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Survival of the Prettiest

By Nancy Etcoff

Survival of the Prettiest Books

Survival of the Prettiest

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Description
A provocative and thoroughly researched inquiry into what we find beautiful and why, skewering the myth that the pursuit of beauty is a learned behavior. In Survival of the Prettiest, Nancy Etcoff, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a practicing psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, argues that beauty is neither a cultural construction, an invention of the fashion industry, nor a backlash against feminism-it's in our biology. Beauty, she explains, is an essential and ineradicable part of human nature that is revered and ferociously pursued in nearly every civilization-and for good reason. Those features to which we are most attracted are often signals of fertility and fecundity. When seen in the context of a Darwinian struggle for survival, our sometimes extreme attempts to attain beauty-both to become beautiful ourselves and to acquire an attractive partner-suddenly become much more understandable. Moreover, if we understand how the desire for beauty is innate, then we can begin to work in our own interests, and not just the interests of our genetic tendencies.
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Edition:
illustrated
Number of Pages:
336
Release Date:
2000-07-11
Publication Date:
2000-07-11
Publisher:
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0385479425
ISBN13:
9780385479424
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
288 g
Height:
201 cm
Width:
133 cm
Thickness:
22 cm
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