Economist's View: "I'm too ugly to get a job"On the other hand, if I were better looking I'd have been even worse behaved as a young man than I was. There's something to be said for having decidely average looks.
..Not only are physically unattractive teenagers likely to be stay-at-homes on prom night, they're also more likely to grow up to be criminals, say two economists... "We find that unattractive individuals commit more crime in comparison to average-looking ones, and very attractive individuals commit less crime in comparison to those who are average-looking," claim Naci Mocan of the University of Colorado and Erdal Tekin of Georgia State University...
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.... Attractiveness in most species is a marker for overall fitness. The beautiful, on average, probably have better genes than homely folk like me. [jf: So do their parents, so they are also typically wealthier ...]
I remember well one summer watching a group of first year Harvard med students entering class. The ugliest among them was prettier than almost all of my McGill med school class. Clearly, physical beauty was a part of their selection process (probably filed under "leadership potential"). Why not?
For a more interesting question -- what is the relationship between acne, the appearance of young females, and the probability of being raped? What is the adaptive advantage of female acne?
What can we do about this? If we're around in a hundred years maybe we'll be wise enough to sort this out -- or we'll have engineered homeliness out of the human species.
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