Attractive Girls Union Refuses To Enter Into Talks With Mike Greenman

• A 54-year-old woman from Chicago has been charged with a hate crime for harassing a young Muslim woman in a grocery store. Valerie Kenney reportedly made loud references to the Fort Hood shootings before grabbing and pulling Amal Abusumaya's headscarf. If convicted, Kenney faces up to three years in prison and a $25,000 fine. •  A woman accused with trying to exhort money from former Knicks coach Rick Pitino has been charged for falsely claiming Pitino raped her. The FBI says there is no evidence that a rape occurred, although he admits to having consensual sex with the woman. • A new analysis of several different studies has found that women who quit smoking while in treatment for weight control fare better at both tasks. While conventional wisdom tells us that going cold turkey while dieting is impossible, researchers say now women won't "have to choose between the two." •  29-year-old Mario McNeill has admitted to the kidnap of 5-year-old Shaniya Davis. McNeill told investigators that he took Shaniya from her home to a hotel about 30 miles away. Police have not yet brought charged against McNeill, and don't plan to until jurisdiction questions are resolved. • Two college students were handcuffed and driven away in a police car after they refused to pay a mandatory gratuity service at the Lehigh Pub. "Gratuity is thanking you for your service," argued 22-year-old Leslie Pope. "You can't give us terrible, terrible service and expect a tip." • Japanese drug company Sciele Pharma Inc plans to file for U.S. approval of a spray that numbs the penis to prevent premature ejaculation. There is currently no prescription treatment for the condition, which Sciele estimates affects up to a third of American men ages 18 to 59. • The March of Dimes gave the U.S. a D on its premature births report card because one out of eight American babies are born prematurely each year. Some states were recognized for taking steps to reduce smoking among women or providing health insurance coverage for pregnant women, but no state got an A. • A study of 2,016 women by deodorant-maker Bionsen found that the average British woman "hosts" 515 chemicals on her body every day. Most of the pollutants come from deodorant, perfumes, moisturizers, and makeup the women put on themselves. • Separate studies found that the most talented male athletes also have attractive faces. In one study women ranked the best NFL players as more desirable, and another survey of New Scientist Twitter followers came up with similar results for men's tennis. Researchers concluded the same genetic factors may be linked to an attractive male face and athletic prowess. • The American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery has responded to the Senate health bill including a 5 percent tax on most of their procedures with six reasons they think it's a bad idea, including, "cosmetic surgery is not a specialty for only the wealthy or the vain," and "despite the fact that more men are seeking cosmetic procedures than ever, the largest portion of patients are still working women, who would be unfairly targeted by such taxes." •

Sager begins his post pretty annoyingly, saying, "At the risk of alienating any females in the audience, today we're going to discuss… the science of a butterface." Starting off a sentence with "at the risk of" in this way is basically like saying, "no offense" — that is "I'm about to say something really offensive, but I'm acknowledging it, so now you can't get mad." And did Sager really need to commit the language foul of calling women "females?" No, nor did he need to link us to his Google image search for the word "butterface," or indeed, mention the word at all. The actual research goes something like this: 375 college students, male and female, were asked to evaluate potential dates of the opposite sex for either a long-term or short-term relationship. They could choose to see a photo of the date's face or body, but not both. Everyone was more likely to choose the face, except for men deciding on a short-term relationship. Sager writes,

For a short-term relationship, men were as likely to say they wanted to see the face as the body. 50-50. For long-term, 75% of men wanted to see the face.

Frankly, this is probably "better" than most people would expect men to do on such a measure, given cultural jokes about how men think about women.

I'm not really sure there's any need to attach a value judgment to this research. We may think of faces as more individual or expressive than bodies, and thus a "better" basis for making relationship decisions, but is this really true? Or does it just reflect a puritanical view of the body? I remember when a boy in high school told me I had a nice ass, and my friend retorted, "He shouldn't like you for your ass! He should like you for your eyes!" Well, if that boy and I were actually going to have a long-term relationship (we didn't), he probably would have needed to like me for my brain in addition to whatever physical qualities he was into — despite windows-to-the-soul stereotypes, eyes aren't any less superficial or any more related to inner beauty than asses. They're just considered less sexual, and therefore somehow more acceptable in a rather outmoded view of human attraction.

A similarly misguided view of the interplay between women's looks and men's desires is at work in the BBC coverage of a study about women's weight. Apparently a group of male students rated "normal weight" women as both healthier and more attractive, based on photographs, than either underweight or overweight ones. The BBC titles its article "Size zero girls 'less attractive' " (seriously, could we retire the phrase "size zero" in all cases not specifically referring to clothing?), and the study authors manage to insult both underweight and overweight women. Study supervisor Prof. David Perrett says,

This sends a strong message to all the girls out there who believe you have to be underweight to be attractive.

