Amerika

It’s a cliche. Go to that sunny southern nation, where there’s lots of studs, and have a rockin’ vacation. But in biological terms, what does a surplus of attractive males mean?

So physical attractiveness, while a universally positive quality, contributes even more to women’s reproductive success than to men’s. The generalized Trivers-Willard hypothesis would therefore predict that physically attractive parents should have more daughters than sons. Once again, this indeed appears to be the case. Young Americans who are rated “very attractive” have roughly a 44% chance of having a son for their first child (and thus a 56% chance of having a daughter). In contrast, everyone else has roughly a 52% chance of having a son (and thus a 48% chance of having a daughter) for their first child. Being “very attractive” increases the odds of having a daughter by 36% or decreases the odds of having a son by 26%!

If physical attractiveness is heritable, such that beautiful parents beget beautiful children (and less attractive parents beget similarly less attractive children), and if beautiful parents are more likely to have daughters than others, then it logically follows that, over time, generation after generation, women will become more attractive on average than men. Once again, studies confirm this implication of the generalized Trivers-Willard hypothesis. The average level of physical attractiveness among women is significantly higher than the average level of physical attractiveness among men, both in Japan and the United States. Women are more beautiful than men on average because beautiful parents have significantly more daughters than less beautiful parents.

…In fact, as I explain in a previous series of posts, physically attractive men may not make desirable long-term mates, precisely because other women seek them out for their short-term mating and thus attractive men are less committed to their long-term mates.

Psychology Today

Connect the dots:

If there is a surplus of attractive women, the society is operating on the principle of long-term commitment from parents, which leads to K-strategies instead of r-strategies in reproduction.

However, if there’s a surplus of attractive men, women have already given up on K-strategies — the idea of having a stable family unit and heavy parental investment. Now it’s ejaculate and dash, and hope some of the abundance of offspring survive, albeit in much greater poverty.

That in turn leads to decline into banana republic status.

So if you land in someplace with lots of attractive men… run in fear. It’s a dying society.

Tags: r / K strategies