Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty (original 1999; edition 2011)

Well, you can’t judge a book by its cover. Author Nancy Etcoff indirectly suggests she wrote Survival of the Prettiest as a response to Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth, in which Ms. Wolf claims (reportedly; I have not read her book) “beauty” is entirely socially constructed and is used to keep women subjected to the Patriarchy. Ms. Etcoff does an excellent job of explaining that although there are some learned and environmental components to beauty it is mostly a product of natural selection – like just about every other component of human behavior.


The explanation is systematic and tinged with humor. You appearance (including scent, sound, and interactions with other senses as well as vision) is a way of convincing a potential mate that you are a good draw in the natural selection sweepstakes. For humans traditional standards of beauty are all things related to youth and health (humans are admittedly a little unique here – in most species that use visual clues for mate selection it’s the female that does the selecting and the male that displays). Etcoff has interesting answers to the classic question – if beauty is not socially constructed, why do different cultures have different standards of beauty? There are several components:


* To a large extent, different cultures don’t have different standards of beauty. There are some extremes – the one usually cited is Ubangi women’s lips – but people from all over (even tribal groups with little or no access to “Western” television or magazines) tend to rank pictures of women according to beauty the same way.


* There is an instinctive component – babies as young as three days old spend more time looking at pictures of beautiful people when presented with an assortment. (I admit I would like to know a little more about how these experiments were done. Could there be a “Clever Hans” effect here, with the baby picking up clues from a person presenting the pictures, not the pictures themselves?)


* There’s also a learned component, and it works in an interesting way. Francis Galton (Darwin’s cousin) attempted to prove that there are “criminal physiognomies” by averaging photographs of prison inmates (I wonder how that was done in the days before morphing?) To Galton’s surprise, the “average” criminal turned out to be a pretty handsome fellow. Further studies show that people’s beauty rankings tend to reflect the distance between the target and the average for that particular culture. Thus it seems that people don’t have an instinctive beauty template, but they do have an instinctive “average”. In the West, as the faces people see on the streets and in the media become more racially and ethnically diverse, the “average” also shifts; and thus people today are more likely to judge racially different faces as “beautiful” than they were 50 years ago (again, this is another one where I’d like to look at the experiments. Were (for example) whites ranking blacks more beautiful in 1990 than they did in 1940 a result of a genuine change in standards or the fear of seeming politically incorrect? A properly blinded experiment would prevent this.)


* Actual attempts to “construct” beauty haven’t been very successful. A lot of Renaissance mathematicians devoted considerable effort to describing the ideal face in terms of proportions and ratios – nose width to lip height, distance from chin to eyebrows, etc. However, the mathematics didn’t end up conforming to what artists of the time (or now) actually portrayed as beautiful.


It’s clear that beauty has rewards. Men presented with a selection of pictures generally picked the most beautiful one (based on previous rankings by other men) as the one they would be the most likely to ask out or offer a ride or help if stranded or protect from a mad dog. (Interestingly, the one thing men were less likely to do for a beautiful woman than an ugly one is loan her money. There is probably a library worth of further studies that could be done on that). Women’s response to handsome men is still there, but much less pronounced.


Ms. Etcoff discusses beauty modifiers – makeup, plastic surgery, clothes – and other components – scent, voice, body hair – at some length. It was interesting but there were no great surprises. All claims are documented in endnotes, and there’s an extensive bibliography. The book (copyright 1999) is a little dated; I wonder if there’s a second edition planned. And based on her photograph in the front matter, Ms. Etcoff is hot. ( )

A popsci book about what we find beautiful and why that makes evolutionary sense. Strictly about people's physical beauty, possibly as enhanced by clothes, makeup, etc. - not at all about why we might admire a sunset or a ship.

Etcoff is in explicit if polite polemic against writers who have argued that standards of beauty are arbitrary cultural dictates: the core of what we appreciate in one another's appearance is, she insists, cross-culturally invariant and biologically determined, because it helps us pick good mates. To oversimplify a little, women are appreciated for looking fertile while men (whose fertility is less variable) are for looking like they can support and protect a woman and her child.

