Not so long ago, whilst enjoying a gelato, I was posed a difficult question by two female friends, "So karthik tell me, what do you look for in a woman - Beauty or Brains?". Any man who poses to be rational would give the obvious answer - "Brains, of course!" and I replied no differently. But then it wasn't as phony as it might sound, at least looking at the history of females I fell for. In hindsight, I would say the question is not as simple to answer.
What is the common gripe of women against men?, "men..men...men, idiots are total suckers for beauty. It doesn't matter how stupid the female is, all they care is how pretty she is, aaaargh!". Are these just proverbial complaints or do they have an element of truth? of course, they do, we all know that. Beauty is a necessity while brains is just a bonus. If you ask a man, who has recently fallen in love, what he has seen in the woman he loves? What would be the likely set of answers? "dude, she is intelligent", "it's her attitude", "it's her innocence", "it's her friendliness", "she's homely" and all that crap. No one truly admits the real reason - that the guy finds her beautiful and the rest niceties are all just added bonuses. If the guy doesn't find the girl beautiful, no matter what other goodies he sees in her, he won't fall in love with her.
What is beauty? has the definition of beauty been consistent over the generations, over the
different races, over the people from the same region, or for that matter, has it been consistent for the same guy as he ages? The answer is no, we all know "beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder". As a teen, I used to wonder why Naomi Campbell is considered pretty. If you are fat, you cannot be a heroine in Bollywood, but I've heard and observed heroines getting intentionally fat for fame in the tamil movie industry (the trend, may be, is on the decline). If a size-zero supermodel comes to me and asks me to marry her (it's my bloody blog and I will imagine only those hypothetical situations that will please me) ,I would first ask her to eat properly. Historians say at one time, the western world considered fat women to be beautiful (not fat fat of course). 
May be the painting(and many such Victorian/roman era paintings), by titian circa 1550 AD, might prove that. Whereas the sculptures in medieval India (especially temples from tamilnadu) show goddesses having slim figures. European women like to bathe in the sun, Indian women like to run away from the sun - both to be in accordance to the standards of beauty currently in vogue, in their respective countries. To cut short a long story, the perception of beauty changes from man to man, race to race, generation to generation. Your perception of beauty changes with the kind of people you grow up with, kind of women you've been seeing around, or, in other words, beauty is nurtured. If I were raised in the US, may be, I would have been running after the size-zero ones, if I had been raised in tamilnadu (of yesteryears), I would have been running after plump ones. So, is there no idea of beauty ingrained in my genes? a concept that I was born with? Yes, there is such a concept. As usual, evolution holds the key.
I've written what a man finds attractive in a woman and why. I've tried to define beauty from a man's point of view. I said a man has to find a woman beautiful before he falls in love with her. There is still one question left unanswered - Why does a man have to find a woman beautiful? why doesn't a man share his life with the first woman that comes in his path? why does he have to be choosy - by assessing her beauty? Like I said earlier, a man finds attractive in a woman those attributes/characteristics that would help his baby. This also answers the current question, he wants a beautiful wife because his idea of beauty(that has been etched into his brain) is beneficial for his unborn baby. Why does he (or his brain) care about an unborn child so much so that he bases his entire perception of beauty on what he thinks would be great for that child? As I wrote in my earlier post, every species evolves such that its genes are well preserved into the next generation, that is why. Why is this not observed in other species - during their mating season, a peacock mates with any peahen that chooses him, a bullock will mate with any cow, a male lion will mate with any set of female lions that join his harem. Then why this extraordinary pressure on female humans to be beautiful, why human males are choosy? Love and its origins have the answers. Since humans share their entire lives with a single partner, he has to be choosy, he has only one shot at fathering a healthy set of babies because he will have those babies with only one partner. Whereas, in species that have a no concept of marriage, the males have multiples shots at becoming father to babies from multiple females - in such a case it doesn't make sense to be choosy, it makes sense to mate as much as possible to spread the male's genes. So in other species, where males need not be choosy and selective, the females are under no pressure to be beautiful.
