- On the face
Beards are much more popular in safer times than during wild times. When the European homicide rate was two orders of magnitude greater than now, anywhere from the late 14th C. through the early 16th, the aristocracy -- who committed a disproportionate share of all violent crime -- shaved their faces. Fast-forward to the Victorian era, when crime had plummeted so much, and suddenly men look like the wolfman. That's despite the cheaper cost of shaving, since the industrial revolution had already begun. Nowadays lots of guys have extensive facial hair, unlike the '60s through the '80s when at most the average guy -- not a hippie on the periphery -- might have a moustache or sideburns.
Their evolutionary purpose is serve as signals in male-male competition, not courtship of females. Just look at all the boys and men who adorn the walls of females with the greatest reproductive value, roughly ages 15 to 24 -- zero percent have a beard, or even a prominent moustache or goatee. Sideburns at most. This does not reflect female preference for boyish looks -- square-jawed heavy metal singers, athletes, and guy's-guy actors are almost entirely clean-shaven too.
A clean-shaven face shows how healthy the skin is and how symmetrical the face is, whereas a beard obscures both of those features.
Girls will allow a week of stubble, but that's about it. I had a week's worth of hair and that didn't deter a tiny teenage cutie pie from dancing close at '80s night and telling me at the end, ...and now i have to kiss you on the cheekkkk. Women's objections to facial hair are all based on horniness -- they want it to feel better when they kiss. They're more tolerant of beards in a long-term relationship because those are less based on sex, and she is glad that the guy is preventing his sex appeal by growing a beard, lest other females try to poach him or lest he think too much of his looks and make an attempt at cheating.
- On the body
Hair is designed to grow universally in only two places in adults -- under the arms and in the pubic area. Therefore hair anywhere else cannot be strictly better from the point-of-view of natural selection, or everyone would have hairy bodies. Body hair is probably a side-effect of a behavioral strategy that is constrained by a trade-off. Again it seems like it serves as a signal in male-male competition, not courtship of females, for the exact same reasons above about facial hair.
So the current vogue for shaving or mowing down your pubic hair and armpit hair is about as unnatural as you can imagine. (Shaving the chest, etc., doesn't look so weird, since a good fraction of males look like that naturally.)
You'd think this high supply of shaved-down-there reflects a high demand for it, but lots of things that guys and girls do with their appearance is more to stay in fashion than to attract the opposite sex. For example, girls keep their hair way too short, and will often chop a good deal off even after asking a bunch of guys for their opinion, all of whom always say "don't cut it." I know that most younger guys are grossed out by a girl with even semi-natural hair. (By the way, one of greatest English slang words is "furburger" -- with all those repeated "er" syllables, it just sounds funny.)
But do girls really desire a trimmed or shaven lower ab region on guys? Hard to tell from the pictures of guys they like, since those are never fully nude. A couple weeks ago at '80s night, a group of honey bunnies passing by as I was dancing asked me to pull up my shirt and show my belly (I think they did use the word "belly"). Although they began cheering, I'm not sure why -- the mere fact that I was doing it, the look of my stomach, or what. But I don't mess around with the hair around my belly button, so perhaps they'd been longing to see a guy with natural hair there (not that it's copious either).
- On the scalp
There are three very different features that serve as signals for three very different traits, but people tend to ignore some or conflate others. They are:
1) Pigmentation. This is the signal of aging: only if you're into mid-life and beyond do you show decreased pigmentation.
2) Length, fullness, and luster -- how big and shiny it is. This is a signal of current health: if you're sick, your hair stops growing, becomes limp, and dries out. If you're in good shape, it grows longer, fuller, and more lustrous. Current health reflects both your current nutrition, disease burden, etc., but also how good your genes are at protecting against environmental insults. Big, long, lubricated hair is a handicap since all those proteins in the hair and the fatty acids used to oil it could be used for more productive purposes than to make you look purty.
That's why males who specialize more in courtship-of-females than male-male competition tend to have longer hair -- if it were short, the female might unconsciously think he wasn't healthy enough to grow a mane of hair. To the extent that healthy hair is a signal for good genes, females will be impressed by it, whereas male competitors in a guys-only contest will not (they aren't after your good genes like a female on the prowl is). And in physical male-male contests, long hair may be too great of a handicap -- it can be yanked, get in your eyes, etc.
3) Borders within which hair grows. This is a signal of male mating strategy: males whose hair grows more or less fully over their scalp (regardless of length or pigmentation) are more oriented to short-term mating, while those who show baldness are more oriented to long-term mating. The evolutionary function of baldness deserves a post of its own, but a brief review of key facts can't hurt here.
