Why do boys want good-looking girls?

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What total utter rubbish! Please could you share the research that shows the correlation between fertility and beauty - probably not, because there isn't any. For starters, physical beauty is subjective and although members who share the same cultural conditioning will have similar ideals of beauty, different cultures define beauty in a totally different way.

On the other hand fertility is objective and measurable. There are lots of people with fertility problems. If you went to a fertility clinic do you really think the clients would be uglier than average? And you don't have to walk far down any city street to see some horrendously ugly slob couple with half a dozen kids.

If you really look at whats going on, you find that Hale Bopp is correct - It's all a mystery with human beings. Our primitive brains are conned by visions of beauty (eg anorexic super models) that are actually less fertile and even less healthy overall. Psychological health is as important as physical health, unfortunately physical appearance is little indicator of inner health. There are plenty of messed up pychos who are nice looking. And ugly saints.

A question: of those with the best genes always win, how come there are any with so-called inferior genes still left? If big curves on a women offer some advantage, how come we still have millions of women with small curves? Perhaps because nature truly needs diversity, not uniformity.

^^ a typical reply of a naive who still believes in love as something spiritual/magical and not as something purely biological.

It's somewhat in-built into the psychology of men to find a ideal mate that can bear the best young for them. However there are also the issues of having a sense of pride of being with someone 'good-looking', and cultural emphasis of what is considered 'good-looking' in mainstream society. These days the cultural expectations of what constitute good looking is becoming increasingly unrealistic to nature, and consequentially becoming detrimental to women's physical and psychological health to compete and comply to the new standard, and at the same time encourage men to become higher in expectation, and therefore more superficial. That is why men want good looking girls, and also why the standards are so superficial.

Although this behavior isn't limited one gender, women have the same tendencies to judge too, for the exact same reasons.

It has elements of both and it's not keeping it real to say it's purely biological.

Hmm let me ask you a question Mr.: Go to any Mall/Pub/University/School and over and observe the couples there. You would notice that 99% of couple follow the Male_is_larger principle.Even if the male is short his gf is shorter or same height at least in the 99% of cases. Coincidence? No, it's natural selection.

And there are many other traits can be good examples for natural selection but height is the most obvious.



It's due to the artificial monogamy system of mating, every individual seeking for mating is obliged to get 1 mate , so the ones who can't get pretty mates will be obliged to pick someone who's less pretty.

Just imagine 6 guys and 6 girls on earth , 3 of the girls are gorgeous and the other 3 are less pretty. The first guy entering the room would try with the most gorgeous girl in the room , if he succeeds then the second guy would go for the second most gorgeous girl and etc. If the first guy fail then he'll try with the second most gorgeous before any guy ...etc

The last girl would be the least attractive and the last guy would have to pick her since he has no other alternative.

Has evolution brought you a suitable mate? You also need to exercise your mind and your heart to make an informed decision.

I'm not arguing against some sort of selection, my point is that there is no discernable means of human beings detecting the fertility based on appearance, gorgeous or otherwise.

In the example of 6 pairs, what of the ugly couple are the most fertile and the prettiest are infertile? It does happen and the race would be recreated in the image of (according to your definition) the least desirable.

Also, men are on average considerably taller than women. Put all the names into 2 bags and draw couples at random. The men will be generally taller than women. No selection involved. And what is the gain of selecting a tall partner? Can the reach the hanging bananas better? What about the short ugly intelligent one who has the brains to build a fence round the fruit trees and make the tall ones slave for him to get the bananas?

And..and..and...the line of thought that starts by saying "physical attractiveness is a measure of breeding potential" soon leads to the fact that all gay people must be repulsively ugly.

The truth is that ideas of beauty change with the tides. In human's, it's more linked to fashion than any underlying natural instinct. Men and women are attracted by social status and again this is very flexible. Tall, short, creative, mundane, every dog has had his day.

So nobody ever actually gets rejected? How does this eliminate the unattractive, then?

^^ only 1% of husbands are shorter than their wives so it's because of 'men are generally taller than women' but it's because women select taller men and men select shorter women, that's why.

As for the 6 pairs example , it is a simplified example. In real life , every girl has a wider range of selection so the risk of rejection would rise. Rejection is the main part of sexual selection process in the human society. If a man get rejected all his life for some reason or another then he's out of the genetic pool.

The mating life of the modern society is based on serial monogamy system (btw , pure monagamy for humans is a myth ....humans are polygamous by nature) : guy ask out a girl , the girl will keep rejecting guys till she's asked out by the guy who most fit her==> nature selection rules==> females are the ones who pick the males. When a male get rejected during his youth by the the hottest girls he would naturally lower his standards a bit , so he's gonna try with the less hot girls , I bet this happened to many of you.


As for beauty and fertility there's many scientifics studies and evidence on this matter.

1% What????

I see many guys with girls taller than them.

As for the rest I agree because I've read studies on that but there are different acceptions as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The standards of attractions are more complex than what meets certain criteria. Humans are the most complicated among the species but in general yes one will go for a good looking mate aka healthy genes because of the mind's instinct for healthier offspring. The rest does not all meet the same standarized specifics of what is attractive such as height or eye color or hair. Some people individually prefer tall women, some small women and etc.

I agree broadly with what your saying. I differ in that I believe it to be more cultural selection, not natural selection. I guess somewhere very deep inside, we do have 'natural' instincts, but these are suppressed and replaced with the values of the culture we're born into. These values may have negative long term effect.

This does lead to very different results. I believe that selection criteria are more or less arbitrary, not producing a steadily improving physically and mentally species. I've seen several articles recently about humans 'dumbing down' because the wealthy are having less children than the poor and the intelligent are having less children than the ignorant. According to what I think you're saying, this shouldn't be happening as those at the bottom of the heap would tend to be unattractive and infertile.

bot on nature it would not be the inteligent but the strong that would be the desirble mates.

Didn't Darwin really say it was "survival of the most adaptable"? If physical strength alone was all that mattered, human beings would have been wiped out long ago as there are plenty of animals stronger than us.

Even looking at animal species, there are dozens where strength isn't the criteria, but the colour of some part of the body or the ability to perform a peculier mating dance. I think people try and impose some kind of order that makes sense to us, and makes us comfortable. In reality, we haven't a clue what the big picture is.

Go to the alpha male thread and read my last long post there about the types of alpha males nowaydays.

To males, what's pretty is mostly a learned experience. Look at what was considered beauty over history (Rubenesque Women -probably spelled wrong), 70's hippie chicks, 90's Metal chicks. Opposite ends of the spectrum.
I've been with girls who in some cases, people said I could do better, and others, that the girl could do better. Think Knocked Up 's Seth Rogan and Katherine Heigl. And looking back, I can hardly remember any physical reasons we liked each other, but it was always personality/compatabilty reasons.

^Now that's interesting because I've been wondering the same thing with all the fads of women in the past and how some of them from certain time periods would be considered unattractive in this day and age. I've never heard guys mention this kind of topic before which has always made me curious of what guys found attractive aside from today.