Evolutionary Advantages of Female Cosmetic Surgery

Women are more likely than men to undergo plastic surgery; in 2014, 92% of cosmetic surgery procedures in the USA were conducted on female patients. The reason for this discrepancy may be explained by current evolutionary theoretical and empirical findings which suggest that differences in male mate preference play a strong role in motivating females to make alterations to their perceived attractiveness.
 
Women are more likely than men to undergo plastic surgery; in 2014, 92% of cosmetic surgery procedures in the USA were conducted on female patients. The reason for this discrepancy may be explained by current evolutionary theoretical and empirical findings which suggest that differences in male mate preference play a strong role in motivating females to make alterations to their perceived attractiveness.

Whereas the common traits found attractive by women tend to be related to resources, men universally rate female beauty as more desirable. In particular, female traits such as youth, fertility and health are deemed most attractive by men These traits appear to have evolved as signals to men of a woman’s fertility.

 Evolutionary psychologists propose that men possess perceptual mechanisms which have evolved to detect these traits as a means of determining whether or not a woman is a desirable potential mate. For example, an ideal waist-to-hip ratio (“WHR”) of 0.7, which corresponds closely to the optimal ratio of health and fertility, is considered to be most beautiful by modern men because their male ancestors identified that ancestral women with that proportion produced more healthy offspring than ancestral women without the proportion.

In this regard, many anatomical features such as breast size and shape, facial symmetry and WHR are reliable indicators of health and fertility in women and are signals to males that one female holds a higher reproductive value over another.

Therefore, a female desiring to promote her reproductive value can manipulate a male’s evaluation of her by manipulating her anatomical features alone. For example, photographs of women who had just undergone micro-fat grafting surgery (in which fat tissue is taken from the waist region and implanted on the buttocks resulting in a lower WHR) were rated by men as being more attractive than the same women’s pre-operative photograph. It is likely that a woman’s decisions to undergo micro-fat grafting surgery are in part mediated by her intention to signal to possible male mates her reproductive potential.

That females outnumber men undergoing plastic surgery procedures is therefore, a reflection of the immense strength of psychological mate preferences. Cosmetic plastic surgery may be seen by women as a means of accentuating the features that are known to be reliable indicators of health and fertility. By undergoing plastic surgery, these desired and admired features of human female beauty can be permanently acquired by women who otherwise would not have access to these signals.

It is no surprise then, that the most common cosmetic surgery procedures for females include liposuction and breast augmentations  in attempts to correct asymmetries and exaggerate traits that are considered to be indicators of health and fertility.