“I’m 19, that’s how I keep in shape,” responded pop star Avril Lavigne in a 2004 interview discussing how she keeps her exceptional beauty represented by the shape of her body. This sums up the attitude that our society has towards relation of age with attractiveness. Age has always wielded a high-ranking role for Physical Attractiveness Phenomenon, but its overt recognition and the explicit pursuit of younger appearances are more intense today than the past, and likely to be less intense today than tomorrow. One difference is that, although Physical Attractiveness always has been a significant factor for people of all ages throughout history, it has not been as explicitly important as it is today for younger and older age groups.

Open acknowledgement of the importance of Physical Attractiveness in our lives has expanded radically and increasingly among both younger ages and older ages. To look more physically attractive, a growing portion of elementary school girls diet, and a substantial number of junior high school boys use illegal body enhancing drugs. In fact, the author of a major national study reported in Psychology Today says that dieting is “very common—even among girls as young as 9 years old.” The age continuum’s other end reveals males in their 50s and 60s obtaining cosmetic surgeries under the premise to compete in the workplace, while women of older ages secure cosmetic surgeries and medical procedures with the idea of transforming the body’s outside to match how she feels internally. Between these younger and older age groups, a national survey in 2005 of more than 1,700 people revealed an overall average of 30.9 years of age as when a woman is most physically attractive.

“In youth and beauty, wisdom is but rare!” proclaimed English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) in The Odyssey of Homer. Values and pursuit of greater Physical Attractiveness related to youth at the expense of potential perceptions of wisdom is neither new nor limited to any one country. “The fight against old age [to avoid this determinant of Physical Attractiveness] has long been good business, and it’s only getting better. Global retail sales of antiaging skin-care products—up 71% since 2000—are rising faster than any other segment of the skin-care market, according to Euromonitor, a market researcher, hitting $9.9 billion [in 2004].”

As distasteful as it is to some people, an artifact of Physical Attractiveness phenomenon is that people regularly grant social powers to females based on Physical Attractiveness characteristics that is, in turn, interrelated strongly with age realities. This practice is just one of many complex double standards of thinking in which long held thoughts and behaviors link aging more negatively with Physical Attractiveness for women than for men. Some people even argue that perception of a woman’s intelligence diminishes in correlation to her degree of beauty. This argument might underlie why “it’s hard telling your mother that you don’t want to look like her when you’re 50,” according to a 29-year old female, who after cosmetic surgery, went on to say, “I think my mother resented that and felt hurt, but I had to be honest.” If so, in the extreme it might be a kind of infantilism, which, as interpreted by Sigmund Freud, was to deny reality in favor of imagination. This interpretation of Freud’s infantilism applied to beauty discrimination might ultimately promulgate a society inclined to view women opposite to the primary fact of Physical Attractiveness phenomenon.

Beauty discrimination referenced in the prior paragraph grants certain social powers to women of greater beauty based on presumptions about greater capabilities. People overwhelmingly equate greater Physical Attractiveness, in this case greater beauty, with better non-physical traits and skills. The opposite or reverse would equate fewer capabilities, fewer skills, and less desirable adult characteristics for women who possess higher Physical Attractiveness.

Women who compete in beauty contests, particularly those who win, at times substantiate inverse perceptions held by the public about a woman’s abilities and her Physical Attractiveness. Sometimes people express these perceptions as jokes that a person of high Physical Attractiveness, or a woman of great beauty, cannot be a person also of high intelligence. Nevertheless, people regularly demonstrate public recognition of the value of Physical Attractiveness through formal beauty pageants that continue around the world. In the United States, where the number of television viewers of the annual Miss America pageant has decreased significantly since its first annual broadcast in 1960, the pageant has sustained viewers more than forty-five years, which longevity is without parallel when compared with other network broadcast shows that rarely sustain beyond a few years. Today, approximately ten million people continue to watch the one-evening television broadcast each year for each of the Miss America, Miss USA, and Miss Universe pageants. At least one country, Canada, has tried to eliminate this scenario by canceling all national beauty contests as of 1992, based on the argument they are degrading to women.

Another end of the beauty pageant continuum is the country of West Africa, “where at least in the southern area of the Sahara, the government sponsored [beauty pageant is] the most public of the annual [events].” Unique in rather mainstream pageants around the world, the Sahara contest features male beauty. Also unique among world beauty pageants, China, in 2004, held the first pageant for contestants with cosmetic surgery. The genesis of the pageant stemmed from an 18-year-old contestant disqualified because of her cosmetic surgery from another Chinese beauty pageant, who sued for emotional damages for that disqualification. One of the female organizers of the new event said, “This contest shows women’s strong pursuit of beauty,” and “we would like to use it to unveil the mystery of manmade beauty…”

Women’s reproductive role has long been a critical component in cultural values of women’s Physical Attractiveness, as revealed in sociobiology studies of natural selection and sexual selection. However, the importance of Physical Attractiveness seems no longer to diminish with age. Historical anecdotes to the contrary are decreasing rapidly today in a world where perceived age is more important than actual age.

