Survival of the Prettiest Quotes

“Appearance is the most public part of the self. It is our sacrament, the visible self that the world assumes to be a mirror of the invisible, inner self.”
― Nancy Etcoff, Conversations with God: Answers to Life's Great Questions

“As Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, and Jerome Barkow point out: “Culture is not causeless and disembodied. It is generated in rich and intricate ways by information-processing mechanisms situated in human minds. These mechanisms are in turn the elaborately sculpted product of the evolutionary process.” Clearly, culture cannot just spring forth from nowhere; it must be shaped by, and be responsive to, basic human instincts and innate preferences.”
― Nancy L. Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty

“Beauty ensnares hearts, captures minds, and stirs up emotional wildfires.”
― Nancy Etcoff, Conversations with God: Answers to Life's Great Questions

“Additionally, one cannot escape a comment on the irony of sexual attraction: in a world where men and women try to stave off pregnancy for the majority of their sexual encounters, sexual preference is still guided by ancient rules that make us most attracted to bodies that look the most reproductively fit. Nor can we escape the jarring thought that women compete in the mating world for men whose brains are hard-wired to find nubile teenagers highly desirable and particularly beautiful. This is not a conscious process nor a desired one but a biological holdover from a vanished way of life.”
― Nancy L. Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty

“In the United States more money is spent on beauty than on education or social services. Tons of makeup—1,484 tubes of lipstick and 2,055 jars of skin care products—are sold every minute.”
― Nancy L. Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty

“Economist David Marks has said that beauty is as potent a social force as race or sex. But unlike racism and sexism, which we are conscious of, “lookism,” or beauty prejudice, operates at a largely unconscious level.”
― Nancy L. Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty

“The argument is a simple one: that beauty is a universal part of human experience, and that it provokes pleasure, rivets attention, and impels actions that help ensure the survival of our genes. Our extreme sensitivity to beauty is hard-wired, that is, governed by circuits in the brain shaped by natural selection. We love to look at smooth skin, thick shiny hair, curved waists, and symmetrical bodies because in the course of evolution the people who noticed these signals and desired their possessors had more reproductive success. We are their descendants. Of”
― Nancy L. Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty

“Too much cultivation of beauty, he wrote, reflects pathological narcissism. Like masochism and passivity, narcissism is largely a female problem, a cover for shame and worthlessness, feelings to which women are prone. Until”
― Nancy L. Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty

“Humans, like flowers and animals, inhabit a form that is both functional and aesthetic.”
― Nancy Etcoff, Conversations with God: Answers to Life's Great Questions

“We allow that violence is done to the body among “primitive” cultures or that it was done by ancient societies, but we have yet to realize that beauty brings out the primitive in every person.”
― Nancy L. Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty

“beauty is a universal part of human experience, and that it provokes pleasure, rivets attention, and impels actions that help ensure the survival of our genes. Our extreme sensitivity to beauty is hard-wired, that is, governed by circuits in the brain shaped by natural selection. We love to look at smooth skin, thick shiny hair, curved waists, and symmetrical bodies because in the course of evolution the people who noticed these signals and desired their possessors had more reproductive success. We are their descendants. Of”
― Nancy L. Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty

“Biologists would argue that at root the quest for beauty is driven by the genes pressing to be passed on and making their current habitat as inviting for visitors as possible.”
― Nancy L. Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty