Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty Paperback – July 11, 2000

Many of the reviews here complains about this being not a book scientifically strong enough.But even looking at the index you can see what the text is about from the chapters 'the nature of beauty', 'beauty as bait', 'cover me', 'feature presentation' and 'fashion runaway'... since the book is written by someone like Dr. Etcoff, everybody expects the scientific cold point of view evident in every page.But for many other disciplines the text is perfectly able to open wide a huge perspective in the general problem of the perception of beauty, its uses, and the necessity of it.For people into arts, the thing about beauty perception and mathematical relation deeply rooted, not in the software but instead in the hardware, is fundamental in a time were the discussion is always about art not being interested in the aestethic depiction, perception or even consideration.Of course it can be sort of very well known facts what she is saying here about the golden proportion, simmetry and genetic health, the 7 to 10 hip proportion and fertility in women, and even the relation between the mother's perception of beauty in their offspring and neoteny -a concept that certainly you can trace back to Stephen Jay Gould or any other 'divulgative' text, even like the mentioned here 'the selfish gene', etc.But the real problem is context.What this book is really good at, is filling the gap between those kind of books -biology, life sciences, perception- and the kind of studies that really need to approach the subject not only as a problem, but instead as a matter.Not precisely aesthetics, but !fashion!.Even at the very beginning is mentioned how nowadays an entire city can be stopped because Claudia Schiffer is at a starcaise making some photographs, giving us the clue to understand how this whole book can be seen; in a total different light and with such a different use.The fact that every now and then Desmond Morris collides with Sandra Rhodes, Azzedine Alaia meets Darwin, opens the window and let you see the landscape is about the form, perception and construction of beauty as an adjective, as something we worn and sometimes have to endure.So this book belongs in the shelf next to Anne Hollander, Valerie Steel or Alison Lurie. Comprehensive studies about the power of image, fashion and appeareance. And not precisely in the side of the 'scientific' bunch.And it is an excellent entrance to think in the equation beauty, perception, process and representation that is so difficult to see, but so much necessary to really achieve: design with one eye into the biological process, art once again perceiving its duties, and science humanized through the contact with the arts, designs and fashion. Also I think everybody goes to the scientific side forgetting all the good concatenation of historical facts from corsets, wigs, make up, heels, making a very well define line between the subject -the beauty- and its uses.As a companion I think also in the same shelf could it be 'Venus Envy' by Elizabeth Haiken, also a bridge between 'science and consumer culture'.

Contrary to what many people think there are certain features of the human body and face that have always been considered attractive, in all cultures. That is, beauty is not an invention of the media any more than cuteness is an invention of Disney (Bambi, the movie, exploited our instinctive judgements of what is cute). Neither is beauty merely in the eye of the beholder. Yet, having said that, both the media and the perceiver matters, just not as much as people tend to think.In this book Nancy Etcoff from Harvard University provides a fast paced, thoroughly researched, rich and enjoyable account of attractiveness. She provides answers to all the main questions that usually come up when attractiveness is discussed. Here is a non exhaustive list, which the basic answerQ: What is attractive?A: Averageness, symmetry, Big eyes (women), large cheekbones (men)Q: When did people start to care so much about their appearance?A: Since the dawn of timeQ: Are we nicer to more attractive individualsA: YesQ: Why are certain traits considered attractive?A: Because they are indicators of underlying qualities, such as health or fertilityThese are rough answers, and there are many important and interesting details which cannot be covered in a short review such as this. Thankfully, Etcoff goes into full detail, and even though I am sort of a minor expert on attractiveness (have published a couple of studies on memory biases associated with attractiveness), I learned many things from this book. Etcoff’s style of writing is reminiscent of Steven Pinker. Both are masters when it comes to referencing a ton of literature from very divergent sources (books, TV-shows, published articles, archeological findings, poetry etc), in a short amount of text, without affecting the flow of that text. In fact Etcoff made such an impression on me that I am almost certain to buy her next book (if she writes one), independent of what that book is about.

Nancy Etcoff's "Survival of the Prettiest" argues that beauty is not a social construct but that human beings are hardwired to recognize people and things as beautiful. You could imagine it like this. There's a definite set of beauty principles we all carry around in our noggins that interact with the environment in all sorts of ways, and these principles allow for varying ranges as to what would appear to be beautiful to us. We might not be able to state in words why it is we find some people and some things beautiful. But there's compelling cross-cultural evidence that there are certain features that we all find beautiful.Etcoff does make an effort to distinguish beauty from fashion. Fashion by its very nature is something that is of the moment. It sometimes either exploits some of the knowledge we carry around about what we find beautiful but other times is very much a matter of social construction. Sometimes we find certain styles and things fashionable because of some authority that tells us that that style of thing (clothing item, accessory, makeup, etc.) is fashionable.Etcoff doesn't talk so much about art, but you could sort of apply this kind of thinking to art and the artworld. So nobody would definitely say that the function of art is that it ought to be beautiful, but everybody agrees that people in general like beautiful art. If so, then how to account for so much ugly art that people seem to like? Fashion and authority. Status indicators. Display of conspicuous consumption. It's not a pretty answer but very likely true. Or perhaps less cynically, sometimes it's just that a work of art can be ugly, maybe only a little ugly, but it serves another positive function: like maybe it expresses something important boy human nature.