Balding Men and Natural Selection
How are you, Dr. Rassman?
I don’t get it. A a firm believer in Charles Darwin’s theories about evolution and natural selection, I would have thought that those unfortunate souls who bear the gene that causes baldness would be an extinct breed. The overwhelming majority of women I’ve met find balding or bald men unattractive. Yet, the baldness gene hasn’t been removed from the human gene pool. How come this gene has made it?
Women and homosexuals find bald men sexually unattractive. Nobody chooses to sleep with a baldie over a hottie with a thick head of hair. Still, 50 percent of the male population has some degree of hair loss. Why does everyone find bald men that hideous?
I realize that my questions might be beyond the scope of this blog and that nobody really knows for sure. Nevertheless, I’d love to hear your thoughts about this.
We think of balding in terms of known times of recorded civilization. I wrote about this very question a few years back — Evolutionary Reason for Hair Loss?.
As humans grew their brains, intelligence and brain power came into play as an important factor for female mate choices. In the early years of humans, the disease tuberculosis was common, and men who had TB would become sickly. Women could often judge the long term health of their prospective mate by looking at the hair. Even though genetic balding was also present, women assumed that men who were bald (I suspect class 6 or class 7 pattern bald) would not make good mates because they would not live long enough to provide for them and their children. Those balding men with TB would die, so women assumed there was a connection between the two. Choosing a non-balding man with a full head of hair gave a woman some assurance that the man was healthy.
In modern Western society, TB is not common. Today’s balding men in Western societies are generally healthy. The genetics of balding may not negatively impact a woman’s choice if the man was smart, successful, and wealthy. I suspect that a class 6 or 7 bald, healthy, and successful man might be preferred over a poorer, full-haired man today. Ask if a sickly man lost his hair, would he be chosen by a good looking woman searching for a husband to produce a family today? The answer might lay in his bank account.
Besides all that, I’m sure there are plenty of people out there that would disagree with the idea that “nobody chooses to sleep with” a balding man.
So you’re saying you’ve never seen a married man with any kind of hair loss.
That is retarded. I dont think Darwin would like you.
Baldness was a sign of maturity in an era of history where young men were much more likely to die a violent death. Murder was the number one cause of death for young adult males through most of hunter-gatherer history. Baldness may not have been sexy, but it was a sign your mate had reached an age and social status where they were far more likely to stick around.
Unfortunately, in modern society, far more emphasis is placed on looking young than mature.
I once read a theory stating that some men have evolved to look more like baby mammoths as they age. The idea was that men needed something to compensate for their reduced physical prowess with age, and baldness/larger ears/larger nose/more body hair would help them disguise themselves as a mammoth’s young. This would enable the the hunter to sort of sidle up to the mother, and deliver a lethal blow.
It sounds like a joke, but I read some serious evolutionary biologists discussing this at one point. I wish I could remember their names.
“Women and homosexuals find bald men sexually unattractive. Nobody chooses to sleep with a baldie over a hottie with a thick head of hair. Still, 50 percent of the male population has some degree of hair loss. Why does everyone find bald men that hideous?”
They don’t actually. As a gay man, I can assure you that we do not find all bald men sexually unattractive (I’m sure women feel the same way). Age probably correlates more to attractiveness than anything else, since aging diminishes attractiveness in a general sense. And baldness has nothing to do with aging. There are young men in their 20s who are bald or balding and old men in their 80s with full heads of hair. The young men still look young in spite of their balding and the old men still look old, in spite of their full heads of hair.
While I agree that having a full head of hair looks better than being bald, I think the concern over balding has been grossly exaggerated. Most people don’t care a hoot about it one way or the other. And there are various kinds of balding and degrees of it.
Having a nice face is far more important than having a full head of hair in assessing one’s overall attractiveness.