Sexy sexy blonde hair

(PHOTO: ARKITEKT)

A study on the origins of blonde hair in ice-aged Europeans has recently been written up in many of the big papers. Basically a Quebecois anthropologist, Peter Frost, has proposed two things. 1) blonde hair was attractive to men because it was bright and different, possibly highlighting femininity and 2) males were scarce in end-of-ice-age European societies and "fiercely" competed for amongst the women-folk - because all that mammoth killing was dangerous so lots of the boys died hunting. So the blondes had much much more fun and the blonde genes swept through the nations leading to the current population of northern blondes and our modern day belief that blondes are sexier, right?

Let's go over some basics of interpreting evolutionary psychology. Like with all these very interesting theories, we'll never have conclusive evidence for how or why blonde hair arose and spread. Also, the evolutionary pressures and selective forces acting 11,000 years aren't acting today and we haven't necessarily been "programmed" by our ancient environs. Just because boys of different cultures today respond to blonde hair does not prove that this preference is genetic, innate or whatever.

So back to this story... Since when did the lack of males result in female competition? It is likely that these cultures did not have strict monogamy. One dude could have gotten it done for lots and lots of ladies. Just like lions, or elephants seals or jungle fowl. It's pretty rare for females to evolve the "come look at me" adornments..mostly it is males who get the tail feathers, antlers and shiny colourful spots that serve to attract females, display wealth and health, fight off competitors and get the girl.

But, exceptions to the rule, there are instances where male fish, birds and crickets seem to be the "choosier" ones and the girls have to vie for their attentions. Why? Because these males are expending massive amounts of energy (a nutrient-rich sperm bundles or other costly "nuptial gifts" for example). Usually it is the female who puts her time, energy, body and safety on the line to support the growth of offspring, hence leading to their choosiness over mates. Frost is arguing for the male-gives-male-chooses model because he asserts that there were limited males (maybe), females could not gather foods in the cold cold plains of Eurasia and it was totally up to the boys to bring home the bacon.

So the questions left for me are - were these societies monogamous? How much did males contribute to the raising of their offspring? Did they really die off at rates SO much higher than other societies (keep in mind that young male mortality rates are almost always higher than young females...? And is the selective force really strong enough to lead to the proliferation of golden haired, come-and-get-me-I-am-so-obvious ladies?

Okay, okay. I have bored you. Go read GNXP. And witness how crap British journalists can be on this subject. A couple of years ago, some reporters said that the WHO authored a report on how the genes for blonde hair were going extinct, but they didn't. Journalists keep on saying they did (it's in the story above). Hawks has a good run down of the events.

Comments

[sara]

Lots of good points... I mean, who says that women don't find blond men attractive? I find it hard to believe that it's only the men who pick their women by hair. I'm almost wondering if something got lost in the science-to-journalist interpretation, as I can't seem to think of a way to prove who picked whom for the blond locks.

[Jonathan Sanderson]

I'd love to see a study of the comparative accuracy of science journalists vs. press offices. My working hypothesis would be that press offices (either in industry or academia) do journos no favours by issuing press releases that miss the point, misrepresent the work in question, or are otherwise rubbish. Sure, no self-respecting journo with ample time and an understanding editor would stoop to the level of regurgitating a press release... but come on, we know how journalism works.

But hey, what do I know? I prefer brunettes, for heaven's sake.

[anna]

As a journalist and a brunette, I'd love to chime in here. Press releases are wrong like 75% of the time. I'd often call up scientists and we'd have to spend the first 10 minutes going over what quotes were incorrect and misleading and how the comms office totally screwed up the report.

Anyways. I read most of the paper behind in the above story. This is the link to the abstract (I can't give you my password for the full copy, sorry).

