Joined: 02 Oct 2007 {Posts: 226 } Location: Seattle
Posted: Tue 23 Oct 2007 16:19 Post subject: Vintage Powell
Why Some Blacks Love the "One Drop" Myth
Written by A.D. Powell
Thursday, 04 November 1999
I'm convinced that 90% of the "black" devotion to a "one drop" myth against the face of all evidence to the contrary (obviously African-descended Latinos, Arabs, kinky-haired Jews, dark Italians, etc.) is based on sex rather than politics. The NAACP claims that they are afraid of losing numbers, but the fact is that there would be little change in the number of blacks if every NON-BLACK abandoned the "light-skinned black" charade and stopped pretending to be part of that "race."
What are these blacks afraid of? It seems to be an obsession with losing white breeding stock (a desire for "light-skinned babies" without an officially "white" spouse) and unofficially white "trophy wives" or potential wives. That is why the thought of "losing" females with obvious "white blood" drives some black-identified types insane.
I can tell you from personal experience that this country is full of crazy Negroes who send violent threats and insults to anyone who dares to suggest that they surrender their most precious genetic treasure - the "superior" genes and beauty of their hated but adored white "enemy." They tell stupid "white liberals" that they were "raped" during slavery. The real "rape" is going on today and the "rapists" are "black." They proclaim the right to force themselves on others, control their lives, and they don't give a damn about your consent. They want to take you against your will. What is that if not rape?
When American "blacks" as a group finally get some self-respect and stop believing in their own genetic "inferiority," they will drop their obsession with "one drop" myths, females with long hair, and "superior" white genes. Until then, too many of them happily proclaim their devotion to their "inferiority" as long as they can drag others down with them.
Posted: Tue 23 Oct 2007 18:31 Post subject: Re: Vintage Powell
LSGH wrote:
there would be little change in the number of blacks if every NON-BLACK abandoned the "light-skinned black" charade and stopped pretending to be part of that "race." What are these blacks afraid of? ...
It should not be necessary to point out that had the above criticism of self-identity been written by a member on this site, he/she would have been suspended. If LSGH had authored this himself, rather than merely posting A.D.'s essay from Interracial Voice of eight years ago, he would have been suspended for two weeks.
Last edited by fwsweet on Tue 23 Oct 2007 19:15; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Fri 26 Oct 2007 03:32 Post subject: Vintage Powell
"Interracial Voice" was a political advocacy web site in which any writer who expressed criticism of forced hypodescent was subjected to many wild threats and accusations by crazed persons who claimed a "black" or "African American" race/ethnicity.
If my blunt criticism of the common and often fanatical "black" American support for the "one drop" myth offends you, read the numerous "black" remarks that inspired those words. My opinion has not changed that the "black" (and "Mulatto elite") support for the ODR has its origins in a "racial" inferiority complex.
Posted: Fri 26 Oct 2007 11:51 Post subject: Re: Vintage Powell
Powell wrote:
"Interracial Voice" was a political advocacy web site in which any writer who expressed criticism of forced hypodescent was subjected to many wild threats and accusations by crazed persons who claimed a "black" or "African American" race/ethnicity.
If my blunt criticism of the common and often fanatical "black" American support for the "one drop" myth offends you, read the numerous "black" remarks that inspired those words. My opinion has not changed that the "black" (and "Mulatto elite") support for the ODR has its origins in a "racial" inferiority complex.
May I offer you another theory, that the ODR denotes a strong brother and sisterhood and has nothing to do with evil and envy. More today but has it has also been in the past...immediate family members come out different skin colors. One woman may have children by different fathers, or as in the case of my family of origin, one father had children by three different women. Therefore if I am brown or dark brown and my brother or half brother is light in tone...the blood that binds us may be less than the mutual household, upbringing and parent.
How could I as a brown person with a light toned biological brother not see similarly toned people the same way? (considering that the culture you are raised in emphasizes brother and sisterhood)
Posted: Fri 26 Oct 2007 12:03 Post subject: Re: Vintage Powell
Monica wrote:
May I offer you another theory, that the ODR denotes a strong brother and sisterhood and has nothing to do with evil and envy. More today but has it has also been in the past...immediate family members come out different skin colors. One woman may have children by different fathers, or as in the case of my family of origin, one father had children by three different women. Therefore if I am brown or dark brown and my brother or half brother is light in tone...the blood that binds us may be less than the mutual household, upbringing and parent.
But all of that applies equally to a Puerto Rican family seeing all other Puerto Ricans as Puerto Ricans, or to a Cockney seeing other Cockneys as kin. It ignores the central and world-unique fact of the U.S. ODR. That central fact is the involuntary attribution of group membership to another person based on the belief that the target has distant biological ancestry of a specific origin (sub-saharan Africa). The ODR is NOT based on shared culture (as Monica implies). It is NOT based on kinship (as Monica imples) it is NOT based on commonality of ethnic self-identity (as Monica implies). In fact, it is based entirely upon the belief that the target has distant sub-Saharan ancestry and it explicitly ignore's the target's protestations that they reject the label.
Monica wrote:
How could I as a brown person with a light toned biological brother not see similarly toned people the same way? (considering that the culture you are raised in emphasizes brother and sisterhood)
I do not know how to stop Monica from imposing her prejudices upon others, merely because of their skin-tone. Nervertheless, Monica would be wise to consider that if she found it irrestistible to express her kinship with a dark Puerto Rican or Dominican merely because of their ancestry, they might resent her overt racism.
Posted: Fri 26 Oct 2007 12:51 Post subject: Re: Vintage Powell
fwsweet wrote:
Monica wrote:
May I offer you another theory, that the ODR denotes a strong brother and sisterhood and has nothing to do with evil and envy. More today but has it has also been in the past...immediate family members come out different skin colors. One woman may have children by different fathers, or as in the case of my family of origin, one father had children by three different women. Therefore if I am brown or dark brown and my brother or half brother is light in tone...the blood that binds us may be less than the mutual household, upbringing and parent.
But all of that applies equally to a Puerto Rican family seeing all other Puerto Ricans as Puerto Ricans, or to a Cockney seeing other Cockneys as kin. It ignores the central and world-unique fact of the U.S. ODR. That central fact is the involuntary attribution of group membership to another person based on the belief that the target has distant biological ancestry of a specific origin (sub-saharan Africa). The ODR is NOT based on shared culture (as Monica implies). It is NOT based on kinship (as Monica imples) it is NOT based on commonality of ethnic self-identity (as Monica implies). In fact, it is based entirely upon the belief that the target has distant sub-Saharan ancestry and it explicitly ignore's the target's protestations that they reject the label.
