The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

by Matt Ridley

In 1883, Francis Galton discovered that merging the photographs of several women’s faces produced a composite that is usually judged to be better looking than any of the individual faces that went into making it.25 The experiment has been repeated recently with computer-merged photographs of female undergraduates: The more faces that go into the image, the more beautiful the woman appears.26 Indeed, the faces of models are eminently forgettable. Despite seeing them on the covers of magazines every day, we learn to recognize few individuals. The faces of politicians, not known for their beauty, are much more memorable. Faces that are “full of character” are almost by definition nonaverage faces. The more average and unblemished the face, the more beautiful, but the less it tells you about its owner’s character.