Free Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire–Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do by Alan S. Miller, Satoshi Kanazawa Page B

that there were no driver’s licenses or birth certificates that men could check to learn how old women were in the ancestral environment. There was no calendar and thus no concept of birthdays in the ancestral environment, so women themselves didn’t know exactly how old they were. The ancestral men needed to infer a woman’s age and reproductive value from some physical signs, and the state of her breasts provided a pretty good clue, but only if they were large enough to change their shape conspicuously with age. Men could tell women’s ages more accurately, and attempt to mate with only young women, if they had larger breasts. Marlowe hypothesizes that this is why men find women with large breasts more attractive.
    More recently, there has been a competing evolutionary psychological explanation for why men prefer women with large breasts. A study of Polish women shows that women who simultaneously have large breasts and a tight waist have the greatest fecundity, indicated by their levels of two reproductive hormones (17-ß-estradiol and progesterone). 13 So men may prefer women with large breasts for the same reason as they prefer women with small waists. Further empirical evidence is necessary to evaluate which of these two competing evolutionary psychological explanations is more accurate. This is just one of many areas where there are competing hypotheses in evolutionary psychology—a sign of active, healthy science.
    Men can accurately infer a woman’s age and reproductive value if they can directly observe their breasts and other physical features (such as the fat content of the body). But what would men do if they could not directly observe women’s bodies? What if the woman’s body is concealed, by heavy clothing, for instance? Men need another way to determine a woman’s age: her hair color.
    Blonde Hair
    Why do blondes have more fun? Because gentlemen prefer blondes. 14 Why do gentlemen prefer blondes? Because they have evolved psychological mechanisms that predispose them to prefer women with blonde hair. Why?
    The notion that blonde hair is the female ideal goes back at least half a millennium, 15 possibly a couple of millennia. 16 There is evidence that women during the Roman era and the Renaissance period dyed their hair blonde, long before the discovery of peroxide in 1812. Women desired to be blonde so strongly throughout recorded history that they accomplished it without the aid of peroxide.
    Some believe that men prefer blonde hair because blonde women tend to have lighter skin, which they prefer. 17 But this seems to be false. While men do prefer women with lighter skin color, 18 because it is an indication of higher fertility 19 (a woman’s skin color darkens when she is pregnant or on the Pill), 20 the lightest skin color is associated with red hair, not blonde hair; yet, according to one study, 21 both men and women have extreme aversion to potential mates with red hair. It turns out that men prefer blonde hair for exactly the same reason that they prefer large breasts: both are accurate indicators of a woman’s age and thus reproductive value.
    What distinguishes blonde hair from all other hair colors is that it changes dramatically with age. Young girls with light blonde hair usually grow up to be women with brown hair (although there are a very few women who retain their light blonde hair into adulthood). Thus, if men prefer to mate with women with blonde hair, they are unconsciously attempting to mate with younger (and hence, on average, healthier and more fecund) women with greater reproductive value and fertility. It is no coincidence that blonde hair evolved in Scandinavia and northern Europe, where it is very cold in winter. In Africa, where our ancestors evolved for most of their evolutionary history, people (men and women) mostly stayed naked. In such an environment, men could accurately assess a woman’s age by the distribution of fat on her