First, only some human populations have a greater-than-zero prevalence of baldness, and even in those groups that do have baldness, only some fraction of men will get it. In contrast, all males in all groups grow old and get sick. Thus, baldness is not a signal of aging (that would be pigmentation -- my grandfather had a full head of hair until he died in his late 80s, although it was white). And also, baldness is not a sign of poor health -- when you get sick, it's not as though your hairline recedes back six inches, and when you recover it shoots back to where it was. Health is indicated by big-and-shiny.
So again, baldness must reflect some kind of behavioral strategy that is subject to trade-offs, or else all males would grow bald, or none would.
Basically, a balding hairline is a guy's honest signal to his long-term mate that he won't be running around with anyone in the future. He's going to settle down and stick with her. How does this work? In the future, when he will be tempted to cheat with a young babe, he will be unable to find any willing partners because younger girls just get weirded out by a bald hairline, especially if he's middle-aged or older. Thus, the balding guy is saying, "Honey dear, don't take my word for it -- do you really think some pretty young thing is going to want to sleep with me if I'm bald?" Unlike cheap talk, this involuntary loss of his hairline is a credible commitment to be with only her. A less-balding or not-at-all-balding guy cannot be counted on so easily.
Notice that because it does not signal poor health, his wife will not interpret his balding as portending ill health later on. And because it is not related to male-male competition, she won't interpret it as a future inability to earn a living and provide for the family. He'll be perfectly healthy and able to hold down a job -- it's just that he won't ever get to sleep around. Baldness is an honest signal of self-domestication.
That's why the European aristocracy used to cover up any baldness by using wigs -- they wanted to stay on the mating market forever -- while the Victorian era and beyond gave us high-status males, bourgeois this time, who were OK with a bald head.
And that's why Australian aborigines don't go bald -- they have a gerontacracy where elder males monopolize women and are on the mating market into old age. Victorian England and the Australian aborigines are just two examples from the entire spectrum, but the rest fills in this way too. Look even at a smaller scale -- far fewer Scottish and Irish men go bald compared to the English. And sure enough, the Celtic groups are more in the rambunctious, fun-loving dirty-old-man direction than the English are.
I think there's even a decade-level change where guys are more likely to go bald during falling-crime times, when they switch to a more long-term and monogamous style. Looking through pictures of guys in their 20s or 30s from the 1960s through the '80s, you hardly see the same level of receding hairlines and baldness that you do among guys of the '90s and especially the 2000s. True nutrition went down the tubes in the past 20 to 30 years, but again that doesn't affect the hairline so much as how long, full, and lustrous the hair is.
Females want it all in a man, but because of trade-offs they must settle for going after this type of guy for this purpose and that type of guy for that purpose. For example, they want a gentle guy as the father of their children, but a more macho guy for a fling. They don't mind, and may even prefer, a balding guy as their long-term husband. But again look at who they want a brief adventure with -- the lead singer of a rock band, an athlete, a dreamy actor, a powerful executive or politician, all have less of a receding hairline than guys who are more suited to being good reliable dads. Just look at the faculty page of any academic department, men who carry their baby in one of those chest-pouches, and so on.
Are balding men more likely to be Republican/conservative, other things equal? It would make sense: when what a man has to offer is stable provider, and the state will force him to be one for anybody's children, it's a huge hit on the mating market.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure baldness is being bred out of white Americans, at least the college-educated classes. Men don't get married until, what mid to late twenties on average? Women seem much more likely to stay in a relationship if the man wasn't visibly balding when the relationship started than to date balding men.
So the current vogue for shaving or mowing down your pubic hair
ReplyDeleteI just called the pharmacy, my prescription for antidepressants will be ready in an hour.
By the way, "current vogue" implies that this is a passing fancy, fashionable today and passe tomorrow. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell from my extensive research* the percentage of women who go completely hairless is on the rise. It used to be around 75% but is now approaching 90%.
* = primarily Voyeurweb and Guess Her Muff.
Peter
Pigmentation or hair color can change due to a variety of other factors such as genetics, stress and even intelligence.
ReplyDeleteI know many above 130 IQ individuals who has had white hair since they were teenagers. Some are born with a strand of white hair.
Not to mention that if you have blonde hair, depending on ancestry/genes more likely to turn gray or white in early 20s-30s compared to someone who has red or brown hair. My father had silver/white hair in mid 20s like Bill Clinton. Pigmentation is very unreliable in predicting age, since spending more time in the sun will also produce lighter shades of pigmentation.
You are right about other aspects of body hair tho. It is usually a cultural thing what one does with body hair, it is considered very unusual to shave their chests in Europe and Asia. Many Asians still don't groom pubic hair compared to Westerners.
The idea that beards are popular during safe times makes no sense at all.
ReplyDeleteAfter World War I, anything more than a neatly trimmed mustache was considered unclean throughout Western Europe and the US. This includes both the Roaring Twenties or the safer era of 1930's through 1950's.
