What is the evolutionary advantage to long hair in women?

[Skull Pilot]

Stands to reason that bi-sexual men would prefer their women to have short hair.

Yeah you who spend a good part of your time with your ass in the air and your nose in the dirt would know.

Must have hit a nerve, but hey, I guess the truth hurts.

You're the one who spends his time in a room full of men on their knees not me.

There is a psychiatric term for what you are doing here. It's called projection.

 

[Sunni Man]

Yeah you who spend a good part of your time with your ass in the air and your nose in the dirt would know.

Must have hit a nerve, but hey, I guess the truth hurts.

You're the one who spends his time in a room full of men on their knees not me.

There is a psychiatric term for what you are doing here. It's called projection.

Hey fella, don't try to saddle me with your personal problems.

I like women who have long hair; any normal straight man does.

 

[Intense]

my wife has short hair and she's sexy as hell

What else can you say. My wife has short hair too. I want to live. I love short hair. Ask me after a few beers, the more alcohol in my the more I will admit to loving it long.

 

[Truthmatters]

There is nothing wrong with short hair on women.

For some it really accentuates their features just right.

The point of this thread is the evolution of sexual attraction.

It bodes nothing for individul taste or fashion.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Must have hit a nerve, but hey, I guess the truth hurts.

You're the one who spends his time in a room full of men on their knees not me.

There is a psychiatric term for what you are doing here. It's called projection.

Hey fella, don't try to saddle me with your personal problems.

I like women who have long hair; any normal straight man does.

normal straight men don't segregate their women so they can all "pray" in their doggy style poses with other men.

And btw you brought up the gay thing not me so it seems it was already on your mind.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

Interesting data point.

I have my own

It does seem that there are several races in Africa where hair does not grow much in humans. It seems to be a very recent mutation in the human genome that codes for this, but what is even stranger is that this recent mutation seems to have caused a reciprocal mutation in human male instinctive behaviors.

 

[The Infidel]

I agree with above.

You agree that Skull Pilot's wife is sexy as hell, even though she has short hair?

I plead the fifth.

I think Mr Skull needs to post up some proof....

 

[The Infidel]

There is nothing wrong with short hair on women.

For some it really accentuates their features just right.

The point of this thread is the evolution of sexual attraction.

It bodes nothing for individul taste or fashion.

Im torn... I love long hair because, if taken care of, it is just plain beautiful.

Then again, my wife has fairly short hair, and she drives me nuts too.....


Can it be that men just love women.

A subject for another thread could be, why are there stigmas attached to men who have long hair?

I had long hair for years and I am pretty masculine... at least I think I am

 

[Mr. Sauerkraut]

hi

i´ve heard from another theory about this question:

The complete design of man - male ore female - seems to be optimized to live on coasts and borders, near lakes and the sea. This includes the long hair of women. About these theory, the body marks of women are made for swimming with babies:

The nose: Our nose has the holes on the underside, not straight like by any other apes. So water can´t come into it and floods away wen we swim, dive and come up again

The breasts: These could be additional swimming cushions, helping a swimming women to stay at the surface

The hair: Babys not only have a inborn swimming reflex, they have also an inborn gripping reflex. So a swimming mother can simplu put a baby in her back, it clams into her long hair and she doesnt loose it.

I´ve read this in a book many years ago. If you want, I will search for it to give you the right sources.

 

[eots]

its all about the face and the ass

 

[ekrem]

@Baruch Menachem
Do you have any scientific theory for man's preference on women hairs not located on the head?

The choice seems to be the opposite these days in Western Hemisphere, whilst Asian cultures still prefer it naturally. Muslims had it always cut.
Unlike the head-hairs this seems to be a cultural thing?

 

[JBeukema]

What, pray tell, is the purpose of ass hair?

 

[dilloduck]

It evens out the crotch hair for balance.

 

[American Horse]

World over, guys like women with long hair. It does not seem at all cultural, as it is world wide. Many goofy religions (and some not so goofy) have women cover, tie up, or wrap their hair in public, so that the long hair is only seen in the home and in terms of sexuality.

Being a guy, I endorse, but do not understand what it is that makes longer hair part of the deal that attracts males.


Most of the male attractors seem related to issues of health and child rearing ability. Guys like big boobs, wide hips, etc. And while weight seems to be cultural in terms of attractiveness, the weight seems based on guys in a particular place and time judge as optimum healthy. Guys don't like big guts, but they do like a bit extra in the hip and breast than is considered optimum by doctors. The evaluation seems based on a woman who can bring a child to term and feed it well.

So where does the hair come in? Does hair somehow prove long term healthiness? What are the limbic systems of us guys doing, evaluating hair length as a sexual positive.

There is a theory, which postulates that humanity spent some time as an aquatic creature; A period of intense climatic change drove humans living in Africa to seek survival by moving into water where abundant food was available with more or less minimal risk to the most inteligent creature of the period, about 2-Million years ago.

This theory was first stated by Alister Hardy, and later picked up and developed by Elaine Morgan.

