the buzz log

The upside: Women may be getting better-looking. The downside: Men, apparently, are not.

According to news reports, a University of Helsinki study looked at 40 years' worth of data for 1,244 women and 997 men, including their high school photographs. This study claims to bolster earlier research by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa that, as The London Times puts it, "evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors."

Naturally, a premise like this raises many questions. Below, some ones that might pop up, and answers found in Forbes' dirty details:

• Who comprised the beauteous sample pool? The scrutinized women were 1957 high-school graduates throughout Wisconsin.
• Who decided on the lookers? Not the Finnish. In the scientific version of Hot or Not, Wisconsinites rated participants' yearbook photos on a scale of 1 to 11.
• What's happening with the ladies? Helsinki researcher Marcus Jokela says their looks signal "fecundity" and good health, so they offer better breeding odds.
• Why are guys still looking like their knuckle-grazing forefathers? Apparently females are less shallow.
• How does the cycle continue? Women who are easy on the eyes have 16% more children. Curiously, good-looking gents beget more daughters than sons.
• Out of places that conduct all the longitudinal studies, why the Badger State? Must be the cheese.

As much as the British and Aussie press have been tickled by the study, doubts remain about its premise. One skeptical science blog points out serious statistical problems in Kanazawa's previous studies (detailed in Journal of Theoretical Biology in 2007), and basically the whole concept of finding "correlations between beauty and mutational loads."

And really, judging a face by a high-school senior picture? That just isn't fair.

Filed under: Science, Beauty, Women

We've heard of puppet governments and Manchurian candidates...but a shadow beauty pageant winner?  

As has been over-reported in the Buzz Log and elsewhere, all Carrie Prejean wanted was the chance to win a custom-made tiara, a New York Film Academy scholarship, and that Jessica Simpson swimsuit wardrobe. Instead, a politically explosive question landed on her rhinestone-encrusted lap, and she became a brief lightning-rod on the talk show circuit.

Just when Miss California's time as a sideshow attraction in the media circus was up, leaked lingerie photos from her past inspired yet another round of Web-ogling: Prejean got double the amount of Web lookups than during pageant week. 

The briefs-only pictures gave California pageant officials the chance to purse their lips disapprovingly and milk the pseudo-drama by declaring a Monday press conference to announce whether her state crown would be lost over contract violations. 

And of course, the conference came and went with the decision to be made Tuesday by pageant master Donald Trump, known for forgiving errant contestants. Prejean's chances also look good, if his compliments about her body during a radio interview is any clue. Trump hadn't seen the photos yet because his people were "sending" them to him...via Pony Express, perhaps.

But, according to E! Online, the officials have appointed a "a shadow Miss California, installing runner-up Tami Farrell as the official ambassador to the pageant's newly launched Beauty of California initiative." She'll be making appearances throughout the Golden State in a role "which sounds an awful lot like Prejean's current role."

Shadow crown-holder or not, Trump's not worried about Prejean's future, and neither are we. If she gets ousted from the Golden State, she could always head to Utah, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and about six other states that led the nation's "carrie prejean" lookups in the past 7 days: Her home state of California barely elbowed its way into 10th place. Miss Utah might want to watch her back.

Filed under: Beauty, Pageants, Scandals