Monica wrote:
How could I as a brown person with a light toned biological brother not see similarly toned people the same way? (considering that the culture you are raised in emphasizes brother and sisterhood)
I do not know how to stop Monica from imposing her prejudices upon others, merely because of their skin-tone. Nervertheless, Monica would be wise to consider that if she found it irrestistible to express her kinship with a dark Puerto Rican or Dominican merely because of their ancestry, they might resent her overt racism.
Okay...this debate is so hard cause, 1st-I am not trying intentionally to "p-ss you off"...but there seems to be something generational and regional as to why my vision is so different from yours...so with that said let me answer your post.
I've spent going in 8 years ina mostly puerto-rican neighborhood. I do remember you said you have little knowledge of this urban community but I can post some stats, the physical areas in Philadelphia that are primarily inhabited by Puerto -rican is pretty big... There seems to be an equal phenom amongst Puerto ricans as the application of ODR by Blacks....
Hopefully this will not get confusing...In Kensington (I don't know abt any other Puerto rican community)...a puerto-rican who just got here in Philly and knows no English is called a "hick", Because I employ alot of young puerto rican women at the daycare, evidently a "hick" is not a desirable boyfr to a second generation born Puerto rican girl.
I employed a mother daughter team, mother with a puerto rican surname, born in the US to at least one parent of Puerto rican decent...daughter in her 20's married to a black man her children have the classic Zahire and Jamal type names, even though these kids do not seem to be the children of this black man...My mom's boyfr of over 10 years Mr. V...born here but with some connection to puerto rico...and two daycare families born here for more than two generations (both parents)in these instances when I've asked them about things that seem uniquely "puerto rican"..they always "deny" their puerto rican heritage...with quotes like "i dunno, I don't speak spanish and neither did my mom" or they look at me and say "I grew up in West Philly" or "I grew up in South Philly" with an intonation that implies "I" grew up or share the same culture with "you".
Now those people that have assimalated into African American culture over several generations, My question is, Are they still "puerto-ricans" with denotes the physical region of the world their ancestor came from...and not their culture or race....
Posted: Fri 26 Oct 2007 13:02 Post subject: Re: Vintage Powell
Monica wrote:
I've spent going in 8 years ina mostly puerto-rican neighborhood. ... My question is, Are they still "puerto-ricans" with denotes the physical region of the world their ancestor came from...and not their culture or race....
You misunderstand. When I referred to Cockneys, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans I was not talking about people born in the U.S. who self-identify ethnically as Cockneys, Puerto Ricans, or Dominicans due to surname or ancestry. I was talking about the inhabitants of East End London, of the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, and of the half-island of the Dominican Republic.
As you say, many of the grandchildren of assimilated immigrant ancestors adopt the dichotomous racialism unique to the United States, complete with hypodescent and its most extreme manifestation, the ODR. I understand that U.S. dichotomous racialism, with all of its bizarre manifestations, may seem perfectly reasonable and natural to you. I am simply trying to point out that it is unique to the inhabitants of the United States, that it is seen as pathological to people from other countries, and that if you try to impose it involuntarily upon someone of multiracial ancestry who is not an American, they will probably resent it.
FWIW, I am writing these words from a hotel room in Santurce, Puerto Rico.
Posted: Thu 08 Nov 2007 15:54 Post subject: Re: Vintage Powell
ADPowell: What are these blacks afraid of? It seems to be an obsession with losing white breeding stock (a desire for "light-skinned babies" without an officially "white" spouse) and unofficially white "trophy wives" or potential wives. That is why the thought of "losing" females with obvious "white blood" drives some black-identified types insane.
I hear and partially agree with some thoughts surrounding this. The ODR probably does add fire to some of this. But we have to remember that many of these 'blacks'/AA's are mixed race men. From images that I haves seen 50% or more of the NAACP is mixed and definately light skinned.
The argument has to be looked at from both perspectives. Not just black men desiring light skinned women. There are many 'light skinned' men who date women darker than themselves mixed or not.
Also I remember a conversation with Javier back in the ODR yahoo group about 'sexual partner selection' and that a lot of it falls back on the female, not the persuing male. So if 'non mixed' black/AA men are hooking up with 'light skinned' mixed(AA descendant women) there is a strong possibility that it's the women doing the choosing. That possibly these lighter skinned women mixed race women find these men attractive and desireable.
The Nubile darker skinned man weither unmixed or mixed is considered a high on the attraction chart.
visually Mixed darker skinned men: model Tyson Beckford, Denzel Washington
visually unmixed darker skinned men: Michael Jordan, Taye Diggs
women of all ethnic backgrounds find these guys 'sexually attractive'
Holding a poster against racial bias in Mississippi are four of the most active leaders in the NAACP movement, from left: Henry L. Moon, director of public relations; Roy Wilkins, executive secretary; Herbert Hill, labor secretary, and Thurgood Marshall, special counsel / World Telegram & Sun photo by Al. Ravenna.
http://www.educationupdate.com/archives/2005/May/Assets/SPOT-NAACP3.jpg (L to R) Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY), 15th Congressional District; Barbara Richards, Chair of the NAACP NYC ACT-SO Workshop Committee; Percy E. Sutton, Chairman Emeritus, Inner City Broadcasting Corporation; and Anton Tomlinson, Executive Director and Cofounder of NAACP NYC ACT-SO; at the 18th Annual NAACP NYC ACT-SO “Olympics of the Mind” Awards Ceremony, April 25, 2005 at Con Edison headquarters in Manhattan.[/img]
I hear and partially agree with some thoughts surrounding this. The ODR probably does add fire to some of this. But we have to remember that many of these 'blacks'/AA's are mixed race men. From images that I haves seen 50% or more of the NAACP is mixed and definately light skinned.
The argument has to be looked at from both perspectives. Not just black men desiring light skinned women. There are many 'light skinned' men who date women darker than themselves mixed or not.
Also I remember a conversation with Javier back in the ODR yahoo group about 'sexual partner selection' and that a lot of it falls back on the female, not the persuing male. So if 'non mixed' black/AA men are hooking up with 'light skinned' mixed(AA descendant women) there is a strong possibility that it's the women doing the choosing. That possibly these lighter skinned women mixed race women find these men attractive and desireable.