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_aset=V-WA-A-W-B-MsSAYZA-UUA-U-AAVBDVZEEU-AAVABWDDEU-ZEUYVVDWD-B-U&_rdoc=1&_fmt=summary&_udi=B6T6H-4H68T8M-1&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F2006&_cdi=5031&_orig=search&_st=13&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=36a4febe747d64da7964584b737ba5a3

The paper wasn't nearly as dumb as the journalistic write-up, but mostly because there were just lots of really big vocab words. In the end, the theory is a bit bonkers, but some anthropologists love to come up with "armchair" theories that can never really be tested and, for very apparent reasons, make for delicous newspaper fodder.

Back to my point. Did I have one? Oh well. Lots and lots of things get lost in the journo - scientist transfer because theories like these are really complicated (crazy or sane) and writers don't have the word limit, intellect or want to include it all the side arguments. Formulas don't sell papers and neither do a mile long list of qualifications. That is what is really annoying about evo-pysch..it is almost guaranteed to be misunderstood because a) we LOVE hearing about our innate urges and preferences that have been shaped by millions of years of evolution and b) drawing conclusions from evo-psych studies is really really hard and really quite boring.

There's my two cents. My brunette cents.

[Poppycock]

Over on Cosmic Variance JoAnne (a particle physicist) posted yesterday about this

http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/02/27/any-publicity-is-good-publicity/

She and her collaborators published a paper, which became the subject of a press office release, and hey presto - inaccuracies and embarrassment ensued.

[AnonEcon]

Evolutionary psychology looks like a very hard subject to me because:

(1) There are no good detailed record of human behaviour on an evolutionarily relevant timescale. What do we really know about the courtship methods of European hunter-gatherers of the time when blondeness emerged?

(2) There are no contemporary species, related or not, with a repertoire of learned behaviour as rich as ours with whom comparisons can be made.

(3) There is no way of growing humans in controlled laboratory conditions in order to observe the effects of different environments on behaviour.

Given that most of the means of validating evolutionary hypotheses are out of reach, evolutionary psychology appears so hard as to be impossible.

[donna]

Far, FAR more likely that the blond men attracted the women!!!

[anna]

Oh poor Joanne at SLAC...You wanna hear something funny??? I worked at the SLAC press office as my very very first internship. It was really great, but the team there does struggle to take the daily goings of particle physics and bring them to a wider audience. I spent hours and hours and hours with physicists trying to really come to grips with what they were doing so I could write about it in a somewhat engaging way. I am pretty sure I failed. The big problem with particle physics is that it is both too big and too small. Huge projects such as "finding dark matter" "tracking down the particles that give us mass" "figuring out why matter won over anti-matter" all come down to tiny tiny nearly insignificant steps that few people other than the community itself can either understand or care about. Sure the detectors look beautiful, the clean rooms are cool, the computer switchboards are amazing and the ideas crazy fun, but the daily runnings of particle physics are hard pressed to be the stuff of daily journalism. The SLAC press office has its work cut out for them..and they seem to need a wee bit of improvement. Sigh.

[draxar]

I'll admit that I have no idea where I saw it, but I remember reading something about changing of skin colour from darker to lighter in evolution, and one thing they mentioned was that there's a theory that anything unusual looking that doesn't have any downsides associated with it will lead to a better chance to mate and reproduce due to the novelty value.

[Daryl McCullough]

My question, for evolutionary biologists, is why are human females beautiful? In most other species, as you say, it is the male that is the good-looking one; females get plenty of action without even trying. It seems like a real mystery to me. Are there any good theories about it?

[AnonEcon]

But are human females beautiful? That is, do human females have displays like peacocks' feathers which are expensive to maintain but serve no purpose other than attracting mates?

I don't think so. Rather it is human males who have been programmed to find the utilitarian female body to be a thing of beauty. I'm sure that the peacock finds the peahen equally attractive.

[Jesse M.]

Well, is there a "utilitarian" purpose to all those fatty deposits that female humans have that give them their curvier shape? I can't think of any other mammal species with this kind of difference in fat distribution, including our closest primate relatives. I don't know if this extra fat is "expensive to maintain" though.

[anna]

I'd like to admit that I have no idea what a peacock finds particularly attractive...males in the animal kingdom usually go for girth. A nice large female is more likely to produce more or healthier offspring...and such larger females often prefer, or are overpowered, by larger males.