Beards were symbolic of Youth Culture during the 60's and 70's. The older, clean shaven elements of society considered beards to be symptomatic of the woodwose-like behavior of the Counterculture.
If more young people were clean shaven in the 1960's through 1980's, it's precisely because being clean shaven meant you were acceptable to the Establishment. John Kerry more or less became a spokesman for anti-war veterans precisely because he marched around clean shaven, unlike his bearded, wild colleagues. It made him more acceptable to authority figures.
Nowadays, since Baby Boomers have taken power and are remembered for their facial hair, it's more acceptable for younger generations to grow some facial hair.
The British Victorians may have been very hairy on the cheek, but so were the Americans during that era. Civil War generals employed a plethora of styles. American streets were very dangerous, especially back East. The setting for Gangs of New York wasn't made ex nihilo.
European aristocrats may have been clean shaven when they were more excitable and ready to duel; so were Europeans in general during the Age of Enlightenment, when crime rates were relatively low.
In short, the big problem with your line of thinking is that you superimpose all of your tastes and preferences onto "high-crime eras," most notably the 1960's through 1980's. You often make valid points, but the way you now present that era is an unrecognizable, hyper-idealized caricature of what it was.
"Men don't get married until, what mid to late twenties on average?"
ReplyDeleteThat's just marriage, though. My idea is that it's a signal of committing to just that one woman rather than planning on running around, whether they get an official marriage or not, have kids or not, etc.
"I just called the pharmacy, my prescription for antidepressants will be ready in an hour."
Heh, well at least there's still lots of stuff already made with muff in it. Just pop in any '80s raunchy comedy, and there you go.
"Pigmentation is very unreliable in predicting age, since spending more time in the sun will also produce lighter shades of pigmentation. "
ReplyDeleteYou know what I mean -- gray or silver or white hair. Conditional on seeing a person with that color of hair, what percent of the time will you falsely classify a young person as old? And conditional on seeing a person with the opposite of that hair color, what percent of the time will you falsely classify an old person as young?
Basically never, and that's why pigmentation is the key trait to telling how old someone is by their hair.
No one claims that "X tracks Y" means that all of the variation in X is accounted for by that in Y. Most of the Age of Reason was a falling-crime time, and they were clean-shaven. The point is that there's a strong, not 100% trend in the direction of safer-times = bearded times.
ReplyDelete"Beards were symbolic of Youth Culture during the 60's and 70's."
Well you're only talking about 7 years at most, say 1967 through 1973, not a stable pattern throughout the entirety of the recent crime wave. Plus as you say, it was only a fringe group -- most young people supported the War in Vietnam, even more so than older people.
I'm talking about when beards are mainstream, not against-the-grain.
"If more young people were clean shaven in the 1960's through 1980's, it's precisely because being clean shaven meant you were acceptable to the Establishment."
Right, like all those heavy metal singers I mentioned.
"In the future, when he will be tempted to cheat with a young babe, he will be unable to find any willing partners because younger girls just get weirded out by a bald hairline, especially if he's middle-aged or older..."
ReplyDeleteVery interesting theory and one I tend to believe. I have felt before that young men were very ill-served to be told to wait until they were older to seek marriage on account of possible baldness. Other things, too, but baldness, should it occur, doing about 90% of the aesthetic damage. My theory (and yours) that baldness is a huge handicap seems contradicted by a recent study I saw (don't remember) that said men's looks, or lack thereof, count for *nothing* in attractiveness to women. Money and status are everything they say. I find this hard to believe, but I fell madly in love as a teen to a teen and married so I may be different? (looks weren't everything, but played a huge role to my teen-aged self, next to intelligence, strength of will, and sweetness)
BTW, here is an article about Prince William discussing this very issue:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/fashion/weddings/23FIELD.html
This viewpoint bothered me:
"Because of the blow to their self-esteem, some balding men simply settle when it comes to spouses, Mr. Kobren said."
Me: It may not be all in their head and thus are acting wisely.
"a recent study I saw (don't remember) that said men's looks, or lack thereof, count for *nothing* in attractiveness to women. Money and status are everything they say. "
ReplyDeleteIf the females are at their peak reproductive value (i.e., college students), it never comes out that way. It's always good looks that matter the most -- they just overwhelm all the other variables that the researchers were hoping to find an effect of.
It doesn't mean that those other things don't matter, but that they're always swamped by the effect of looks.
"If the females are at their peak reproductive value (i.e., college students), it never comes out that way. It's always good looks that matter the most -- they just overwhelm all the other variables that the researchers were hoping to find an effect of."
ReplyDeleteYes, it feels that so much of the "Looks don't matter according to science" memes are propaganda. In the NYT article I linked to, the women they find who don't care about baldness are past college age. I can't recall ever hearing or seeing what you just said, but it is an extremely unpopular message so I'm not surprised.