The Nubile darker skinned man weither unmixed or mixed is considered a high on the attraction chart.
visually Mixed darker skinned men: model Tyson Beckford, Denzel Washington
visually unmixed darker skinned men: Michael Jordan, Taye Diggs
women of all ethnic backgrounds find these guys 'sexually attractive'
The problem with A.D.'s theory from my perspective is not only the multigenerational impact of what's she'd call "mixed" and "unmixed" Blacks having children. What do you suppose the children of a lightskinned parent and a darkskinned parent look like? And who do these children prefer as partners? How do their children look? So on and so forth from the 1800s to 2007. Wouldn't the A-A population look somewhat different if this preference (assuming it is accurate) is affecting real preferences? At some point we should acknowledge that the proliferation of medium to dark Blacks who are mixed over generations is unlikely to reflect a preference for lightskinned Blacks who are "held hostage" by what A.D. might call "real Blacks" for their genes. I just really find this logic asinine when you look beyond the media images of video girls and one-off celebrity relationships and start looking at Black families and children.
The second problem I have is the inherent gender bias in equating "Blacks" with "Black men" with a fetish for light skin. I'm having a Sojourner Truth moment and asking "ain't a Black woman also Black?" And if so, what are her preferences in a mate? It's clear from demographic data on cross-color line marriage and Black endogamy rates that Black women prefer to marry (or procreate outside of marriage to be blunt about it) Black men. Again I ask, what do these children look like if we assume that lightskinned Black men are not preferred?
This argument sounds good and it might resonate emotionally, especially after being exposed to vitriol by some Black folks (men, maybe?) hell-bent on preserving their ODR-based political power and media images in which visibily mixed lighter skinned women are showcased, but to me it is not supported with evidence and has no generation continuity expressed by a clear skin tone preference for either gender in mate selection. And even if there was, it would HAVE to be bi-directional to minimize the genetic impact of medium to darkskinned Black women who would also have to have an "obsession" with lighter skinned men. But what I hear over and over again is that they prefer darkskinned men (I'm also unconvinced on this point).
As Ty said, selection is a two-way street. Why no discussion about the "obsession" of lightskinned women for darkskinned men (are lightskinned women who choose to self-identify as Blacks simply afraid of losing their access to African breeding stock)? Why no consideration of the darkskinned women who are apparently not "obsessed" over but manage to keep being born and bearing more darkskinned women in some sort of magical process unrelated to physical attraction? Are they being "driven insane" by their inferiority vis a vis lightskinned mothers (but not lightskinned fathers...that NEVER happens )? I'm being facaetious but hopefully my point is clear.
I talked to my dad about this and he laughed for a good 5 minutes. This might be why he finds it funny: His mother is one of those lightskinned Black "hostages" (or trophy wife if you prefer) who married a man darker than she was. So what about her children? Three sons (all fairly light and married very dark women and produced medium to dark children. Her medium brown daughter married an extremely dark man and has an extremely dark child. One very lightskinned son has yet to marry or have children. Another tidbit: Grandma is the product of a mulatto father who looks 100% European and a mulatto mother who looks predominantly SSA. For good measure, her father was the product of a mulatto mother and a French (white) father. Without knowing what my Haitian mulatto ancestors looked like, but predicting that the miscegenation party got started between an African female and a European male, I believe a similar dissection of a representative sample of Afrodescended families located on the Black side of the U.S. color line would also not yield a clear trend in a preference for light skin in either gender. How could it, if descendants who look like me are what you end up with?
What I believe is that is that one day some researcher will discover that skin tone/phenotype preference has a genetic component, which will be a nice compliment to what we already know about the changes in which male/female physical characteristics are desired over time and how these preference differ between cultures.
I hear and partially agree with some thoughts surrounding this. The ODR probably does add fire to some of this. But we have to remember that many of these 'blacks'/AA's are mixed race men. From images that I haves seen 50% or more of the NAACP is mixed and definately light skinned.
The argument has to be looked at from both perspectives. Not just black men desiring light skinned women. There are many 'light skinned' men who date women darker than themselves mixed or not.
Also I remember a conversation with Javier back in the ODR yahoo group about 'sexual partner selection' and that a lot of it falls back on the female, not the persuing male. So if 'non mixed' black/AA men are hooking up with 'light skinned' mixed(AA descendant women) there is a strong possibility that it's the women doing the choosing. That possibly these lighter skinned women mixed race women find these men attractive and desireable.
The Nubile darker skinned man weither unmixed or mixed is considered a high on the attraction chart.
visually Mixed darker skinned men: model Tyson Beckford, Denzel Washington
visually unmixed darker skinned men: Michael Jordan, Taye Diggs
women of all ethnic backgrounds find these guys 'sexually attractive'
The problem with A.D.'s theory from my perspective is not only the multigenerational impact of what's she'd call "mixed" and "unmixed" Blacks having children. What do you suppose the children of a lightskinned parent and a darkskinned parent look like? And who do these children prefer as partners? How do their children look? So on and so forth from the 1800s to 2007. Wouldn't the A-A population look somewhat different if this preference (assuming it is accurate) is affecting real preferences? At some point we should acknowledge that the proliferation of medium to dark Blacks who are mixed over generations is unlikely to reflect a preference for lightskinned Blacks who are "held hostage" by what A.D. might call "real Blacks" for their genes. I just really find this logic asinine when you look beyond the media images of video girls and one-off celebrity relationships and start looking at Black families and children.
The second problem I have is the inherent gender bias in equating "Blacks" with "Black men" with a fetish for light skin. I'm having a Sojourner Truth moment and asking "ain't a Black woman also Black?" And if so, what are her preferences in a mate? It's clear from demographic data on cross-color line marriage and Black endogamy rates that Black women prefer to marry (or procreate outside of marriage to be blunt about it) Black men. Again I ask, what do these children look like if we assume that lightskinned Black men are not preferred?
This argument sounds good and it might resonate emotionally, especially after being exposed to vitriol by some Black folks (men, maybe?) hell-bent on preserving their ODR-based political power and media images in which visibily mixed lighter skinned women are showcased, but to me it is not supported with evidence and has no generation continuity expressed by a clear skin tone preference for either gender in mate selection. And even if there was, it would HAVE to be bi-directional to minimize the genetic impact of medium to darkskinned Black women who would also have to have an "obsession" with lighter skinned men. But what I hear over and over again is that they prefer darkskinned men (I'm also unconvinced on this point).
As Ty said, selection is a two-way street. Why no discussion about the "obsession" of lightskinned women for darkskinned men (are lightskinned women who choose to self-identify as Blacks simply afraid of losing their access to African breeding stock)? Why no consideration of the darkskinned women who are apparently not "obsessed" over but manage to keep being born and bearing more darkskinned women in some sort of magical process unrelated to physical attraction? Are they being "driven insane" by their inferiority vis a vis lightskinned mothers (but not lightskinned fathers...that NEVER happens )? I'm being facaetious but hopefully my point is clear.
