think the whole field of evolutionary biology being presented to explain contemporary 21st century gender roles or expectations or norms is respectfully… I think it has almost no intellectual merit. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. Because you can… I mean, I’ve read the whole range of evolutionary biologists who are usually invoked, right? And they’re always tendentious, and they’re always talking about circumstances that no longer exist.