Do Women Prefer Masculine Faces?

In recent years, scientists have turned to the theory of evolution to explain why some faces are judged to be more attractive than others.

According to the laws of evolution, the attractiveness of an individual is directly related to his or her value as a mate. In other words, a "high-value" mate is one who best enhances your chances for successfully reproducing. In our evolutionary past, scientists claim, someone who noticed the cues to the value of a potential partner and thereby selected a high-value mate would leave behind more children, and those children would tend to inherit genes for attentiveness (i.e., they paid attention to who was the most handsome).

Thus attention to attractiveness is part of our evolutionary design.

What does good looks have to do with anything? Scientists believe that one link between good genes and attraction could be the shape of the masculine face.

Boys and girls, until puberty, have similarly shaped faces. At puberty, however, hormones kick in and masculinize or femininize the faces and produce distinctive faces of mature men and women. Testosterone provokes the growth of certain facial features--such as the jaw and cheekbones--so boys' faces grow more than girls'. Female faces remain relatively childlike. High levels of estrogen in growing girls prevents the growth of facial bones, and leads to increased thickness of lips and fatty deposits in the cheek area.

Theoretically, then, men with more 'masculine' faces should be more attractive, because there are certain evolutionary costs connected to developing such characteristics. It all comes back to the testosterone levels associated with the male face-shape. Testosterone decreases the effectiveness of the immune system, and so only healthy individuals with strong immune systems can afford to produce the hormones required to create masculine characteristics. (If a male doesn't have a strong immune system, his body would not release enough testosterone to give him a more masculine facial shape.)

The quality of our immune systems is linked to our genes. So it tracks that an attractive masculine face should reflect the attractiveness of underlying good immunity genes (and thereby somewhat guaranteeing a child of the union would be healthy).

There have also been some studies done of chimps and gorillas in correlation to this idea. Male primates' canine teeth generally are longer than females. Which makes sense, as their teeth would be used in fights for dominance and fighting for the right to mate. Longer teeth often reflect which males are dominant.

Scientists have found that as primate faces became broader, their canines were shorter. Longer-faced primates have longer canines. The study of chimps and gorillas found that there was a development of broader-faced males with shorter canines in chimpanzees (which evolutionists claim our are closest primate relative), suggesting a move toward attractiveness versus brute strength when females selected their mates. Broader faces with prominent cheekbones were picked preferentially by females.

This leads scientists to believe that we had the same "move" in our own evolutionary history (as evidenced by contemporary movie stars like Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortensen), where mate choice was more important than competition between males.

Hmm. You'd never know that by watching American football or Canadian hockey, now would ya?

Take a look. Are these faces attractive to you?


P.S. I'll be over at Fallen Angels Reviews tonight, along with the other authors from Whiskey Creek Press Torrid. 9 p.m. EST. Come over and chat with us!