I talked to my dad about this and he laughed for a good 5 minutes. This might be why he finds it funny: His mother is one of those lightskinned Black "hostages" (or trophy wife if you prefer) who married a man darker than she was. So what about her children? Three sons (all fairly light and married very dark women and produced medium to dark children. Her medium brown daughter married an extremely dark man and has an extremely dark child. One very lightskinned son has yet to marry or have children. Another tidbit: Grandma is the product of a mulatto father who looks 100% European and a mulatto mother who looks predominantly SSA. For good measure, her father was the product of a mulatto mother and a French (white) father. Without knowing what my Haitian mulatto ancestors looked like, but predicting that the miscegenation party got started between an African female and a European male, I believe a similar dissection of a representative sample of Afrodescended families located on the Black side of the U.S. color line would also not yield a clear trend in a preference for light skin in either gender. How could it, if descendants who look like me are what you end up with?
What I believe is that is that one day some researcher will discover that skin tone/phenotype preference has a genetic component, which will be a nice compliment to what we already know about the changes in which male/female physical characteristics are desired over time and how these preference differ between cultures.
Good points, but I feel most people marry those they can, not necessarily those they want (i.e settle for).
To prove this theory either way, I would like to see a study or some evidence on the 'mating habits' or marriages of the most highly selected groups of all - wealthy men and beautiful women.
It would appear that those of high wealth and/or beauty, really are the most advantageous as far as mate selection goes....
Let's examine who the rich and beautiful choose in American populations. I think this would prove either theory, perhaps.....
The biology of beauty. (Cover Story) Geoffrey Cowley.
Abstract: Recent research correlates physical attraction between human females and males to certain physical features
regardless of culture. Men and women are naturally drawn to symmetry in face and body. Men innately prefer women with a
small waist-to-hip ratio, a physical indicator of child-bearing ability.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT Newsweek Inc. 1996
WHEN IT COMES TO CHOOSING A MATE, A FEMALE PENGUIN knows better than to fall for the first creep who
pulls up and honks. She holds out for the fittest suitor available--which in Antarctica means one chubby enough to spend
several weeks sitting on newly hatched eggs without starving to death. The Asian jungle bird Gallus gallus is just as choosy.
Males in that species sport gaily colored head combs and feathers, which lose their luster if the bird is invaded by parasites. By
favoring males with bright ornaments, a hen improves her odds of securing a mate (and bearing offspring) with strong resistance
to disease. For female scorpion flies, beauty is less about size or color than about symmetry. Females favor suitors who have
well-matched wings--and with good reason. Studies show they're the most adept at killing prey and at defending their catch
from competitors. There's no reason to think that any of these creatures understands its motivations, but there's a clear pattern
to their preferences. "Throughout the animal world," says University of New Mexico ecologist Randy Thornhill, "attractiveness
certifies biological quality."
Is our corner of the animal world different? That looks count in human affairs is beyond dispute. Studies have shown that
people considered attractive fare better with parents and teachers, make more friends and more money, and have better sex
with more (and more beautiful) partners. Every year, 400,000 Americans, including 48,000 men, flock to cosmetic surgeons.
In other lands, people bedeck themselves with scars, lip plugs or bright feathers. "Every culture is a `beauty culture'," says
Nancy Etcoff, a neuroscientist who is studying human attraction at the MIT Media Lab and writing a book on the subject. "I
defy anyone to point to a society, any time in history or any place in the world, that wasn't preoccupied with beauty." The
high-minded may dismiss our preening and ogling as distractions from things that matter, but the stakes can be enormous.
"Judging beauty involves looking at another person," says University of Texas psychologist Devendra Singh, "and figuring out
whether you want your children to carry that person's genes."
It's widely assumed that ideals of beauty vary from era to era and from culture to culture. But a harvest of new research is
confounding that idea. Studies have established that people everywhere--regardless of race, class or age--share a sense of
what's attractive. And though no one knows just how our minds translate the sight of a face or a body into rapture, new studies
suggest that we judge each other by rules we're not even aware of. We may consciously admire Kate Moss's legs or Arnold's
biceps, but we're also viscerally attuned to small variations in the size and symmetry of facial bones and the placement of weight
on the body.
This isn't to say that our preferences are purely innate--or that beauty is all that matters in life. Most of us manage to find jobs,
attract mates and bear offspring despite our physical imperfections. Nor should anyone assume that the new beauty research
justifies the biases it illuminates. Our beautylust is often better suited to the Stone Age than to the Information Age; the qualities
we find alluring may be powerful emblems of health, fertility and resistance to disease, but they say nothing about people's
moral worth. The human weakness for what Thornhill calls "biological quality"causes no end of pain and injustice.
Unfortunately, that doesn't make it any less real.
BALANCING ACT
One key to physical attractiveness is symmetry; humans, like other species, show a strong preference for individuals whose
right and left sides are well matched. Denzel Washington's face, below, is almost completely symmetrical. Lyle Lovett's, on the
right, is not--as revealed by a computerized image made up of his left side repeated on the right.
NO ONE SUGGESTS THAT points of attraction never vary. Rolls of fat can signal high status in a poor society or low status
in a rich one, and lip plugs go over better in the Kalahari than they do in Kansas. But local fashions seem to rest on a bedrock
of shared preferences. You don't have to be Italian to find Michelangelo's David better looking than, say, Alfonse D'Amato.
When British researchers asked women from England, China and India to rate pictures of Greek men, the women responded
as if working from the same crib sheet. And when researchers at the University of Louisville showed a diverse collection of
faces to whites, Asians and Latinos from 13 countries, the subjects' ethnic background scarcely affected their preferences.
To a skeptic, those findings suggest only that Western movies and magazines have overrun the world. But scientists have found
at least one group that hasn't been exposed to this bias. In a series of groundbreaking experiments, psychologist Judith Langlois
of the University of Texas, Austin, has shown that even infants share a sense of what's attractive. In the late '80s, Langlois
started placing 3- and 6-month-old babies in front of a screen and showing them pairs of facial photographs. Each pair
included one considered attractive by adult judges and one considered unattractive. In the first study, she found that the infants
gazed significantly longer at "attractive" white female faces than at "unattractive" ones. Since then, she has repeated the drill
using white male faces, black female faces, even the faces of other babies, and the same pattern always emerges. "These kids
don't read Vogue or watch TV," Langlois says. "They haven't been touched by the media. Yet they make the same judgments
as adults."