A enjoyable read, not terribly deep, with a definite feminine viewpoint. Will annoy those convinced there is little innate psychological difference between the sexes.

Kind of depressing about humankind. Reminds me of a long article I read about how parents favor the cutest kid. Interesting and awful at the same time. ( )

An interesting read about appearance and how what we perceive as beauty is actually subtle clues that tell us that the person we're looking at is healthy and capable of bearing children or able to support someone while they were pregnant and/or rearing children.

It's also an interesting look at how these perceptions of pretty seem to be more an average than an outstanding look. An average looking person looks more pretty than an under average person, which also builds the perception of what falls within the boundries of normal for people in a certain society and why, with cues that are difficult to read othering can happen to people not of your culture/appearance group. It's interesting and facinating and food for thought. ( )

Nobody is immune to beauty, and it seems that what is beautiful is wired in our brains. It’s all in the proportions and angles between the parts of the face and then different parts of the body, for both women and men. It seems to be pretty much universal. There are no cultural discrepancies in what we like and define as beautiful. All around the globe we seem to pick out the same photographs as more pleasing than others. The only curious difference may be the nose. It is mentioned that Polynesians, for example, would pick a short and flat nose over a long and thin Caucasian nose, and call the white men ‘ant eaters’ behind their backs.

It all seems to be related to sexual selection, and good proportions and healthy skin, beautiful lustrous hair and symmetrical bodies advertise health and promise good reproductive future. As far as sexual display is concerned, we join other animals in liking the bigger and the showier- bigger peacock tails, big and symmetrical antlers, and so on. It can be equated to our fondness of broader shoulders and prominent pectorals in a male, and relatively big and well proportioned hips, waists and breasts in a female.

We similarly respond to what we perceive as beautiful in babies: nice skin, big foreheads, big eyes and big heads in relation to the rest of the body. Also to symmetry in the body, and harmony in music. Symmetry is especially interesting, as not only do we perceive it as pleasing, we also mate more eagerly with mates with symmetrical bodies, to the extent that female bodies actually become more symmetrical during ovulation.

Now it only leaves the question why we respond to beautiful landscapes, or a piece of music or a poem, and perhaps why we invented music and literature in the first place.
The book is well written and well researched, and it makes a lot of good points. There is also a good chapter distinguishing fashion from beauty. ( )

Endlessly fascinating. Yes, it will make you view non-clinical subjects in a clinical way. You are smart enough to move past that. At least I hope so. Anyway- haven't you always wondered why you give a damn about beauty? Time to find out. Worth many re-reads.

And in response to another review: I did not find it ethnocentric at all. It talks about the biological possibilites for why humans prefer certain types across the board, and skims over the cultural reasons why other types are preferred in different regions of the world. This book is not a Bell Curve for the style set. It does, however, explain why exaggeration of certain aspects of appearance can seem grotesque to one gender or culture and exceptionally beguiling to another. i.e: Pam Anderson as sex bomb. ( )

Although this book claims to be a refutation of Wolf's The Beauty Myth, it isn't. Much of what the book claims to be biological fact is Euro-centric or racist and sometimes borders on pseudo-science. ( )

About: Guide to what humans find beautiful and attractive about each other

Pros: Interesting, very thorough, well researched.

Cons: Almost a bit too well researched, the multitude of facts and studies thrown about can bog the reader down. You're pretty much guaranteed to feel worse about at least one part of your appearance after reading this book.

Grade: B+ ( )

If you are looking for an endlessly interesting book that will provide serious insight into why people present themselves like they do, this is it. Survival of the Prettiest tells in plain terms why humans like what they like in other humans, making it an enjoyable and enthralling read. Why are hourglass figures desirable? Why do women paint their lips and cheeks red? Why do gentlemen prefer blonds? These questions and more are answered here--after reading this book you will have a multitude of interesting tidbits and facts that you will feel the need to repeat to your friends for years. ( )