The Evolution of Allure

by George L. Hersey

The beauty of the human body has long fascinated art historian George Hersey. In The Evolution of Allure this interest takes a novel turn: for the first time, Hersey brings together modern Darwinian theories of sexual selection (male competition, attractor manipulation, and the like) with art history. By channeling a general preference for normative proportions, he argues, art has shaped Western society's sexual choices and reproductive goals while also giving rise to normative body types that link physiological drives to aesthetic impulses. From the Greek Venus Pudica (a form and pose most familiar in the Medici Venus), to any number of subsequent portraits, to the phone-sex goddesses of D-Cup Superstars, Hersey's lively, erotically charged text shows how Western art and popular culture exploit the attractors (the cosmetics, clothes, and ornament that showcase the body) with which people make themselves more alluring or "selectable" to potential mates. He discusses the mathematical ma