Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Vegangelica
Another proposes that males have evolved a preference for females with more juvenile features.
|
The above quote is from some of the text in the article you posted from. Juvenile features here means less visible body hair and so it basically proposes that males have evolved a preference for females with less visibler body hair, just like CarnwllCorfe's quote suggests.
Checking out Wikipedia's article on hair, I see it says the following :
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Wikipedia
Another factor in human evolution that also occurred in the prehistoric past was a preferential selection for neoteny, particularly in females. The idea that adult humans exhibit certain neotenous (juvenile) features, not evinced in the great apes, is about a century old. Louis Bolk made a long list of such traits, and Stephen Jay Gould published a short list in Ontogeny and Phylogeny. In addition, paedomorphic characteristics in women are widely acknowledged as desirable by men. For instance, vellus hair is a juvenile characteristic. However, while men develop longer, coarser, thicker, and darker terminal hair through sexual differentiation, women do not, leaving their vellus hair visible.
|
To those who don't understand all of the above, neoteny is the retention of childlike traits in adult individuals, so in a hairy situation where children are hairless and adults are hairy, neoteny would mean that adults have less hair - just like children. Preferential selection for neoteny in females means that males have selected for (preferred) less hairy females.
Vellus hair is hair is that body hair which is relatively invisible.
Sexual selection for less visible body hair in women also would explain why women on the whole are less hairy than men.