The people making judgments in our study were all between the ages of 18 and 26 and they did not rate underweight girls most attractive. They preferred normal weight girls.

That's right, girls, quit having that eating disorders so that boys will like you! I'll admit that it's probably good for heterosexual young women to know that the men in their lives expect them to diet themselves down to nothing. But most people who develop eating disorders don't do it so that guys will like them, and invoking the generalized sexual preferences of a group of men in their teens and twenties isn't exactly a great way to instill healthy habits in women. Of course, neither is fat-shaming. Lead researcher Vinet Coetzee said that overweight women in the study had higher blood pressure and more colds and flus than their normal weight peers. She added,

Even at this young age, their health was already suffering because they were overweight, and what is more, other people can spot this in their face.

She seems confident that the men in the sample rated overweight women as less healthy not because of cultural mores that equate fat with omgdeath, but because they could totally tell that the women probably got the flu a lot. This seems Specious, but more than anything, it's unhelpful — being told that guys can tell they're unhealthy isn't going to make anybody lose weight, especially since anyone who's considered overweight is already bombarded with the message that they're unhealthy anyway.

I'm not against studies about human attractiveness per se — I just wish those who report on such studies could stop linking them to health or morality. Anybody who's been on the Internet knows that sexual attraction isn't always healthy or moral. And just as a man who ogles your ass is no better or worse than one who gets lost in your eyes, a woman is no more sound in body or soul because a panel of men deem her doable.

Image via Flickr.

The Science Of A Butterface [True/Slant]
Size Zero Girls 'Less Attractive' [BBC]
A Pretty Face Or A Hot Body? [Scientific American]

Interestingly enough, the study results were targeted to plastic surgeons, to help them understand cultural differences in beauty ideals:

Surgeons that perform nose surgery "must be aware of the different concepts of beauty, especially when working with people of non-Caucasian origin," Gomes said.

Most of the recent studies of the issue were "produced in North America, where the beauty concepts seem to have subtle differences when compared to concepts of other cultures," he noted. "Attention to this aspect may help the surgeon to tailor a more adequate technique and meet their patients' expectations better."

Exactly - beauty is a highly objective thing to quantify. We develop our own individual standards of beauty, taking cues from our families, society, our peer group, and pop culture. In addition, we take into account the shifting standards of beauty over time. For example, the hourglass figure, once coveted, has fallen to the wayside in favor of an overall leaner figure. (See also the changing cast of 90210, which demonstrates that beauty standards can change remarkably within a ten-year period.)

So it is possible to determine something as "objectively beautiful" when the values of beauty are constantly shifting?

Researchers have also honed in on the idea of symmetry as being part of a universal standard of beauty, pointing out how other animals prefer symmetry in mate selection and how some of these traits held cross-culturally:

According to a University of Louisville study, when shown pictures of different individuals, Asians, Latinos, and whites from 13 different countries all had the same general preferences when rating others as attractive — that is those that are the most symmetric.

However, John Manning of the University of Liverpool in England cautions against over-generalization, especially by Western scientists. "Darwin thought that there were few universals of physical beauty because there was much variance in appearance and preference across human groups," Manning explained in email interview. For example, Chinese men used to prefer women with small feet. In Shakespearean England, ankles were the rage. In some African tribal cultures, men like women who insert large discs in their lips.

Indeed, "we need more cross-cultural studies to show that what is true in Westernized societies is also true in traditional groups," Manning said his 1999 article.

But with even these basic ideas under scrutiny, how do we truly determine what is considered beautiful?

Brazilians Judge Facial Beauty Differently Than North Americans [Eureka Alert]
What's Most Beautiful? Brazilians Say A Low Nose [Reuters]
Looking Good: The Psychology And Biology of Beauty [Journal of Young Investigators]

Earlier: Women Today Are Fat, Unhealthy - And Full Of Themselves
New 90210 Showcases Skinniness, Outrageous Fortune

According to the Times of London, University of Helsinki researcher Markus Jokela has found that attractive women (those rated in the second highest quartile of hotness) had 16% more children their less attractive peers, while very attractive (top quartile) women had 6% more. The Times couples this with previous research by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa (author of, no joke, Why Men Gamble and Women Buy Shoes: How Evolution Shaped the Way We Behave), which found that good-looking parents were "26% less likely to have sons." If true, I guess this would explain Sasha and Malia. Kanazawa says,

If more attractive parents have more daughters and if physical attractiveness is heritable, it logically follows that women over many generations gradually become more physically attractive on average than men.

