Razib Khan

July 27, 2009

Women are more beautiful, declares the headline in Times Online:

The researchers have found beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern.

Over generations, the scientists argue, this has led to women becoming steadily more aesthetically pleasing, a ?beauty race? that is still on. The findings have emerged from a series of studies of physical attractiveness and its links to reproductive success in humans.

I suspect this is not true. The short answer is that there are major evolutionary objections to the dynamic that is being described here. For readers who want to get into the scientific weeds (and view a nice headshot of Megan Fox), see my post at ScienceBlogs.