What, then, is beauty made of? What are the innate rules we follow in sizing each other up? We're obviously wired to find
robust health a prettier sight than infirmity, "All animals are attracted to other animals that are healthy, that are clean by their
standards and that show signs of competence," says Rutgers University anthropologist Helen Fisher. As far as anyone knows,
there isn't a village on earth where skin lesions, head lice and rotting teeth count as beauty aids. But the rules get subtler than
that. Like scorpion flies, we love symmetry. And though we generally favor average features over unusual ones, the people we
find extremely beautiful share certain exceptional qualities.
WHEN RANDY THORNhill started measuring the wings of Japanese scorpion flies six years ago, he wasn't much concerned
with the orgasms and infidelities of college students. But sometimes one thing leads to another. Biologists have long used
bilateral symmetry--the extent to which a creature's right and left sides match--to gauge what's known as developmental
stability. Given ideal growing conditions, paired features such as wings, ears, eyes and feet would come out matching perfectly.
But pollution, disease and other hazards can disrupt development. As a result, the least resilient individuals tend to be the most
lopsided. In chronicling the scorpion flies' daily struggles, Thornhill found that the bugs with the most symmetrical wings fared
best in the competition for food and mates. To his amazement, females preferred symmetrical males even when they were
hidden from view; evidently, their smells are more attractive. And when researchers started noting similar trends in other
species, Thornhill turned his attention to our own.
Working with psychologist Steven Gangestad, he set about measuring the body symmetry of hundreds of college-age men and
women. By adding up right-left disparities in seven measurements--the breadth of the feet, ankles, hands, wrists and elbows, as
well as the breadth and length of the ears--the researchers scored each subject's overall body asymmetry. Then they had the
person fill out a confidential questionnaire covering everything from temperament to sexual behavior, and set about looking for
connections. They weren't disappointed. In a 1994 study, they found that the most symmetrical males had started having sex
three to four years earlier than their most lopsided brethren. For both men and women, greater symmetry predicted a larger
number of past sex partners.
That was just the beginning. From what they knew about other species, Thornhill and Gangestad predicted that women would
be more sexually responsive to symmetrical men, and that men would exploit that advantage. To date, their findings support
both suspicions. Last year they surveyed 86 couples and found that women with highly symmetrical partners were more than
twice as likely to climax during intercourse (an event that may foster conception by ushering sperm into the uterus) than those
with low-symmetry partners. And in separate surveys, Gangestad and Thornhill have found that, compared with regular Joes,
extremely symmetrical men are less attentive to their partners and more likely to cheat on them. Women showed no such
tendency.
It's hard to imagine that we even notice the differences between people's elbows, let alone stake our love lives on them. No
one carries calipers into a singles bar. So why do these measurements predict so much? Because, says Thornhill, people with
symmetrical elbows tend to have "a whole suite of attractive features." His findings suggest that besides having attractive (and
symmetrical) faces, men with symmetrical bodies are typically larger, more muscular and more athletic than their peers, and
more dominant in personality. In a forthcoming study, researchers at the University of Michigan find evidence that facial
symmetry is also associated with health. In analyzing diaries kept by 100 students over a two-month period, they found that the
least symmetrical had the most physical complaints, from insomnia to nasal congestion, and reported more anger, jealousy and
withdrawal. In light of all Thornhill and Gangestad's findings, you can hardly blame them.
IF WE DID GO COURTING WITH calipers, symmetry isn't all we would measure. As we study each other in the street, the
office or the gym, our beauty radars pick up a range of signals. Oddly enough, one of the qualities shared by attractive people
is their averageness. Researchers discovered more than a century ago that if they superimposed photographs of several faces,
the resulting composite was usually better looking than any of the images that went into it. Scientists can now average faces
digitally, and it's still one of the surest ways to make them more attractive. From an evolutionary perspective, a preference for
extreme normality makes sense. As Langlois has written, "Individuals with average population characteristics should be less
likely to carry harmful genetic mutations."
So far, so good. But here's the catch: while we may find average faces attractive, the faces we find most beautiful are not
average. As New Mexico State University psychologist Victor Johnston has shown, they're extreme. To track people's
preferences, Johnston uses a computer program called FacePrints. Turn it on, and it generates 30 facial images, all male or all
female, which you rate on a 1-9 beauty scale. The program then "breeds" the top-rated face with one of the others to create
two digital offspring, which replace the lowest-rated faces in the pool. By rating round after round of new faces, you create an
ever more beautiful population. The game ends when you award some visage a perfect 10. (If you have access to the World
Wide Web, you can take part in a collective face-breeding experiment by visiting http://www-psych.nmsu.edu/^vic/faceprints/.)
For Johnston, the real fun starts after the judging is finished. By collecting people's ideal faces and comparing them to average
faces, he can measure the distance between fantasy and reality. As a rule, he finds that an ideal female has a higher forehead
than an average one, as well as fuller lips, a shorter jaw and a smaller chin and nose. Indeed, the ideal 25-year-old woman, as
configured by participants in a 1993 study, had a 14-year-old's abundant lips and an 11-year-old's delicate jaw. Because her
lower face was so small, she also had relatively prominent eyes and cheekbones.
The participants in that study were all college kids from New Mexico, but researchers have since shown that British and
Japanese students express the same bias. And if there are lingering doubts about the depth of that bias, Johnston's latest
findings should dispel them. In a forthcoming study, he reports that male volunteers not only consciously prefer women with
small lower faces but show marked rises in brain activity when looking at pictures of them. And though Johnston has yet to
publish specs on the ideal male, his unpublished findings suggest that a big jaw, a strong chin and an imposing brow are as
prized in a man's face as their opposites are in a woman's.
Few of us ever develop the heart-melting proportions of a FacePrints fantasy. And if it's any consolation, beauty is not an
all-or-nothing proposition. Madonna became a sex symbol despite her strong nose, and Melanie Griffith's strong jaw hasn't
kept her out of the movies. Still, special things have a way of happening to people who approximate the ideal. We pay them
huge fees to stand on windblown bluffs and stare into the distance. And past studies have found that square-jawed males not
only start having sex earlier than their peers but attain higher rank in the military.
None of this surprises evolutionary psychologists. They note that the facial features we obsess over are precisely the ones that
diverge in males and females during puberty, as floods of sex hormones wash us into adulthood. And they reason that hormonal
abundance would have been a good clue to mate value in the hunter-gatherer world where our preferences evolved. The tiny
jaw that men favor in women is essentially a monument to estrogen--and, obliquely, to fertility. No one claims that jaws reveal a
woman's odds of getting pregnant. But like breasts, they imply that she could.
