Have you ever wondered why Hollywood marriages almost always include an older man settling down with a much younger woman? More specifically, how successful are these marriages given the great age disparity and that exists between husband and wife? A recent study by researchers at the Univeristy of Tennessee may provide an answer to this daunting question and it may not be what you expect. They compared the facial attractiveness of husband and wife across 82 newly-wed couples and then tested this comparison against the quality of their marriage. Their finding suggests that men who were rated as more attractive than their partner demonstrated a tendency to be less likely to offer emotional and practical support to their wives. The researchers offer an evolutionary account of this finding and argue that attractive men have more short-term mating opportunities available to them and this in turn may lead them to feel less satisfied and less committed to their marriage. In fact, they report that men are rated as more likeable and friendly when they are in a martial relationship with a partner who is very attractive. Likening this finding back to the question concerning the success of Hollywood marriages, it is not necessarily the age discrepancy between men and women that unites celebrities in matrimony but instead the ostensible difference in their levels of attractiveness.
While the data are interesting, the explanation of the findings is unconvincing at best. We would do well to remember that, throughout much of history, extremely young women were forced by their families to marry older men. In fact, this practice still goes on today in parts of the world (rural India, for instance). Is it not possible that, because this practice went on for so long, and still goes on, there are vestiges of it in our society today, despite our being "modern", "western", and "non-sexist"? It takes a long time for a convention to die out, especially one linked to inequality.
It seems strange that this article doesn't address in any way the question of whether women married to physically unattractive men are more or less happy than women who are married to handsome men. Sure, plain men may be delighted to have beautiful wives, but how do the women feel about the situation? After all, one might well expect beautiful women who are married to unattractive men to "demonstrate a tendency to be less likely to offer emotional and practical support" to their husbands, effecting the the marriage just as negatively as a handsome husband who takes his plain wife for granted.
Perhaps there's more to this?
By: aglr () on 04-07-2008 03:19