A recently-reported excavation of a highly advanced Neolithic settlement shows that early humans were as concerned about appearance as long as 7500 years ago, since they produced statuettes of women wearing short skirts, ornamental tops, and bracelets around their arms. In the settlement, archaeologists found many things, including tools for metalworking. A nearby copper mine dated to the same period as the settlement confirms that the people in this village were advanced metalworkers.

The settlement also shows that villagers produced as many as 60 different forms of pottery and figurines. The village has evidence of advanced burial practices, clothes made of wool, flax, and leather. It also shows that the people of this era treated children much as we would today, supplying them with rattles and toy animals, as well as having them play at adult tasks such as pot-making.

There is also a thermal well nearby, marking what may very well be Europe's oldest beauty spa.

Interestingly, the settlement also has figurines of young women, who ornamented themselves in a fashion remarkably similar to today's women. Although it is by no means One Million Years B.C, the women wore short skirts and attractive short blouses.

The figurine also shows how much this culture valued narrow waists and arms of young women, meaning that in some ways they were very similar to us with our liposuction-seeking culture, not only around the abdomen, but perhaps even seeking SmartLipo for the arms and other targeted areas of fat. However, since the women are small-breasted, we imagine they would most likely not share the penchant of modern humans toward breast augmentation

Labels: art, breast augmentation, fashion, liposuction, neolithic

Although beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, research reminds us that all human beholders have essentially the same eye. Ever since evolutionary psychologists turned their gaze to the question of female beauty, they noted a striking correlation. Almost all of the most beautiful women, the sex symbols from many ages, had one thing in common despite the apparently changeable nature of fashion. Nearly all women considered significantly beautiful had a waist-to-hip ratio of .7 to .8. For a long time, it was considered that this was a product of Western media, a phenomenon localized in both space and time. This conclusion was based at least partly on the discovery of the Venus of Willendorf, a stone-age statuette that ostensibly portrayed the ideal of beauty from the period it was made, between 24,000-22,000 BCE.

However, the purpose of the statuette is completely unknown: it may be actually a weight-loss totem, intended to appease the Fat Goddess, who then doesn't punish the bearer with fat. This isn't much crazier than some of the diet claims I've seen on late-night TV, and it brings up the point that we shouldn't be too hasty to make judgements based on very fragmentary evidence. Much more reliable is data from cultural sources that are plentiful enough to give context to one another.

For example, a great deal of Greco-Roman sculpture remains, enough to give statistical significance to findings, and with context that shows these statues were intended to be beautiful, such as naming the statue Venus (rather than having that moniker applied post facto). Studies of these statues indicates that they also share the same waist-to-hip ratio as dominated Western sex symbols. Of course, the Greco-Roman culture is the foundation of Western art, so it makes sense that we might derive our values of beauty from their statuary.

But a more recent study of 345,000 texts from the United States, Britain, China, and India, from the first century to the present confirmed the earlier hypothesis. According to the study, the ideal of the slim waist has been relatively constant over history. Although the breasts are the most commonly mentioned feature, the waistline is also a prominent feature, and is always referred to as narrow when beautiful. This holds true for both men and women.

This cultural study follows a biological study that women with "hourglass figures," i.e. large breasts, narrow waists, and wide hips, had much higher levels of hormones that predict their ability to become pregnant.

Together, these studies provide both the evidence of universality for the narrow waist, as well as an evolutionary mechanism selecting for the trait, and they explain the prominence of several types of cosmetic surgery procedures. It explains, for example, the popularity of liposuction for men and women. And abdominoplasty is also popular among both sexes. Furthermore, the perennial popularity of breast augmentation, not only in the United States but around the world is also given credibility by these studies, not to mention the increasing popularity of buttock augmentation.

Labels: beauty, evolutionary psychology, liposuction

The above lines from Edmund Waller's 17th century poem are truer even than he imagined. According to a new study published in the journal of Evolution and Human Behavior, women with curves are more intelligent than skinnier women. Not only that, but the women tended to produce smarter children. The researchers studied a sample size of 16,000 women and girls, giving them cognitive tests. The results showed that not only did women do better on the tests as the difference between their hips and waist increased, but the children of these women did better as well.

Researchers speculated on a mechanism that links the two, that the fatty acid deposits found on the hips and elsewhere could help maintain a higher reserve of Omega-3 acids, which have been shown to help developmental health, reduce deposits that clog arteries, and reduce the risk of cancer. It has also been intimated that the acids may be helpful in combating depression and anxiety.

The study also claimed that the combination of an attractive (i.e. fecund) figure was combined with the attraction of intelligence. This finding is a blow to conventional wisdom that women cannot be both smart and attractive (wisdom pithily pilloried in Dorothy Parker's couplet: "Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses"), and calls attention to curvaceous and smart women, such as the voluptuous British cook, Nigella Lawson. Lawson has a degree in Medieval and Modern Languages from Oxford, and is the author of six books, including Feast, and the aptly titled How to Be a Domestic Goddess, probably referring to Hestia or Hera, not Venus, although that might also be appropriate.

Some researchers are not convinced. Noting that there are many complex and more proximate possible causes, researchers claim that a link between fatty hips and fatty acids in the bloodstream and the development of intelligence is tenuous at best. furthermore, these same researchers are unconvinced by the notion that the waist-to-hip ratio is all that significant a determiner of attractiveness. They claim it is relatively low on a man's list of priorities when looking for a potential partner.

However, this second objection is based on survey data, and one of the essential principles of evolutionary psychology is that most of what goes on in our minds is hidden from us, making surveys dubious evidence. This principle has long been known by sex researchers as well, and is pithily summed up by cognitive researchers as "Men say one thing, and date another."

Another curvaceous woman who felt the conflict between her looks and her intelligence is Catherine Zeta-Jones, who has said, "I used to go around looking as frumpy as possible because it was inconceivable you could be attractive as well as smart."

But the truth, apparently, is very different. The truth is that a well-contoured body not only looks good, but looks smart as well. Practicing body contouring in Dallas, Texas, Dr. Vasdev Rai, is an expert at liposuction, tummy tucks, and other techniques to help you achieve the curves of a scholar.

Labels: beauty, celebrity, evolutionary psychology, liposuction, poetry, tummy tuck, voluptuous