Likewise, the heavy lower face that women favor in men is a visible record of the surge in androgens (testosterone and other
male sex hormones) that turns small boys into 200-pound spear-throwers. An oversized jaw is biologically expensive, for the
androgens required to produce it tend to compromise the immune system. But from a female's perspective, that should make
jaw size all the more revealing. Evolutionists think of androgen-based features as "honest advertisements" of disease resistance.
If a male can afford them without falling sick, the thinking goes, he must have a superior immune system in the first place.
No one has tracked the immune responses of men with different jawlines to see if these predictions bear out (Thornhill has
proposed a study that would involve comparing volunteers' responses to a vaccine). Nor is it clear whether penis size figures
into these equations. Despite what everyone thinks he knows on the subject, scientists haven't determined that women have
consistent preferences one way or the other.
BODY LANGUAGE
When men are asked to rank figures with various weights and waist-hip ratios (0.7 to 1.0), they favor a pronounced hourglass
shape. The highest-ranked figures are N7, N8 and U7 (in that order). The lowest ranked is O10.
OUR FACES ARE OUR SIGNATURES, but when it comes to raw sex appeal, a nice chin is no match for a perfectly
sculpted torso--especially from a man's perspective. Studies from around the world have found that while both sexes value
appearance, men place more stock in it than women. And if there are social reasons for that imbalance, there are also
biological ones. Just about any male over 14 can produce sperm, but a woman's ability to bear children depends on her age
and hormone levels. Female fertility declines by two thirds between the ages of 20 and 44, and it's spent by 54. So while both
sexes may eyeball potential partners, says Donald Symons, an anthropologist at the University of California in Santa Barbara,
"a larger proportion of a woman's mate value can be detected from visual cues." Mounting evidence suggests there is no better
cue than the relative contours of her waist and hips.
Before puberty and after menopause, females have essentially the same waistlines as males. But during puberty, while boys are
amassing the bone and muscle of paleolithic hunters, a typical girl gains nearly 35 pounds of so-called reproductive fat around
the hips and thighs. Those pounds contain roughly the 80,000 calories needed to sustain a pregnancy, and the curves they
create provide a gauge of reproductive potential. "You have to get very close to see the details of a woman's face," says
Devendra Singh, the University of Texas psychologist. "But you can see the shape of her body from 500 feet, and it says more
about mate value."
Almost anything that interferes with fertility--obesity, malnutrition, pregnancy, meno-pause--changes a woman's shape. Healthy,
fertile women typically have waist-hip ratios of .6 to .8, meaning their waists are 60 to 80 percent the size of their hips,
whatever their actual weight. To take one familiar example, a 36-25-36 figure would have a WHR of .7. Many women outside
this range are healthy and capable of having children, of course. But as researchers in the Netherlands discovered in a 1993
study, even a slight increase in waist size relative to hip size can signal reproductive problems. Among 500 women who were
attempting in vitro fertilization, the odds of conceiving during any given cycle declined by 30 percent with every 10 percent
increase in WHR. In other words, a woman with a WHR of .9 was nearly a third less likely to get pregnant than one with a
WHR of .8, regardless of her age or weight. From an evolutionary perspective, it's hard to imagine men not responding to such
a revealing signal. And as Singh has shown repeatedly, they do.
Defining a universal standard of body beauty once seemed a fool's dream; common sense said that if spindly Twiggy and
Rubens's girthy Three Graces could all excite admiration, then nearly anyone could. But if our ideals of size change from one
time and place to the next, our taste in shapes is amazingly stable. A low waist-hip ratio is one of the few features that a long,
lean Barbie doll shares with a plump, primitive fertility icon. And Singh's findings suggest the fashion won't change any time
soon. In one study, he compiled the measurements of Playboy centerfolds and Miss America winners from 1923 to 1990.
Their bodies got measurably leaner over the decades, yet their waist-hip ratios stayed within the narrow range of .68 to .72.
(Even Twiggy was no tube; at the peak of her fame in the 1960s, the British model had a WHR of .73.)
The same pattern holds when Singh generates line drawings of different female figures and asks male volunteers to rank them
for attractiveness, sexiness, health and fertility. He has surveyed men of various backgrounds, nationalities and ages. And
whether the judges are 8-year-olds or 85-year-olds, their runaway favorite is a figure of average weight with a .7 WHR. Small
wonder that when women were liberated from corsets and bustles, they took up girdles, wide belts and other waist-reducing
contraptions. Last year alone, American women's outlays for shape-enhancing garments topped a half-billion dollars.
FACIAL FANTASIES
As a rule, average faces are more attractive than unusual ones. But when people are asked to develop ideal faces on a
computer, they tend to exaggerate certain qualities.
TO SOME CRITICS, THE search for a biology of beauty looks like a thinly veiled political program. "It's the fantasy life of
American men being translated into genetics," says poet and social critic Katha Pollitt. "You can look at any feature of modern
life and make up a story about why it's genetic." In truth, says Northwestern University anthropologist Micaela di Leonardo,
attraction is a complicated social phenomenon, not just a hard-wired response. If attraction were governed by the dictates of
baby-making, she says, the men of ancient Greece wouldn't have found young boys so alluring, and gay couples wouldn't
crowd modern sidewalks. "People make decisions about sexual and marital partners inside complex networks of friends and
relatives," she says. "Human beings cannot be reduced to DNA packets."
Homosexuality is hard to explain as a biological adaptation. So is stamp collecting. But no one claims that human beings are
mindless automatons, blindly striving to replicate our genes. We pursue countless passions that have no direct bearing on
survival. If we're sometimes attracted to people who can't help us reproduce, that doesn't mean human preferences lack any
coherent design. A radio used as a doorstop is still a radio. The beauty mavens' mission--and that of evolutionary psychology in
general--is not to explain everything people do but to unmask our biases and make sense of them. "Our minds have evolved to
generate pleasurable experiences in response to some things while ignoring other things," says Johnston. "That's why sugar
tastes sweet, and that's why we find some people more attractive than others."
The new beauty research does have troubling implications. First, it suggests that we're designed to care about looks, even
though looks aren't earned and reveal nothing about character. As writer Ken Siman observes in his new book, "The Beauty
Trip," "the kind [of beauty] that inspires awe, lust, and increased jeans sales cannot be evenly distributed. In a society where
everything is supposed to be within reach, this is painful to face." From acne to birth defects, we wear our imperfections as
thorns, for we know the world sees them and takes note.