Richard Dawkins, in his book 'The Selfish Gene', writes how we are all just slaves of our genes. Our entire existence is just to satisfy the whims of those genes. But we do have free-will, something that gives us the strength of acting against our primal instincts. Matt Ridley, in his book 'Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters', writes how, even free-will is just an illusion created by genes and we are never actually free (much like the premise of the movie, The Matrix). In a hypothetical situation, suppose you can choose to either lie(and get away) or speak the truth(and give some explanation). It might seem you have a choice, but in reality you don't, the outcome has already been decided by your genes. In the future, when the human genome is perfectly decoded, it could be possible to know what exactly you would do in a particular well-defined situation. The movie 'Gattaca' has a storyline similar to this. At the climax of that movie, the hero(with a weak set of genes) does extra-ordinary things and the movie closes with the line,"there is no human gene for courage"; I would beg to differ, there is a human gene for everything. All is not lost; Matt Ridley also says free-will is very much possible. I am not too well-versed in those aspects of genes and hence can't reproduce here what he wrote. I, personally, don't like the idea of not having a choice, of not having a free-will, I sincerely wish we do.
PS: What I have written is not the brainchild of my genius. I've only written what I have read. If you are interested in reading more about evolution and love, read this wonderful book by Matt Ridley - The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.
Next part: Time for Women to Choose
Photo1 Courtesy: Bill Watterson and his genius
Photo2 Courtesy: Titian, don't know who holds the copyrights
Photo3 Courtesy: photographersdirect.com
What is the common gripe of women against men?, "men..men...men, idiots are total suckers for beauty. It doesn't matter how stupid the female is, all they care is how pretty she is, aaaargh!". Are these just proverbial complaints or do they have an element of truth? of course, they do, we all know that. Beauty is a necessity while brains is just a bonus. If you ask a man, who has recently fallen in love, what he has seen in the woman he loves? What would be the likely set of answers? "dude, she is intelligent", "it's her attitude", "it's her innocence", "it's her friendliness", "she's homely" and all that crap. No one truly admits the real reason - that the guy finds her beautiful and the rest niceties are all just added bonuses. If the guy doesn't find the girl beautiful, no matter what other goodies he sees in her, he won't fall in love with her.
What is beauty? has the definition of beauty been consistent over the generations, over the
different races, over the people from the same region, or for that matter, has it been consistent for the same guy as he ages? The answer is no, we all know "beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder". As a teen, I used to wonder why Naomi Campbell is considered pretty. If you are fat, you cannot be a heroine in Bollywood, but I've heard and observed heroines getting intentionally fat for fame in the tamil movie industry (the trend, may be, is on the decline). If a size-zero supermodel comes to me and asks me to marry her (it's my bloody blog and I will imagine only those hypothetical situations that will please me) ,I would first ask her to eat properly. Historians say at one time, the western world considered fat women to be beautiful (not fat fat of course). 
May be the painting(and many such Victorian/roman era paintings), by titian circa 1550 AD, might prove that. Whereas the sculptures in medieval India (especially temples from tamilnadu) show goddesses having slim figures. European women like to bathe in the sun, Indian women like to run away from the sun - both to be in accordance to the standards of beauty currently in vogue, in their respective countries. To cut short a long story, the perception of beauty changes from man to man, race to race, generation to generation. Your perception of beauty changes with the kind of people you grow up with, kind of women you've been seeing around, or, in other words, beauty is nurtured. If I were raised in the US, may be, I would have been running after the size-zero ones, if I had been raised in tamilnadu (of yesteryears), I would have been running after plump ones. So, is there no idea of beauty ingrained in my genes? a concept that I was born with? Yes, there is such a concept. As usual, evolution holds the key.The idea of beauty, that a man is born with, in his genes is........the immensely popular.......36-24-36 hour-glass figure with a round arse/buttocks. 
