The Biology of Beauty

Essay by Steve UdickHigh School, 10th gradeA+, September 1996

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Many articles are written by modern psychologists and psychoanalysts that stress the importance of beauty

in human and animal breeding as well as survival. One such article The Biology of Beauty suggests this importance and

backs it up with many facts and figures as well as surveys on normal people. The article states many theories and hypotheses

and also tries to explain why beauty plays such an important role in sexuality and power. What is beauty? According to this

article, beauty is a combination of symmetry, special qualities, and traits.

Symmetry is perhaps the most supported part of beauty in this article. The article states that symmetry

shows abundance of sexual hormones, health, and strength of the immune system. They support their hypothesis of

symmetry's affect on the abundance of sexual hormones with various scientific evidence. Two psychologists, Steven

Gangestead and Randy Thornhill measured the symmetry of hundreds of men and women in college.

They also asked them

to complete a personal confidential survey that gave information on their health and sex lives. What they found was that the

men and women with better symmetry had started having sex 3-4 years before the people with average symmetry.

Gangestead and Thornhill also completed another survey involving women's responses to symmetrical men and men with

average symmetry. The results were as expected. The women with symmetrical partners responded twice as much

compared to the women with men having average symmetry. The rate of contraception was also much higher. Animals are

much more severe in their choosing. Female penguins won't accept males who aren't plump and symmetrical, and female

scorpion flies only accept males with symmetrical wings, as they are better at hunting and protecting. Also, less symmetrical

men and women surveyed had more ailments and more frequent accounts of illnesses compared to...