thedrunkenchild So is this all armchair evolutionary psych or do you have actual science to back up all these scientifically stated claims?
As far as I can tell, you're just cherry picking individual attraction phenomenons and arbitrarily associating it with a theoretical reproduction benefit without actually proving any of it. This is literally the kind of 'science' that tries to explain male pattern baldness by connecting it with increase in aerodynamics to escape predators.
Well let me begin to explain myself even further then:
"you're just cherry picking individual attraction phenomenons and arbitrarily associating it with a theoretical reproduction benefit without actually proving any of it"
well I did found a study that found correlation between large breast/hip waist ratio and actual reproduction benefit:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1691716/pdf/15306344.pdf
so my argument that at least in regard to women the attractiveness of certain physical traits might be dictated by more than just societal trends seems to be validated by at least this study.
My argument for male attractiveness is a little more complex and more difficult to prove as it's more broad and there aren't any study that I could find to help me, but nonetheless we do know a lot about women's role and supposed needs throughout the ages so I feel like I can make reasonable claims about male attractiveness and the role male physical attributes had in it.
So what we do know about women's role up to a century ago?
Because of babies physiological necessities and overall economical situation in society the role in the family of the vast majority of women was taking care of children, because human babies are very high maintenance, working or resource gathering was relegated to the male figure, these activities especially at the beginning of civilization were very physically demanding(things such as hunting, wood chopping and gathering) so it makes sense to believe that males were sexually selected mainly for their physical prowess as this allowed them to gather resources more efficiently and offered better defense for the family as well.
As society advanced and technology made resource gathering and immediate defense less of a physical problem and more of a monetary one, it's reasonable to believe that male physical prowess started to be considered as a trait of secondary importance to the family and the men's ability to score higher paying jobs(which often required less physical labor and less danger for the man) started to become a higher priority so women started to be less vinconleted by the male's high physical presence when involved in sexual selection, this in return allowed men to be less defined by a singular physical characteristic and male physical sexual attractiveness was allowed to evolve into being more varied and subjective.
Women's role however never changed in such a radical way throughout the ages mainly because of slow advancement in medicine and the overall societal poverty their physical attributes still remained the biggest factors during sexual selection as the fertility of the female sexual partner and their ability to care for the children when born was still the best guarantees of advancement of the next generation (especially with high mortality rate among children I might add) for men.
I think these are rather reasonable claims to make considering the historical information at our disposal and our knowledge and acceptance of Darwin's theories. I don't feel like I've been cherry picking in my argument but if you do find flaws in it I'm happy to have a conversation about it.