In humans men are bigger - which is generally a sexually selected trait. And many of the traits we find attractive are the hypermasculine or hyperfeminine. Examples include tall men, strong men, square jaws and v. masculine faces. In women we have small waists, big boobs and bums, childlike or dainty faces...

As per those fat deposits - thigh and hip fat is thought to be a direct repository for breast feeding calories. It's harder to healthily carry excess body fat around the middle. The hip to waist ratio is probably a biproduct of this "indicator of fecundity". Doesn't explain the boobs so much. Boob fat doesn't help breast feed.

So even though these traits are not necessarily "showy" or "costly" they may still have been sexually selected characteristics...hence easily considered beautiful in the eye of the male beholder.

I think men and women are equally pretty (from an sexual selection standpoint) and this is because we have such needy, expensive, costly offspring that must be cared for by both parents for ages and ages. Having such demanding children means that partnership/co-operation is the best strategy for both males and females. This type of social monogamy (where you might fool around on the side but only help raise one family) is common in birds where....wait for it....neither male or female is particularly beautiful. Nothing showy, nothing fancy just a little extra emphasis on those utilitarian differences to give us the upper hand.

[Daryl McCullough]

Okay, there seems to be some disagreement about basic facts. Let's vote on it: If you think girls are pretty, say "Aye!"

Yes, Anna, I was thinking of boobs and lack of facial hair as probably sexually selected. Of course, an alternative theory is that it isn't sexual selection, but is regular old natural selection. Maybe prehuman tribes engaged in a lot of bloody battles, where the winning tribe would kill all the males of the losing tribe, but spare the females. In that case, it was to a woman's advantage not to look like a male.

[Jesse M.]

As per those fat deposits - thigh and hip fat is thought to be a direct repository for breast feeding calories. It's harder to healthily carry excess body fat around the middle. The hip to waist ratio is probably a biproduct of this "indicator of fecundity".

But why don't chimps or other primates (or other mammals) have them, then? Do humans breast feed for an unusually long time?

[anna]

All those who think boys are sexy say HELLO SAILOR!

But seriously, I love the tribal war theory. In truth, of course, we'll never really know. The back and forth of cause/effect natural then sexual selection makes it impossible to prove.

And as for those skinny-thighed primates..I don't know. We actually breast feed our infants for shorter than other great apes. In "traditional societies" its about 2.5 years. Chimps breast feed for 5 years.

That being said - they have lots of hair, walk on all fours and eat mostly veggies, all factors that could influence how you store fat around your body. So again, I have no idea. But it is interesting to point out such a strange body form difference in humans that does not exist in our closest relatives.

[AnonEcon]

Another reason for human fat deposit patterns to differ from that of primates may be the greater uncertainty in food supply faced by the plain-dwelling early humans compared to their tree-dwelling cousins.

Coming back to beauty and evo-psycho, I guess between us we have supporters of all the possible positions: natural selection, sexual selection with signalling (the 'fecundity indicator') and sexual selection without signalling. While participating in this thread I have tried to look for empirical studies that may help to distinguish between them, but all I have come up with are just plausible stories of the kind that we have been discussing. Can anyone provide any pointers to the empirical literature?

[Robert Rendulic]

My question is i recently bleached my hair, but instead of the colour I wanted, it came out yelloe blonde? is there any other way to make my hair Ice White Blonde? Cheers

[Like Your Hair]

I have never heard anything more ridiculous than the theory of that Quebecois "anthropologist" - no offense meant. Is that what modern "scientists" entertain themselves with?

[fax]

o fasz a szatokba bazzzzzzzzzzzz

[Carol E. Cox]

Anybody else notice this lone voice:

"Posted by: AnonEcon | February 28, 2006 at 06:11 PM

Far, FAR more likely that the blond men attracted the women!!!"

Blue-eyed Blonde-haired, tall, handsome, intelligent and socially-evolved men were/are attractive to women.

I'd like to know why Peter Frost ignores the Blond men and makes sexually-oriented speculations about the Blonde women.