Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!aero!aipna.ed.ac.uk From: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Female human aesthetics Message-ID: <3416@aipna.ed.ac.uk> Date: 1 Nov 90 21:04:56 GMT References: <1990Oct29.185629.3652@nntp-server.caltech.edu> Sender: nadel@aerospace.aero.org Reply-To: Chris Malcolm Organization: Dept of AI, Edinburgh University, UK. Lines: 34 Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org Status: R In article <1990Oct29.185629.3652@nntp-server.caltech.edu> morphy@truebalt.cco.caltech.edu (Jones Maxime Murphy) writes: >More important, we need to attack the double >standard which judges women much more by appearance than men. I think two things are conflated here. The first is sexual attractiveness, the biological purpose of which is to attract one to the most appropriate mate of the opposite sex for the purpose of breeding. Of course in our modern industrial civilisation we have outgrown the environemnt of evolutionary adaptedness which formed the genetic basis for these impulses, but it seems reasonable to suggest that evolution would work slightly differently on men and women in this respect, producing in men a preference for young healthy women (i.e. the usual visible concomitants), and in women a preference for succesful men (i.e. the usual visible concomitants). But what so many women complain about is not this kind of sexual judgement, but that this kind of sexual judgement is used as a basis for other judgements, e.g. job competence. The relationship is not always direct, either -- for example, there is a definite tendency among both men and women to adjust judgement of women's intelligence by a factor inversely related to the size of breasts. i.e., to suppose that women with big tits are (on average) more stupid. Once the sexual judgement is separated from other judgements, is it really true that men are less affected by judgements of their worth based on irrelevant physical parameters? It is, for example, well established that an important selection criterion in promotion up the management ladder is sheer physical bulk. And why are all these men torturing themselves for hours a day and risking drug damage to acquire huge muscles? Why do so many bald men wear toupees? -- Chris Malcolm cam@uk.ac.ed.aipna 031 667 1011 x2550 Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University 5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK