Abstract
The phenomenon of apparently greater emphasis on human female physical attractiveness has spawned an array of explanatory responses, but the great majority can be broadly categorized as either evolutionary or social constructivist in nature. Both perspectives generate distinct and testable predictions. If, as Naomi Wolf (The beauty myth: How images of female beauty are used against women. New York: William Morrow, [originally published in 1991], 2002) and others have argued, greater emphasis on female attractiveness is part of a predominantly Western “beauty myth,” then an analysis of a culturally diverse sample should reveal marked fluctuation in gendered attractiveness emphasis: there should be significant numbers of cultures in which male and female attractiveness are equally emphasized, and cultures in which male attractiveness receives more emphasis. On the other hand, an evolutionary perspective suggests that disproportionate emphasis on female attractiveness will be a universal or near-universal phenomenon. To test these hypotheses, we tallied references to male versus female attractiveness in 90 collections of traditional folktales from 13 diverse cultural areas. The results are consistent with the evolutionary predictions and inconsistent with the constructivist predictions. Across culture areas information on physical attractiveness was much more likely to be conveyed for female characters. Together with other recent studies, these results suggest that the main elements of the beauty myth are not myths: there are large areas of overlap in the attractiveness judgments of diverse populations, and cross-cultural emphasis on physical attractiveness appears to fall principally upon women.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alexander, R. D., & Noonan, K. M. (1979). Concealment of ovulation, parental care, and human social evolution. In N. A. Chagnon, & W. Irons (Eds.), Evolutionary biology and human social behavior: An anthropological perspective (pp. 402–435). North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press.
Baker-Sperry, L., & Grauerholz, L. (2003). The pervasiveness and persistence of the feminine beauty ideal in children’s fairy tales. Gender and Society, 17, 711–726.
Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture, and the body. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Brownmiller, S. (1984). Femininity. New York: Linden Press.
Buss, D. M. (1989). Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 1–49.
Cahill, A. (2003). Feminist pleasure and feminine beautification. Hypathia, 18, 42–64.
Capozzoli, M., McSweeney, L., & Sinha, D. (1999). Beyond kappa: A review of interrater agreement measures. Canadian Journal of Statistics, 27, 3–23.
Cohen, J. (1960). A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 20, 37–46.
Darwin, C. (1871/1998). The descent of man and selection in relation to sex. New York: Prometheus Books.
Dawkins, R. (1989). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, (originally published in 1979).
Dundes, A. (1968). Every man his way: Readings in cultural anthropology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Ellis, H. (1927). Studies in the psychology of sex, vol. IV. Philadelphia: F. A. Davis.
Etcoff, N. (1999). Survival of the prettiest. New York: Doubleday.
Faludi, S. (1992). Backlash: The undeclared war against women. New York: Anchor.
Feingold, A. (1992). Good-looking people are not what we think. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 304–341.
Fleiss, J. L. (1971). Measuring nominal scale agreement among many raters. Psychological Bulletin, 76, 378–382.
Ford, C., & Beach, F. (1951). Patterns of sexual behavior. New York: Harper and Row.
Freedman, R. (1986). Beauty bound. New York: Lexington Books.
Gangestad, S. W., & Buss, D. M. (1993). Pathogen prevalence and human mate preferences. Ethology and Sociobiology, 14, 89–96.
Gangestad, S., & Scheyd, G. (2005). The evolution of human physical attractiveness. Annual Review of Anthropology, 34, 523–548.
Gottschall, J. (2005). Quantitative literary study: A modest manifesto and testing the hypotheses of feminist fairy tale studies. In J. Gottschall, & D. S. Wilson (Eds.), The literary animal: Evolution and the nature of narrative (pp. 199–224). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Gottschall, J. (2007). Greater emphasis on female attractiveness in Homo sapiens: A revised solution to an old evolutionary riddle. Evolutionary Psychology, 5, 347–358.
Gottschall, J., Berkey, R., Drown, C., Fleischner, M., Glotzbecker, M., Kernan, K., et al. (2005). The heroine with a thousand faces: Universal trends in the characterization of female folk tale protagonists. Evolutionary Psychology, 3, 85–103.
Gottschall, J., Martin, J., Quish, H., & Rhea, J. (2004). Sex differences in mate choice criteria are reflected in folktales from around the world and in historical European literature. Evolution and Human Behavior, 25, 102–112.
Haase, D. (2000). Feminist fairy tale scholarship: A critical survey and bibliography. Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, 14, 15–63.
Hansen, J., Reed, E., & Waters, M. (1986). Cosmetics, fashions, and the exploitation of women. New York: Pathfinder Press.
Jones, D. (1996). Physical attractiveness and the theory of sexual selection. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
Krippendorff, K. (1980). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
Langlois, J., Kalakanis, L., Rubenstein, A., Larson, A., Hallam, M., & Smoot, M. (2000). Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 390–423.
Neuendorf, K. (2002). The content analysis guidebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Potter, W., & Levine-Donnerstein, D. (1999). Rethinking validity and reliability in content analysis. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 27, 258–284.
Ragan, K. (2008). What happened to the heroine in folktales? An analysis by gender of a multicultural sample of published folktales collected from storytellers. Marvels and Tales (in press).
Rhodes, G. (2006). The evolutionary psychology of facial beauty. Annual Reviews of Psychology, 57, 199–226.
Rhodes, G., & Zebrowitz, L. (Eds.) (2002). In Facial attractiveness: Evolutionary, cognitive and social perspectives. Westport, CT: Ablex.
Rourke, L., Anderson, T., Garrison, D., & Archer, D. (2001). Methodological issues in the content analysis of computer conference transcripts. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 12, 8–22.
Schoemacher, C. (2004). A critical appraisal of the anorexia statistics in the beauty myth: Introducing Wolf’s Overdo and Lie Factor (WOLF). Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention, 12, 97–102.
Sommers, C. H. (1994). Who stole feminism?. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Sugiyama, L. (2005). Physical attractiveness in adaptationist perspective. In D. Buss (Ed.), The Handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 292–343). New York: Wiley.
Symons, D. (1979). The evolution of human sexuality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Toerien, M., & Wilkinson, S. (2003). Gender and body hair: Constructing the feminine woman. Woman’s Studies International Forum, 26, 333–344.
Travis, C., Meginnis, K., & Bardari, K. (2000). Beauty, sexuality, and identity: The social control of women. In C. B. Travis, & J. W. White (Eds.), Sexuality, society, and feminism: Psychological perspectives on women (pp. 237–272). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Weber, R. P. (1990). Basic content analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Westermarck, E. (1921). The history of human marriage, vol. I. London: Macmillan.
Wolf, N. (2002). The beauty myth: How images of female beauty are used against women. New York: William Morrow, (originally published in 1991).
Wollstonecraft, M. (1792). A vindication of the rights of woman. Boston: Peter Edes.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for support provided by the dean of St. Lawrence University, Grant Cornwell, and, especially, Assistant Dean Steven Horwitz. We also thank two other St. Lawrence University faculty members, Robin Lock (Statistics) and Alan Searleman (Psychology), both of whom provided consultation on statistical matters. Like these professors, John Johnson (Penn State University) generously lent us the benefit of specialized statistical expertise. Finally, we thank the three anonymous peer-reviewers; this article benefited greatly from their challenges and their advice.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Consortia
Corresponding author
Appendix
Appendix
Attractiveness keywords (all relevant variants of these words were also tagged)
Physical Attractiveness: Alluring, Attractive, Beautiful, Brawny, Breathtaking, Broad, Burly, Busty, Buxom, Comely, Coquettish, Curvaceous, Cute, Exquisite, Fair, Feminine, Good Looking, Gorgeous, Handsome, Lovely, Luscious, Maidenly, Manly, Masculine, Muscular, Nubile, Powerful, Pretty, Pulchritudinous, Radiant, Ravishing, Sexy, Shapely, Strapping, Strong, Stunning, Tall, Virile, Voluptuous, Winsome, Womanly.
Physical Unattractiveness: Disfigured, Disgusting, Frightful, Gross, Grotesque, Hideous, Homely, Horrid, Horrible, Loathsome, Monstrous, Repelling, Repugnant, Repulsive, Revolting, Ugly, Unattractive.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gottschall, J., Kacey Anderson, Chad Burbank, Jasper Burch, Chelsea Byrnes, Christine Callanan, Nicole Casamento, Amy Gardiner, Natalie Gladd, Allison Hartnett, Elisabeth Henry, Eloise Hilarides, Chelsea Lemke, Kristen Manganini, Sara Merrihew, Tonya Milan-Robinson, Patrick O’Connell, Jessica Mott, Kimberly Parker, Karlin Revoir, Nathan Riley, Darcie Robinson, Sheila Rodriguez, Chelsea Sauve, April Spearance, Valerie Stucker, Adam Tapply, Alexa Unser, Christopher Wall, Alexis Webb, and Melinda Zocco. The “Beauty Myth” Is No Myth. Hum Nat 19, 174–188 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-008-9035-3
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-008-9035-3