A second implication is that sexual stereotypes are not strictly artificial. At some level, it seems, women are designed to favor
dominant males over meek ones, and men are designed to value women for youthful qualities that time quickly steals. Given the
slow pace of evolutionary change, our innate preferences aren't likely to fade in the foreseeable future. And if they exist for
what were once good biological reasons, that doesn't make them any less nettlesome. "Men often forgo their health, their
safety, their spare time and their family life in order to get rank," says Helen Fisher, the Rutgers anthropologist, "because
unconsciously, they know that rank wins women." And all too often, those who can trade cynically on their rank do.
But do we have to indulge every appetite that natural selection has preserved in us? Of course not. "I don't know any scientist
who seriously thinks you can look to nature for moral guidance," says Thornhill. Even the fashion magazines would provide a
better compass.
Posted: Thu 08 Nov 2007 22:51 Post subject: the emotional response to the "light-skinned issue"
sagascend wrote:
Tyrone wrote:
I hear and partially agree with some thoughts surrounding this. The ODR probably does add fire to some of this. But we have to remember that many of these 'blacks'/AA's are mixed race men. From images that I haves seen 50% or more of the NAACP is mixed and definately light skinned.
The argument has to be looked at from both perspectives. Not just black men desiring light skinned women. There are many 'light skinned' men who date women darker than themselves mixed or not.
Also I remember a conversation with Javier back in the ODR yahoo group about 'sexual partner selection' and that a lot of it falls back on the female, not the persuing male. So if 'non mixed' black/AA men are hooking up with 'light skinned' mixed(AA descendant women) there is a strong possibility that it's the women doing the choosing. That possibly these lighter skinned women mixed race women find these men attractive and desireable.
The Nubile darker skinned man weither unmixed or mixed is considered a high on the attraction chart.
visually Mixed darker skinned men: model Tyson Beckford, Denzel Washington
visually unmixed darker skinned men: Michael Jordan, Taye Diggs
women of all ethnic backgrounds find these guys 'sexually attractive'
The problem with A.D.'s theory from my perspective is not only the multigenerational impact of what's she'd call "mixed" and "unmixed" Blacks having children. What do you suppose the children of a lightskinned parent and a darkskinned parent look like? And who do these children prefer as partners? How do their children look? So on and so forth from the 1800s to 2007. Wouldn't the A-A population look somewhat different if this preference (assuming it is accurate) is affecting real preferences? At some point we should acknowledge that the proliferation of medium to dark Blacks who are mixed over generations is unlikely to reflect a preference for lightskinned Blacks who are "held hostage" by what A.D. might call "real Blacks" for their genes. I just really find this logic asinine when you look beyond the media images of video girls and one-off celebrity relationships and start looking at Black families and children.
The second problem I have is the inherent gender bias in equating "Blacks" with "Black men" with a fetish for light skin. I'm having a Sojourner Truth moment and asking "ain't a Black woman also Black?" And if so, what are her preferences in a mate? It's clear from demographic data on cross-color line marriage and Black endogamy rates that Black women prefer to marry (or procreate outside of marriage to be blunt about it) Black men. Again I ask, what do these children look like if we assume that lightskinned Black men are not preferred?
This argument sounds good and it might resonate emotionally, especially after being exposed to vitriol by some Black folks (men, maybe?) hell-bent on preserving their ODR-based political power and media images in which visibily mixed lighter skinned women are showcased, but to me it is not supported with evidence and has no generation continuity expressed by a clear skin tone preference for either gender in mate selection. And even if there was, it would HAVE to be bi-directional to minimize the genetic impact of medium to darkskinned Black women who would also have to have an "obsession" with lighter skinned men. But what I hear over and over again is that they prefer darkskinned men (I'm also unconvinced on this point).
As Ty said, selection is a two-way street. Why no discussion about the "obsession" of lightskinned women for darkskinned men (are lightskinned women who choose to self-identify as Blacks simply afraid of losing their access to African breeding stock)? Why no consideration of the darkskinned women who are apparently not "obsessed" over but manage to keep being born and bearing more darkskinned women in some sort of magical process unrelated to physical attraction? Are they being "driven insane" by their inferiority vis a vis lightskinned mothers (but not lightskinned fathers...that NEVER happens )? I'm being facaetious but hopefully my point is clear.
I talked to my dad about this and he laughed for a good 5 minutes. This might be why he finds it funny: His mother is one of those lightskinned Black "hostages" (or trophy wife if you prefer) who married a man darker than she was. So what about her children? Three sons (all fairly light and married very dark women and produced medium to dark children. Her medium brown daughter married an extremely dark man and has an extremely dark child. One very lightskinned son has yet to marry or have children. Another tidbit: Grandma is the product of a mulatto father who looks 100% European and a mulatto mother who looks predominantly SSA. For good measure, her father was the product of a mulatto mother and a French (white) father. Without knowing what my Haitian mulatto ancestors looked like, but predicting that the miscegenation party got started between an African female and a European male, I believe a similar dissection of a representative sample of Afrodescended families located on the Black side of the U.S. color line would also not yield a clear trend in a preference for light skin in either gender. How could it, if descendants who look like me are what you end up with?
What I believe is that is that one day some researcher will discover that skin tone/phenotype preference has a genetic component, which will be a nice compliment to what we already know about the changes in which male/female physical characteristics are desired over time and how these preference differ between cultures.
Do you deny that there is a contradiction in constantly raging about all the obviously mixed-race people being descended from "white rapists" while at the same time taking great pains to claim the descendants of these alleged "rapists" (frequently against their will), marry their daughters and granddaughters, and get their "rapist blood" (As Malcolm X called it) into their children? Well, that is the situation we saw constantly at IV. I've seen it in many biolgraphical and autobiographical books where the contradiction is obvious but accepted.
Maya's talk of matings and marriages between "light-skinned" people and others does not disprove my original statement. The term "light-skinned" has no real meaning. I've heard the term used to describe people who vary from Nordic blond to a nearly Nigerian phenotype. We are talking about people with VERY different phenotypes, genotypes, opportunities and social conditions.
Posted: Fri 09 Nov 2007 14:27 Post subject: Re: the emotional response to the "light-skinned issue"
Powell wrote:
sagascend wrote:
Tyrone wrote:
I hear and partially agree with some thoughts surrounding this. The ODR probably does add fire to some of this. But we have to remember that many of these 'blacks'/AA's are mixed race men. From images that I haves seen 50% or more of the NAACP is mixed and definately light skinned.
The argument has to be looked at from both perspectives. Not just black men desiring light skinned women. There are many 'light skinned' men who date women darker than themselves mixed or not.
Also I remember a conversation with Javier back in the ODR yahoo group about 'sexual partner selection' and that a lot of it falls back on the female, not the persuing male. So if 'non mixed' black/AA men are hooking up with 'light skinned' mixed(AA descendant women) there is a strong possibility that it's the women doing the choosing. That possibly these lighter skinned women mixed race women find these men attractive and desireable.
The Nubile darker skinned man weither unmixed or mixed is considered a high on the attraction chart.
visually Mixed darker skinned men: model Tyson Beckford, Denzel Washington
visually unmixed darker skinned men: Michael Jordan, Taye Diggs
women of all ethnic backgrounds find these guys 'sexually attractive'
The problem with A.D.'s theory from my perspective is not only the multigenerational impact of what's she'd call "mixed" and "unmixed" Blacks having children. What do you suppose the children of a lightskinned parent and a darkskinned parent look like? And who do these children prefer as partners? How do their children look? So on and so forth from the 1800s to 2007. Wouldn't the A-A population look somewhat different if this preference (assuming it is accurate) is affecting real preferences? At some point we should acknowledge that the proliferation of medium to dark Blacks who are mixed over generations is unlikely to reflect a preference for lightskinned Blacks who are "held hostage" by what A.D. might call "real Blacks" for their genes. I just really find this logic asinine when you look beyond the media images of video girls and one-off celebrity relationships and start looking at Black families and children.
The second problem I have is the inherent gender bias in equating "Blacks" with "Black men" with a fetish for light skin. I'm having a Sojourner Truth moment and asking "ain't a Black woman also Black?" And if so, what are her preferences in a mate? It's clear from demographic data on cross-color line marriage and Black endogamy rates that Black women prefer to marry (or procreate outside of marriage to be blunt about it) Black men. Again I ask, what do these children look like if we assume that lightskinned Black men are not preferred?
This argument sounds good and it might resonate emotionally, especially after being exposed to vitriol by some Black folks (men, maybe?) hell-bent on preserving their ODR-based political power and media images in which visibily mixed lighter skinned women are showcased, but to me it is not supported with evidence and has no generation continuity expressed by a clear skin tone preference for either gender in mate selection. And even if there was, it would HAVE to be bi-directional to minimize the genetic impact of medium to darkskinned Black women who would also have to have an "obsession" with lighter skinned men. But what I hear over and over again is that they prefer darkskinned men (I'm also unconvinced on this point).
As Ty said, selection is a two-way street. Why no discussion about the "obsession" of lightskinned women for darkskinned men (are lightskinned women who choose to self-identify as Blacks simply afraid of losing their access to African breeding stock)? Why no consideration of the darkskinned women who are apparently not "obsessed" over but manage to keep being born and bearing more darkskinned women in some sort of magical process unrelated to physical attraction? Are they being "driven insane" by their inferiority vis a vis lightskinned mothers (but not lightskinned fathers...that NEVER happens )? I'm being facaetious but hopefully my point is clear.
I talked to my dad about this and he laughed for a good 5 minutes. This might be why he finds it funny: His mother is one of those lightskinned Black "hostages" (or trophy wife if you prefer) who married a man darker than she was. So what about her children? Three sons (all fairly light and married very dark women and produced medium to dark children. Her medium brown daughter married an extremely dark man and has an extremely dark child. One very lightskinned son has yet to marry or have children. Another tidbit: Grandma is the product of a mulatto father who looks 100% European and a mulatto mother who looks predominantly SSA. For good measure, her father was the product of a mulatto mother and a French (white) father. Without knowing what my Haitian mulatto ancestors looked like, but predicting that the miscegenation party got started between an African female and a European male, I believe a similar dissection of a representative sample of Afrodescended families located on the Black side of the U.S. color line would also not yield a clear trend in a preference for light skin in either gender. How could it, if descendants who look like me are what you end up with?
What I believe is that is that one day some researcher will discover that skin tone/phenotype preference has a genetic component, which will be a nice compliment to what we already know about the changes in which male/female physical characteristics are desired over time and how these preference differ between cultures.
Do you deny that there is a contradiction in constantly raging about all the obviously mixed-race people being descended from "white rapists" while at the same time taking great pains to claim the descendants of these alleged "rapists" (frequently against their will), marry their daughters and granddaughters, and get their "rapist blood" (As Malcolm X called it) into their children? Well, that is the situation we saw constantly at IV. I've seen it in many biolgraphical and autobiographical books where the contradiction is obvious but accepted.
Maya's talk of matings and marriages between "light-skinned" people and others does not disprove my original statement. The term "light-skinned" has no real meaning. I've heard the term used to describe people who vary from Nordic blond to a nearly Nigerian phenotype. We are talking about people with VERY different phenotypes, genotypes, opportunities and social conditions.
Are you are attempting to cloud the the issue by feigning ignorance on a basic issue? Of course "light skinned" has no real meaning but neither does black. Ask any "black" child what colour they are and they will invariably answer "brown". If coming from a black or African American speaker the definition of the term "light skinned" is quite clear (no pun intended).
I have noticed that whenever a board member points out holes in the blanket statements that you attempt to portray as undeniable fact you either attempt to cloud the issue by introducing irrelevant information such as the above or ignore the issue entirely. Is it so hard to admit when a theory of yours is wrong?
Good points, but I feel most people marry those they can, not necessarily those they want (i.e settle for).
To prove this theory either way, I would like to see a study or some evidence on the 'mating habits' or marriages of the most highly selected groups of all - wealthy men and beautiful women.
It would appear that those of high wealth and/or beauty, really are the most advantageous as far as mate selection goes....
Let's examine who the rich and beautiful choose in American populations. I think this would prove either theory, perhaps.....
That goes both ways, people have fantasies, many American men (being exposed to Playboy bunnie images) would probably like to end up with one. Most don't.
I believe that men are predominately visually driven. And what he finds sexy could vary man to man, some the women could be supermodel fine but if she has busted feet, it won't work for him. I know a Puerto Rican girl who goes crazy if the guy has very sharp shaped eyebrows. The attracting factors vary from beautiful face to shapely hips and bottoms.
Women tend to go for other things first, not saying they don't notice or desire attractive men. Smooth voice, large hands, height [tall dark handsome] The article you posted did bring up some of this too and I also noticed it mentioned Denz
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)? I'm being facaetious but hopefully my point is clear.