Of course, we are not born with those numbers but we are born to appreciate and admire the ratio, of bust/waist/hip. The measurement itself is not important but the ratio is - A big bust, slim waist and a hip wider when compared with the waist. This standard of beauty has been pretty much consistent over the generations, races and individuals. Most of the traditional clothes, be it a saree or a victorian era ball gown or a womens cut tee-shirt, try and accentuate this ratio. The hour glass figure, is pretty much liked by every man on this planet. And when something is consistent and common over the entire human population, you have got to suspect it's evolution. Let's take a bottom-up approach (pun intended). The hips- men swoon over when shakira, with the utmost ease, shakes, and does wonders with her hips. Unfortunately, we can only speculate why men evolved to appreciate a wide hip. The popular theory is that, a wider hip might have fooled men into thinking that the woman's pelvic bone is large (read my earlier post) and hence his baby is safe. It means we are still fools, our brains are hardwired to like wide hips. Men are obsessed with breasts, they really are. Ninth grade science textbook teaches you breasts are secondary sexual organs - meaning they help a woman in attracting a mate. Breasts, definitely do serve the purpose, but it has got to have a reason. When humans, thousands of years ago, still walked on fours, the act of sexual intercourse was performed only with the man penetrating the woman from behind(yes, doggy) and not in the face-to-face way. Because of the 'behind' penetration, a secondary sexual organ had to be behind a woman's body - the arse. We still have those instincts in us and hence we(men) find the arse an integral factor in assessing a woman's sexiness. After we became bipeds, watching the other gender (and penetrating them) became a more open-chested like. So now, the secondary sexual organ had to be in the front side, and breasts took over the role (This transition is evident if you observe chimps and gorillas where breasts seem to have no other purpose other than to give milk to the baby apes). So, breasts became the secondary sexual organs, but why breasts, that once were just milk ducts? Why not ears, or why not the waist become differently shaped? Either you believe something had to change and breasts were chosen or think more and say it had to have a reason. There are multiple theories but I can only remember one, the one which always catches my imagination - the one which says men are fools. The theory says, men were fooled into thinking that larger breasts mean more milk for his baby! Until I read about this theory, I thought a larger breast could indeed store more milk than a smaller one. Hence proved, men are fools! Coming to the last one, the question of why a slim waist?(as i said before, it's not the measurement that is important but the ratio. by a slim waist I mean, slimmer compared to the hip) May be a slimmer waist just helped to show how wide the hip is, may be.
Of course, we are not born with those numbers but we are born to appreciate and admire the ratio, of bust/waist/hip. The measurement itself is not important but the ratio is - A big bust, slim waist and a hip wider when compared with the waist. This standard of beauty has been pretty much consistent over the generations, races and individuals. Most of the traditional clothes, be it a saree or a victorian era ball gown or a womens cut tee-shirt, try and accentuate this ratio. The hour glass figure, is pretty much liked by every man on this planet. And when something is consistent and common over the entire human population, you have got to suspect it's evolution. Let's take a bottom-up approach (pun intended). The hips- men swoon over when shakira, with the utmost ease, shakes, and does wonders with her hips. Unfortunately, we can only speculate why men evolved to appreciate a wide hip. The popular theory is that, a wider hip might have fooled men into thinking that the woman's pelvic bone is large (read my earlier post) and hence his baby is safe. It means we are still fools, our brains are hardwired to like wide hips. Men are obsessed with breasts, they really are. Ninth grade science textbook teaches you breasts are secondary sexual organs - meaning they help a woman in attracting a mate. Breasts, definitely do serve the purpose, but it has got to have a reason. When humans, thousands of years ago, still walked on fours, the act of sexual intercourse was performed only with the man penetrating the woman from behind(yes, doggy) and not in the face-to-face way. Because of the 'behind' penetration, a secondary sexual organ had to be behind a woman's body - the arse. We still have those instincts in us and hence we(men) find the arse an integral factor in assessing a woman's sexiness. After we became bipeds, watching the other gender (and penetrating them) became a more open-chested