Directly challenging formal notions of natural selection, standards of Physical Attractiveness driven by the appearance phenomenon for much more youthful looking women apply even to women in their forties and fifties. Factors other than evolutionary principles, at least reproductive aspects of evolution, can at times better explain contemporary behaviors. Here, adhering to Physical Attractiveness Phenomenon elevates the value of one’s own existence above the evolutionary principle for instinctual promulgation of one’s species.

Despite standards for Physical Attractiveness that are sometimes unrealistic, the appearance phenomenon and Physical Attractiveness phenomenon compel continuous pursuit of improvements. Pursuit is encouraged by improved cosmetic surgery techniques and technologies, easier access to and greater availability of cosmetic surgeries, shifting acceptance toward cosmetic surgery, and aging public figures who maintain their younger appearance. Although at least one clinical professor of cosmetic surgery asserts that “surgery will never make you look younger, but it can help you look better,” people at disquieting rates pursue both.

Witness the whopping increase of more than 400 percent for Americans who received cosmetic surgeries in 2003 compared to ten years earlier (1.8 million versus 330,000). Among them is the well-known American pop singer Cher. At 60 years of age she possessed an appearance very high in Physical Attractiveness with features characteristic of much younger ages: lack of wrinkles, free of shrinking lips, void of drooping eyelids, exempt from thinning or graying hair, unfettered from less than bright white teeth, possessing flawless complexion, and liberated from sagging body parts.

No known biological code of nature would equip a woman of that age to possess those age-affiliated looks. Instead, a woman might pursue these younger age characteristics to escalate perception of her sexual capability in hopes of capturing other benefits to satisfy her needs. As put forth in a 2004 Newsweek article by a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine: “We have evidence showing that whether we like it or not, appearance does matter…and we know that especially among women, we equate beauty with youthfulness.” Women’s awareness of stereotypically attractive bodies is not limited to song and film stars. Similar wishes and values about Physical Attractiveness exist among even the most politically powerful and politically correct women. Former American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright speaking complimentarily, if not enviously, in 2005 about the Physical Attractiveness of the body possessed by her successor, the much younger American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, stated, “I think she looks great. And I would give anything to have a figure like hers.”

“Trying to present yourself as looking as young as possible might actually make practical sense.” Evolutionary theory suggests this pursuit by older persons, not strictly because of reproductive inclinations, as people frequently view Darwin’s perspective, but by survival inclinations that are also part of Darwin’s perspective. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a more moderate theory, offers a potentially more plausible explanation based on physical, security, social, esteem, and self-actualization needs.

Men of ages similar to the pop singer Cher, in their 50s, 60s, or older, might well pursue women whose appearance reflects higher Physical Attractiveness more consistent with younger ages than with actual chronological age. The motivation for men is not the sexual reproductive capabilities (or lack thereof) of these women. Rather, the likely driver for men is a perception aligned with an extension of Physical Attractiveness Phenomenon. Specifically, the appeal is that the Physical Attractiveness of these women enhances men’s regard for them because of the perceived younger age and equivalent reproductive ability of those ages (even in the context of the men’s own naturally diminished reproductive-performance capability). Of course, this, too, explains rather closely the motivations of aging women to pursue enhancement of their Physical Attractiveness to levels more consistent with younger ages than with their actual chronological age.

Many factors contribute to the dramatic changes concerning aging and Physical Attractiveness. Particularly in the United States and other western countries, the baby boom effect means the increasing larger population of people entering older life stages, accompanied with stereotypically declining levels of Physical Attractiveness and potential financial means to counter these declines. The baby boom cited here comprise individuals born between 1945 and 1960, a period spanning approximately 15 years after World War II ended. At the same time, improvements in medical technology for cosmetic surgeries are surging, and societal attitudes toward cosmetic surgery are changing dramatically more favorable.

With people living longer than ever before, they experience a greater decline in their Physical Attractiveness than ever before. People in the United States today commonly live to their late seventies and eighties, whereas, in 1900, forty-seven years of age was the average lifespan in the United States. All the while, documentation reveals “that men pay more attention to looks than women do [in selecting mates], which has now been shown in many societies,” and “the power of female youth in men’s [physical] attractiveness judgments…is universal.”