Here's Why Fairy-Tale Princesses are Beautiful

What if Cinderella had a cleaning service business with her friends Jaq and Gus? What if she already had a strong career? Would Prince Charming still be attracted to such an intelligent, independent woman who don’t need no man to make a living? Let’s see how evolutionary psychologists explain why the orthodox romantic fairy tale suggests that a prince always falls in love with a beautiful young lady, but not with an intelligent and competent one.

Evolutionary psychologists claim that the key to female attractiveness is youthfulness, rather than intelligence. Kershaw (2008) claims that females’ physical cues that suggest youthfulness are found to be attractive with little dissent among people of different cultures, ethnicities, or ages. The reasoning behind this argument dates from the ancient hunter-gatherer society, where females were expected to bear healthy children and manage households, whereas males were responsible for hunting and providing resources to their families. Intelligence, which improves with age and experience, was considered desirable in males because clever ones were more likely to attain hunting skills and acquire higher status within tribes. Female intelligence, on the other hand, was not prioritized because the prominent role of females was to bear children and to take care of them. Childcare requires youthfulness over intelligence because young females are generally more likely to have healthier eggs, less likely to be already pregnant with other men, and less likely to be prone to health issues. To mate with fertile females, males had to be attracted to young, healthy potential mates. Because of that, young females who are inexperienced and unintelligent were considered more attractive than old, intelligent females who are less likely to be healthy and fertile. Overall, the major factor of female attractiveness largely depended on youthfulness rather than intelligence.

Evolutionary psychologists propose that the mating preferences formed in the ancestral society still dominate the psychological mechanisms of humans today. Ancestral humans have evolved to fit the stable and unchanging environment of the African savanna, a suitable environment for natural selection to occur. Evolutionary psychologists argue that human brains are no exception. Just as the other body parts, human brains have evolved to recognize the surroundings in ways that maximize the chance of survival. In the case of mating preferences, successful males — who preferred young females instead of old ones — had more chances of mating with fertile females. Consequently, they left more successful offspring who inherited the same tastes for female attractiveness from their ancestors. Karbowski and his colleagues (2016) suggest that even today, “in men's view…, female physical attractiveness cannot be substituted for intelligence” (p. 217). Through many generations of sexual selection, human brains have evolved to regard female youthfulness as the more significant attractiveness factor than intelligence.

It is true that modern society is distinct from the hunter-gatherer society, and the evolutionary adaptations made in the ancestral contexts often no longer apply to the environment today. Nevertheless, Miller and Kanazawa, the authors of “Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters”, argue that human brains have difficulty understanding situations that did not exist in the ancient environment. Evolutionary psychologists refer to this phenomenon as the “Savanna Principle”. Human brains have not been able to evolve drastically over the past millennia because the environment has been changing too quickly for natural selection to make significant evolutionary differences. This also explains why female attractiveness today largely depends on physical youthfulness rather than intelligence.

Many psychologists, however, counterargue that modern romantic values have been shifting more progressively due to the increase in gender equality. Today, more than ever, women pursue higher education and seek careers which leads them to get married later in their lives. Social psychologists point out that men, in response to this social change, now react more favorably to women with high intelligence and strong careers. Goudreau (2013) claims that “[u]ntil the 1960s men ranked a woman's education and intelligence at No. 11 on their lists of attractive qualities. Now men prioritize a woman's intelligence over her good looks, ranking it at No. 4 as compared to No. 8.” Zentner and Mitura (2012) explain that it is because traditional gender differences explained by evolutionary psychologists decline as society improves gender equality. Based on these psychological perspectives, intelligent women are considered more attractive in modern society, and the trend will be more salient as society shifts towards gender equality.

While people do not usually pay attention to how their preferences and behaviors affect their chance of survival, there are evolutionary explanations on why the typical image of a princess is a young, beautiful lady rather than an intelligent, competent one. As some psychologists found, however, evolutionary backgrounds are not the definitive factors of people’s behaviors. It is important to update our understandings as our society progresses towards gender equality.