like. So now, the secondary sexual organ had to be in the front side, and breasts took over the role (This transition is evident if you observe chimps and gorillas where breasts seem to have no other purpose other than to give milk to the baby apes). So, breasts became the secondary sexual organs, but why breasts, that once were just milk ducts? Why not ears, or why not the waist become differently shaped? Either you believe something had to change and breasts were chosen or think more and say it had to have a reason. There are multiple theories but I can only remember one, the one which always catches my imagination - the one which says men are fools. The theory says, men were fooled into thinking that larger breasts mean more milk for his baby! Until I read about this theory, I thought a larger breast could indeed store more milk than a smaller one. Hence proved, men are fools! Coming to the last one, the question of why a slim waist?(as i said before, it's not the measurement that is important but the ratio. by a slim waist I mean, slimmer compared to the hip) May be a slimmer waist just helped to show how wide the hip is, may be.I've written what a man finds attractive in a woman and why. I've tried to define beauty from a man's point of view. I said a man has to find a woman beautiful before he falls in love with her. There is still one question left unanswered - Why does a man have to find a woman beautiful? why doesn't a man share his life with the first woman that comes in his path? why does he have to be choosy - by assessing her beauty? Like I said earlier, a man finds attractive in a woman those attributes/characteristics that would help his baby. This also answers the current question, he wants a beautiful wife because his idea of beauty(that has been etched into his brain) is beneficial for his unborn baby. Why does he (or his brain) care about an unborn child so much so that he bases his entire perception of beauty on what he thinks would be great for that child? As I wrote in my earlier post, every species evolves such that its genes are well preserved into the next generation, that is why. Why is this not observed in other species - during their mating season, a peacock mates with any peahen that chooses him, a bullock will mate with any cow, a male lion will mate with any set of female lions that join his harem. Then why this extraordinary pressure on female humans to be beautiful, why human males are choosy? Love and its origins have the answers. Since humans share their entire lives with a single partner, he has to be choosy, he has only one shot at fathering a healthy set of babies because he will have those babies with only one partner. Whereas, in species that have a no concept of marriage, the males have multiples shots at becoming father to babies from multiple females - in such a case it doesn't make sense to be choosy, it makes sense to mate as much as possible to spread the male's genes. So in other species, where males need not be choosy and selective, the females are under no pressure to be beautiful.
Richard Dawkins, in his book 'The Selfish Gene', writes how we are all just slaves of our genes. Our entire existence is just to satisfy the whims of those genes. But we do have free-will, something that gives us the strength of acting against our primal instincts. Matt Ridley, in his book 'Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters', writes how, even free-will is just an illusion created by genes and we are never actually free (much like the premise of the movie, The Matrix). In a hypothetical situation, suppose you can choose to either lie(and get away) or speak the truth(and give some explanation). It might seem you have a choice, but in reality you don't, the outcome has already been decided by your genes. In the future, when the human genome is perfectly decoded, it could be possible to know what exactly you would do in a particular well-defined situation. The movie 'Gattaca' has a storyline similar to this. At the climax of that movie, the hero(with a weak set of genes) does extra-ordinary things and the movie closes with the line,"there is no human gene for courage"; I would beg to differ, there is a human gene for everything. All is not lost; Matt Ridley also says free-will is very much possible. I am not too well-versed in those aspects of genes and hence can't reproduce here what he wrote. I, personally, don't like the idea of not having a choice, of not having a free-will, I sincerely wish we do.
PS: What I have written is not the brainchild of my genius. I've only written what I have read. If you are interested in reading more about evolution and love, read this wonderful book by Matt Ridley - The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.
Next part: Time for Women to Choose
Photo1 Courtesy: Bill Watterson and his genius
Photo2 Courtesy: Titian, don't know who holds the copyrights
Photo3 Courtesy: photographersdirect.com
