"Whatever determines sexual attraction, the Red Queen is at work: If for most of human history beautiful women and dominant men had more children than their rivals —which they surely did because the dominant men chose beautiful wives, and together they lived off the toil of their rivals— then in each generation women became that little bit more beautiful and men that little bit more dominant: But their rivals did, too, being descendants of the same successful couples. So standards rose, too: A beautiful woman needed to shine still more brightly to stand out in the new firmament: And a dominant man needed to bully or scheme still more mercilessly to get his way. Our senses are easily dulled by the commonplace, however exceptional it may seem elsewhere or at other times: As Charles Darwin put it, “If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characters in our women a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.”[491] This, incidentally, is as concise a statement as could be made for why eugenics would never work: A page later Darwin describes the Jollof tribe of West Africa, famous for the beauty of its women; it deliberately sold its ugly women into slavery. Such Nazi eugenics would indeed gradually raise the level of beauty in the tribe, but the men’s subjective standards of beauty would rise as fast: Since beauty is an entirely subjective concept, the Jollofs were doomed to perpetual disappointment."
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