Quotes from Nancy L. Etcoff

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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