Rather a hipster with a beard or a young first? Experience shows that women tend to favor a thick facial hair in order to reproduce.
” A man, a real man “. There are many expressions that enhance virility. Advertising also echoes an exacerbated masculinity. The men’s perfume department is undoubtedly the best example of this: The male, The night of the man, Only the Brave… The argument is supposed to make the products more attractive.
But what about when it comes to selecting your partner? Australian researchers have wondered about this: what makes a man attractive? The beard is a characteristic that counts, answer the authors. But they brought to light a rather astonishing paradox in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.
Signs of good health
8,520 women took part in this study. They were placed in front of several male faces and had to classify them according to their attractiveness in two situations: a short relationship and a longer one. The different facies showed variations in hairiness, ranging from freshly shaved cheeks to those adorned with a carefully groomed beard.
The researchers also included changes in secondary male characteristics, such as a prominent browbone or a more pronounced jawbone. “The typical features of the man, like a marked brow bone, a more square jaw are the signs of good health, while the beard can indicate the age of a man and a male social domination”, underline- they. Slight variations can therefore make a face more or less manly.
Fertility and survival
This is where the “paradox of masculinity”, described in the title of the study, emerges. When it comes to selecting a partner for a short time, women favor manly features, such as a square jaw, or a beard that is a few days old. The beard emerges as an attractive feature when women select a potential life partner. In this situation, they clearly favor a dense facial hair. And this, whatever the shape of the face, feminized or on the contrary made more masculine.
The choice is not trivial: the beard would be the sign of an exacerbated virility. By displaying it, men show that they are very fertile and able to survive for a long time. Two important parameters for the survival of the species, more in any case than a square jaw. Moreover, faces virilized or feminized to the extreme are almost systematically rejected.
“Our results suggest that having a beard can be attractive in long-term relationships because it is a sign of intrasexual domination,” the authors conclude. A very complex terminology to evoke the human equivalent of an alpha male. Because the choice of a bearded man could be more of a reflex as a species than a simple aesthetic choice, according to researchers. “Sexual selection through female choice has shaped the evolution of male adornments in many species,” they recall. The beard would therefore be the means of signaling to women the strong presence of male hormones.
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