So is this true? Let's look at Jokela's study first. Feminist Law Professors points us to the abstract, which says the study was conducted on "1244 women, 997 men born between 1937 and 1940." Feminist Law Profs also reports that the basis for attractiveness was yearbook photos from the 1957 graduating classes at Wisconsin high schools. But people on average married earlier in 1957 and they do now, and had children earlier, so whether you were "hot in high school" may have had much more to do with your "reproductive success" than it does today. The study didn't track the women's attractiveness as they got older, nor did it study women from later generations, who may have had more options to confound the purported link between attractiveness at age 18 and popping out lots of kids.

Now to Kanazawa's study. At least one statistician has called his numbers into question. Razib at Gene Expression links to this critique of Kanazawa's work, which states that if you do the math right, the most attractive parents in his study had "an 8% higher rate of girls," and that the 26% figure "cannot be interpreted in the way suggested in the paper." "This is particularly unfortunate," says statistician Andrew Gelman, "since 26% was the number reported in the press."

Razib also points out that the idea of women getting more attractive over time is complicated by the constant presence of mutations, and that attractiveness difference between the sexes would likely be very slow to emerge, if it emerges at all. But perhaps the most disturbing thing about Satoshi Kanazawa is not his flawed research, but his politics. From an editorial in Pyschology Today (published during the 2008 primary):

Here's a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost.

Yes, we need a woman in the White House, but not the one who's running.

That's right — if only we'd had Ann Coulter instead of Bush in the White House, the world would be a better place. But the real question is, who's hotter?

Women Are Getting More Beautiful [TimesOnline]
Are Women Getting Better Looking? [Gene Expression]
The Science Of Sexism [Feminist Law Professors]
Physical Attractiveness And Reproductive Success In Humans: Evidence From The Late 20th Century United States [Evolution and Human Behavior]
Why We Are Losing This War [Psychology Today]

We like disproportionately large heads; large eyes, set low on the face; button noses and soft round bodies. Hence the popularity of this and these.

But I still wonder why I'm attracted to what I'm attracted to. While my sister and I both are "meh" about most human babies, we totally squee over baby animals. And she goes a little further and gets super emotional about turtles. Not exactly cuddly, but she adores them.

When it comes to guys, I've dated all kinds and wouldn't at all say that I have a "type," although delicate, slender, olive-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired boys generally make me sigh. The thing is: If I get really honest with you? Truly honest? This might gross you out. But a couple of years ago, I suddenly realized that this sorta looked like this. That second link, friends, is my mother. I know. Horrifying. I saw this boy on Facehunter and thought, mmm! And then I was like, oh God. I mean: Some chicks date dudes who look like their dad. Chace Crawford went out with a woman who looks like his sister. A professor once told me that the more your parents tell you you're beautiful, the more likely you are to be attracted to someone who looks just like you. Does any of it make sense?

We Don't Need Popular Science To Tell Us Why Kittens Are Cute [Videogum]

It's that most of these paeans to Maddow's looks inevitably come back to the fact that she is a lesbian. Can you stand to say it again? Daphne Merkin thinks you can. Judy Berman at Salon thinks you can. Lesbian, lesbian, lesbian! It's like Rachel Maddow wouldn't be considered attractive or pretty or cute if she wasn't a lesbian. (Did someone mention she's a lesbian? Because she's a lesbian. She has a girlfriend and they have sex with each other and then go to the market together and they're lesbians. Look at her in all her cute dyke-y-ness!)

I mean, enough already. No profiles of Campbell Brown or Katie Couric dwell obsessively on their heterosexuality, and to do so about Maddow's sexuality serves only to emphasize her "otherness." I think it's great to have a non-plastic, non-blonde, short-haired, smart woman in a cable news chair, serving up important information in a way that is accessible to a variety of people and with a touch of humor. I think the admiration of her vaguely androgynous looks are, frankly, in keeping with a trend toward admiring androgyny generally rather than adulating hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine forms that were more in vogue when I was younger. She's a former Rhodes scholar, has a doctorate, worked on HIV/AIDS issues and prison reform and bummed around Massachusetts doing odd jobs to figure out what she wanted to do with her life when she was done with all that. Her partner is a respected artist, they live in a tiny town in Western Massachusetts rather than in Manhattan and she is really, really into old school cocktails to the point that she gets invited to teach Martha Stewart how to make them. The fact that she is a lesbian is probably the least interesting thing about her, and yet it seems to be quite a lot of what most people focus on.

