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Friday, August 05, 2005
An age of appearances
Daniel Akst writes in the Wilson Quarterly:
The importance of good looks rose “dramatically” for both men and women from 1939 to 1989, the period of the study, according to David M. BussRead the full piece, "Looks Do Matter", here. Not good news for ones such as me. Shouldn't blogs matter as well?, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas. On a scale of 1 to 3, the importance men gave to good looks rose from 1.50 to 2.11. But for women, the importance of good looks in men rose from 0.94 to 1.67. In other words, women in 1989 considered a man’s looks even more important than men considered women’s looks 50 years earlier. Since the 1930s, Buss writes, “physical appearance has gone up in importance for men and women about equally, corresponding with the rise in television, fashion magazines, advertising, and other media depictions of attractive models.”
In all likelihood this trend will continue, driven by social and technological changes that are unlikely to be reversed anytime soon—changes such as the new ubiquity of media images, the growing financial independence of women, and the worldwide weakening of the institution of marriage. For better or worse, we live now in an age of appearances. It looks like looks are here to stay.