@Agnostic
ReplyDeletePlease without looking it up. How old do you think Anderson Cooper is? It is more reliable to look at other physical features such as muscle tone and facial structure to predict age than the shade of hair. Not to mention people can dye their hair and with advances of today's technology its harder to tell if its real or fake.
Dahlia, This article about a semiscientific study agrees. They say bald and fat men want to get married and off the market. What they don't say is that it's because women treat them horribly.
ReplyDeleteMy problem might be with the word signal, I think it's more a cause of fidelity.
I brought up the age of marriage because 1)man has hair when relationship starts: woman is ok if he starts to lose it. 2)Man is balding before they meet: woman will take a pass. Delayed courtship effectively takes a big chunk of bald men off the market, which will lead to selection against it.
On the gene side , evidence favors agnostic: the androgen receptor allele strongly associated with baldness seems to have been under positive selection in Germany. Are Germans particularly dad-ish?
The problem with the mate loyalty theory is that (if we believe Rushton) Asian men go bald less often than whites despite high paternal investment. But maybe baldness is a rapid adaptation to a new environment that bred out of Asians when something better came along.
An allele of SOX21 is associated with baldness. Wikipedia says SOX21 antagonizes other SOXes and so promotes neuronal differentiation. SOX3 defects cause mental retardation. The old idea that bald are smarter might be true.
For fat people I can't work up much sympathy: it's a choice/result of choices. Very arguably it's a sign of character flaws. For me, I can work up a ton.
"Please without looking it up. How old do you think Anderson Cooper is?"
ReplyDeleteI guessed 45-47, while he's actually 43. You're mistakenly thinking that I said hair pigmentation is the only cue people use to guess age. I'm saying, of hair cues, pigmentation rather than hairline or length/fullness is the one for age.
But even on an absolute level, hair pigmentation is usually the best cue, at least in the way of life that human beings spent most of their existence in. Take a look at Bushmen hunter-gatherers and see which cues tell you immediately who is old vs. young:
Bushmen
In a low-carb-eating, real-physical-activity-getting people, old people rarely look decrepit. But their hair always turns gray, then white.
I'll try to write up a separate post and collect some articles from social science journals that hide the fact that looks swamp everything else.
ReplyDeleteRe: baldness in Germany, I had thought that would be true but didn't know about that gene being selected there.
Part of the mate loyalty theory is that pastoralists will be less prone to baldness than farmers, like Scottish or Irish vs. English. Germans are more on the sedentary farming side than most other European groups.
I think the reason Northeast Asians don't go bald is that the gene from western Eurasia never got there, or did so too recently for it to have risen to a high-ish frequency.
There should be convergent evolution producing baldness in Asians, but that is also a chancy affair. Lactase persistance, for example, didn't catch on right after Arabians started herding camels. It took awhile, and probably some early contenders just didn't get that initial stroke of luck needed to keep from getting lost due to genetic drift. And their version wasn't the Indo-European version.
Something similar might be going on in East Asia with baldness.
"rob said...
ReplyDeleteDahlia, This article about a semiscientific study agrees. They say bald and fat men want to get married and off the market. What they don't say is that it's because women treat them horribly."
Ahhh, this makes me want to give my honey an extra hug and kiss when he gets home...
He was a hottie when we met and married (he was 19), but according to Agnostic, I have a decent guarantee of fidelity, LOL! Actually, he's confident and could care less about his looks. His father on the other hand, married and not, was bothered immensely by his (same as DH's) hairline. Probably because he had be been and wanted to remain promiscuous.
can't imagine there being much selection one way or the other in male pattern baldness-the effects mostly took place after the men were done reproducing. something like Huntington disease but lesser effect. Like Huntington, the baldness gene mutation only occurred in Western Europe. Except that we have 5 alpha reductase inhibitors but no effective treatment for Huntington.
ReplyDeleteArab men used to wear their beard and shave their head, perhaps reversing the functions of the two?
Baldness: it's linked to testosterone (a bilateral orchiectomy is the only sure cure), which may account for would-be tough guys shaving their heads (so they look higher-T), and I suspect that's a viable if niche mate-attracting tactic even if you aren't a famous movie star (girls like thugs). Baldness is also popularly associated with intelligence, perhaps because it makes the forehead look higher and big domes often mean big brains inside, or perhaps because baldness really does correlate with IQ. A few girls like brains-- probably enough to perpetuate bald genes.
ReplyDeleteI would guess the main way baldness hurts mating attractiveness is by making the man look older.
Beards: I like the theory, but with Anonymous, I'm not fully convinced. I can come up with plenty of examples of men in violent eras wearing beards as well as the reverse.