Merkin is, of course, a case in point. Some highlights below (emphasis mine):

LESBIANISM has finally come into a glamour of its own, an appeal that goes beyond BUTCH and FEMME archetypes into a more universal seduction. Her name is Rachel Maddow, the polished-looking, self-declared GAY newscaster who stares out from the MSNBC studio every weekday night and MAKES LOVE to her audience. She may not be one of Hefner's Girls Next Door, exactly, but she is no bare-faced, unstylish DYKE either, however she chooses to characterize herself. Although she insists that she has no interest in the issue of physical appearance - her own or anyone else's - Maddow's ambition has allowed her to play the mediagenic game: to be carefully made up, her brown eyes given depth with flattering eye shadow, her short (but not too short) haircut artfully coiffed. With her Poindexter glasses, Jil Sander pantsuits and Converse sneakers, she's not trying to PASS, but she's willing to prettify her image sufficiently to endear her to male viewers.

I mean, come on! Maddow wears make-up on TV because everyone wears make-up on TV, including Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, but that doesn't mean they're bending gender lines by doing so. She's not doing it to appeal to men, or to try to subvert her sexual identity or be a more "passable" lesbian. She's doing it because, like the suits she wears on the air and eschews off the air, that's what you wear to work — a nurse isn't trying to be a "sexy nurse" by wearing a uniform any more than Maddow is trying to be sexy by dressing in the uniform of her profession.

And there's more:

Sally Hershberger, the celebrity hairstylist reputed to be the model for the Donna Juan character of Shane in ‘‘The L Word,'' believes that Maddow is ‘‘so charismatic that it doesn't really matter whether she's GAY.'' Well, yes and no. It would matter if Maddow were genuinely androgynous-looking, like a real-life version of the neutered Pat from ‘‘Saturday Night Live.'' Or if she were hard-edged in her style, acting combative instead of charming. But as it turns out, the only real giveaway is, in fact, her haircut. ‘‘Most women,'' Hershberger points out, ‘‘don't get their hair cut that short.'' (The exceptions, of course, present themselves the minute one makes this distinction, the extravagantly feminine women who wore their hair cropped boyishly short and looked all the more beautiful for it - Audrey Hepburn, Jean Seberg, Mia Farrow, Twiggy.) Hershberger deems Maddow's most recent haircut ‘‘too short,'' but that might just be the competition talking. In any case, hair grows in, and Maddow's star shows every sign of further ascending. Welcome to the brave new world of LESBIAN glamour.

I love that having short hair is a dead giveaway that a woman is a lesbian (someone should tell my mom), except when the woman is straight and attractive. I also think the connotation is that Maddow would look better with long hair but is only wearing it short to denote that she's GAY. I actually think Maddow's haircut suits her face because, like the other women listed, she has great bone structure. It's probably also way easier to take care of than my hair, which makes me slightly jealous but I don't have the face for short hair.

The real question is: why does being a lesbian make Maddow more attractive? Why is her sexual identity so much a part of how people perceive her physically? It seems to me that it plays to the stereotype that gay people in general are somehow more sexually available, and to the even worse stereotype that lesbians are secretly all a little bisexual. It makes what is attractive about Maddow her "otherness," it makes her sexuality something exotic rather than something she (like most everyone else) just takes for granted, and it marks her with a big pink "L." Either you think Rachel Maddow is attractive, or you don't, but it shouldn't be because of who she loves.

Butch Fatale [T Style]
Rachel Maddow, Reluctant Sex Symbol [Salon]

A study showed that women who drank, even moderately, "were less able to detect male facial symmetry, a marker of attractiveness and good genes." Study author Dr. Kristen Oinonen says the women "therefore may find less attractive men more attractive." All women were sober when they took the test, but the more they habitually drank, the worse they did. "Whether or not any damage or deficits are permanent is hard to tell at this point," says Oinonen — but we're not sure if thinking everyone looks pretty hot can really be called a deficit. [Telegraph]

The Tennessee study tested 82 couples for facial attractiveness and how they felt about their marriages. While women who were better-looking than their spouses reported contentedness, according to Univeristy of Tennessee professor Jim McNulty, men who were more attractive than their mates "demonstrated a tendency to offer less emotional and practical support to their wives." McNulty addsthat there is an "evolutionary explanation" for this behavior: "Attractive men have available to them more short-term mating opportunities. This may make them less satisfied and less committed to the marital relationship." Finally, a scientific explanation for the Katherine Heigl's choice to stay with Seth Rogen in Knocked Up!.

Do Attractive Women Want it All? New Study Reveals Relationship Standards Are Relative [PhysOrg]
Why Gorgeous Girls Are Happier With Plain Guys [Daily Mail]