Age : Evolution would also instill an age preference. Human female fertility peaks in the early 20s, and so do assessments of female attractiveness. Between 1953 and 1990, the average age of playboy centerfold models was 21.3 years. Because men are fertile most of their adult lives, their attractiveness ratings remain relatively higher as their perceived age increases. Victor Johnson ” our feelings of beauty are exceptionally well turned to the age of maximum fertility.”
Considerable evidence has accumulated in recent years supporting the hypothesis that both facial and bodily physical attractiveness are health certifications and thus represent honest signals of phenotypic and genetic quality. Ellis and Donald Symons first proposed by Westermarck and the hypothesis that beauty connotes health later. There is no doubt, regarding all these variables, that beauty or attractiveness, are cognitive constructs in the eye of the beholder. Thus beauty, its signal values and cognitive processes are interlinked to a high degree.
The main aspect of my work presented here is the fact, that although different people might have different templates for beauty these templates underlie common construction principles. This also explains the high cultural and temporal variability of beauty standards. What we know is that mate selection criteria play a role in attractiveness ratings: females rate males as attractive who are dominant, males rate females as attractive who are healthy, receptive at the optimal age of reproduction and who promise high quality offspring. I will put forward that it is mainly “gender identification”: appearing as a “typical” male or a “typical” female in a certain environment will cause ratings as attractive. This means that sexually dimorphic traits are valued which signal youth. These traits then form the respective prototypes for the cognitive evaluation of attractiveness. In addition each theory of attractiveness has to take into account that a great deal of learning is involved. One of the conditions I posed at the beginning of this paper is the fact that “attractiveness” and “beauty” should be linked to reproductive success.
Human beauty has three components. In order of importance, there’s natural selection, which leads to the average face and the limited age rang. Then there’s sexual selection, which leads men, at least, to be attracted to exaggerated feminine traits like the small lower jaw and the fuller lips. Finally, there’s learning. It’s a fine-tuning mechanism that allows you to become even adapted to your environment and culture. It’s why one person can say “she is beautiful ” and the other can say ” she’s not quite right for me.”
Bibliography
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