The involvement of human hair is explained thusly: As an aquatic creature, fur was less relevant and subsided on the human body until it only remained in quantity on the surface areas where it offered an advantage. The head is the primary area of an abundance of hair, since a creature needs cover for the head when it is the area most exposed to the sun while standing erect in water, say in a lake or estuary environment. That's because in a body of water there may be very little shade from the sun offered up.

But also, the creature that was to become mankind at the time was a creature which needed to spend most of its time on the acquisition of food. In the trees, the very young child would hang onto the fur at the back of its mother. In a water environment the hair on the head was a substitute for the fur as a means of hanging on while the mother was pre-occupied with obtaining survival for them both. The male offered very little or nothing to the survival of the very small child.

Standing or moving around in a water environment also explains how a creature formerly of the trees, would learn to walk erect, something that a dangerous period of evolution on the savanah does not adequately explain. Today the monkey that walks fully erect is one that spends its time in an aquatic environment. When ashore the probiscus monkey walks in a completely upright posture. It too, like humans, has a long nose which helps out in a aquatic environment. Its young too, unlike other primates, cling to the hair of the chest rather than the back. If its mother attempted to swim while carrying its young, it would drown.


Hardy published the theory in an article in New Scientist on 17 March 1960:
"My thesis is that a branch of this primitive ape-stock was forced by competition from life in the trees to feed on the sea-shores and to hunt for food, shell fish, sea-urchins etc., in the shallow waters off the coast. I suppose that they were forced into the water just as we have seen happen in so many other groups of terrestrial animals. I am imagining this happening in the warmer parts of the world, in the tropical seas where Man could stand being in the water for relatively long periods, that is, several hours at a stretch"

Big "boobs," the early ability for infants to take to the water - human hair, became sublimated in the new environment, while still there over most of the body, on most of the surface it is not much more than an opening for the sebacious glands to permit sweating. As an aside, my own son, born in the sixties, learned to swim just beyond infancy, and took to swimming under water, because holding the breath while submerged was a natural tendency for infants. These are among many others human features, which support the AQUATIC APE HYPOTHESIS.


Here are the opening lines to her latest book and a link to the book

The Naked Darwinist <<- Link here (94 pages PDF)

&#8220;Don&#8217;t Ask&#8221;

&#8220; - Imagine you are a student revising for an exam of human evolution and wondering what questions you might be asked. It suddenly occurs to you that you cannot remember why human beings lost their body hair. It sounds just the kind of topic on which they might give you a quote and then say: &#8220;Discuss&#8221; - and the answer has gone right out of your head. You cannot even remember the point being raised, and the exam is tomorrow. What can you do? - &#8220;

Here is a listing of all her books touching on the subject:

The Aquatic Ape, 1982, Stein & Day Pub
The Scars of Evolution, 1990, Souvenir Press
The Descent of the Child: Human Evolution from a New Perspective,
.....1995, Oxford University Press
The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, 1997, Souvenir Press
The Naked Darwinist, 2008, Eildon Press

 

[JBeukema]

Did someone seriously just dig up AAH?

 

[AquaAthena]

"So where does the hair come in?"

Long hair on women makes men feel young.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

It is cool to wonder about.

 

[American Horse]

What, pray tell, is the purpose of ass hair?

I am going to answer that because I recognize you as the USMB resident expert on anthropology; I seems to me the value of that hair, arm-pit hair, and hair in the groin would serve a useful purpose and be of benefit as a bearing surface to prevent/reduce chaffing. Does that seem reasonable?

 

[JBeukema]

seems to me the value of that hair, arm-pit hair, and hair in the groin would serve a useful purpose and be of benefit as a bearing surface to prevent/reduce chaffing

Then why is it a secondary sex trait and, from what I understand, absent when we are young?


Also.. how does reduced chaffing enable you to have more babies- how is it an evolutionary advantage?


Anyone know whether chaffing is a problem for those who shave?

 

[American Horse]

seems to me the value of that hair, arm-pit hair, and hair in the groin would serve a useful purpose and be of benefit as a bearing surface to prevent/reduce chaffing

Then why is it a secondary sex trait and, from what I understand, absent when we are young?

Also.. how does reduced chaffing enable you to have more babies- how is it an evolutionary advantage?

Elaine Morgan's explanation as to why we are hairless is that fur is less streamlined for creatures which swim than is hairlessness. More land creatures than not which have returned to an aquatic life are hairless unless hair was retained for warmth. The hair on human bodies is everywhere equal in number of follicles, just much less extended to full growth in length.

But hair patterns on our bodies are directional in patterns that indicate least resistance, I.E. streamlined to the flow of water down the length of the body as other creatures similarly are which spend a great deal of time swimming.

Might friction in the groin (and buttocks) cause chaffing in a tropical climate that would cause disease which could affect reproduction? I can only guess why hair growth in these areas is delayed, but some glandular/hormonal impetus is implied by the timing as secondary sexual traits. Sweating (odors) may play role here too. And it's not that it is an addition, but that it is retained/extant, it seems.