Women's attractiveness is linked to expected age at menopause

Abstract

A great number of studies have shown that features linked to immediate fertility explain a large part of the variance in female attractiveness. This is consistent with an evolutionary perspective, as men are expected to prefer females at the age at which fertility peaks (at least for short-term relationships) in order to increase their reproductive success. However, for long-term relationships, a high residual reproductive value (the expected future reproductive output, linked to age at menopause) becomes relevant as well. In that case, young age and late menopause are expected to be preferred by men. However, the extent to which facial features provide cues to the likely age at menopause has never been investigated so far. Here, we show that expected age at menopause is linked to facial attractiveness of young women. As age at menopause is heritable, we used the mother's age at menopause as a proxy for her daughter's expected age of menopause. We found that men judged faces of women with a later expected age at menopause as more attractive than those of women with an earlier expected age at menopause. This result holds when age, cues of immediate fertility and facial ageing were controlled for. Additionally, we found that the expected age at menopause was not correlated with any of the other variables considered (including immediate fertility cues and facial ageing). Our results show the existence of a new correlate of women's facial attractiveness, expected age at menopause, which is independent of immediate fertility cues and facial ageing.

An association between women's physical attractiveness and the length of their reproductive career in a prospectively longitudinal nationally representative sample

“…The analyses of the NCDS data replicated Bovet et al's () findings, based on a small convenience sample, that physically attractive women have a later expected age of menopause, thereby enjoying longer reproductive careers. The results presented above showed that, not only do “attractive” women experience menopause later, but they also undergo menarche earlier.…”

“…In this article, I replicate Bovet et al's () findings with a large, prospectively longitudinal, and nationally representative sample of women. The National Child Development Study (NCDS) has followed a population of babies born in Great Britain since birth for over half a century, and some women have undergone menopause while others have not.…”

“…As impeccable as Bovet et al's () theoretical logic was, their empirical data suffered from two shortcomings. First, they used a very small (n = 68) convenience sample of young women.…”

“…Recently, Bovet, Barkat‐Defradas, Durand, Faurie, and Raymond () suggested that women's physical attractiveness may be an important determinant of their mate value in long‐term mating because more physically attractive women may have longer reproductive careers than less physically attractive women. Consistent with their prediction, their study showed that more physically attractive women had a later expected age of menopause (proxied by their mother's age of menopause, given that the age of menopause is highly heritable).…”

Mate preference priorities in the East and West: A cross‐cultural test of the mate preference priority model

“…Each would have been important for successful reproduction in the ancestral past. Physical attractiveness would have been a cue of fertility, and offspring produced with a physically attractive partner would likely be desirable mates themselves (Bovet, Barkat‐Defradas, Durand, Faurie, & Raymond, ; Cornwell & Perrett, ; Pflüger, Oberzaucher, Katina, Holzleitner, & Grammer, ; Rosenthal, ). Choosing a kind and empathetic partner would have been fundamental to successful pair‐bonding, the primary mating arrangement in humans (Geary, ; Stewart‐Williams & Thomas, ).…”