Her body is young and strong and he knows the smell of her breasts, which are like powdered infant flesh, but all the women turn to cordwood in the town.
-Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
A friend of mine, who was balding prematurely, fell in love with a voluptuous little 14-year-old. She ended up marrying a smooth-cheeked army private who, ironically, was about the age of my friend, but looked younger than his years, somehow, more "appropriate." This chapter is about that love affair indirectly, and how it relates to some of our values about our changes in appearance with age.
Our lives from conception to death are a sweeping pattern of changes. This is more apparent in some other species, which are almost separate organisms at different stages of life. To us, who have a relatively determinate growth pattern, the woolly caterpillar winding himself in a cocoon and emerging later as a beautiful airy flier is a miracle. But, in fact, we are the exceptions to the rule, not him. Determinate growth patterns are rarer than indeterminate ones.
Each stage along the life spectrum has its own role and adaptations to the immediate circumstance. The newborn, the juvenile, the larva, the second instar, etc., have evolved as a result of relative success within that age group. One's total evolutionary "worth" represents a complex summation of compromises throughout the life span, and not just differences in adult performances alone. Each stage of our lives has its evolutionary pressures which sculpt our differences in physiology, anatomy, and behavior.
Once this idea is digested and becomes part of one's thinking, several different evolutionary strategies take on a clearer meaning. Though every major evolutionary change has reverberated through one's lifetime, in general there is a "tacking-on" of things in the later stages of life, in an almost additive fashion. In a less common pattern, in which changes throughout one's life are abbreviated by lopping off the later stages, the result is an adult who looks like a juvenile.
This phenomenon, referred to as neoteny, is usually rather extreme. For example, a tadpole may find life as a tadpole much better than a meta-morphosed adult. Tadpoles who can reproduce, though juvenile in every other respect, sometimes replace adults in that population.
Here is a diagram of a hypothetical animal to illustrate seversal different types of evolutionary change. Today they appear as the lowe row. The young are small, horned, and have no penis hair tuft; adults have large horns and a penis tuft. Earlier in their evolution (top row) the young had bushy tails and no penis tufts or manes, while adults had skinny tails and large white manes, big brow ridges, penis tufts, and big fangs. Among present day adults (lower right) bushy tails are neotenic-- having been brought from an earlier stage in the ontogeny into a later stage. Manes, fangs, and brow ridges have been lost, whereas horns have come into being. The penis tuft remains unchanged.
Neoteny is not limited to such gross levels as complete metamorphosis. Moreover, some aspects of an organism can be reverting to an earlier development pattern while others are still accelerating in novel directions still other characters may be becoming vestigial. Some early evolutionists applied the concept of neoteny to some of the evolutionary changes which have occurred to man. The principle was applied a little too broadly, however, implying that essentially in every trait we represent young anthropoids.
Nonetheless, they did see something rather fundamental. In spite of the fact that lines of the genus Homo evolved extremely rapidly off and on throughout the late Pliocene and Pleistocene in novel directions, such as increased brain capacity, changes in body posture and their many ramifications - at the same time they also regressed in development by becoming more childlike in many characters - that is, more neotenic.
There are two main threads in the fabric of man's neoteny, which often intertangle or even coalesce. The first has to do with the balance of whether to explore (in its widest sense) or to be content with the known. If somebody must rely mostly on learned experience, then he must devote a considerable sum of energy in the early part of life to exploration. But there comes a point when one can best serve his own interests and perhaps those of others if he decreases his exploration and begins to trade off of what he has learned. We face this decision constantly in our everyday lives. Do you hire a very promising outsider to fill a position or promote a solid company man of known performance? Does a fisherman return to his favorite stretch of water where he knows there are some fish or does he look for an even better pool?
In a more primitive life the adult role necessitates a certain conservatism - a reliance on the tested. A child, because he is under parental protection, has little to lose from an exploratory failure and much to gain from a success. For the adult, the price of major change is potentially more severe.
Children must have been the great innovators of early man's lifestyle, It was the children who had the leisure and the social freedom to experiment with new ways of doing things: eating new foods, trying different ways of modifying weapons, playing with new pets from the wild, making noises and music from everyday things, and trying new modes of artistic expression. It is worth noting that the only recorded instance of the wheel in the New World, before white men came, was on a child's toy.
Somewhere along the line it became increasingly advantageous to continue the child's enthusiasm for new experiences on into adult life. Interest in new things is still much greater among the young, but even so, we are considerably more flexible as adults than are any other organisms or animals.
A lot has been said about this form of neoteny. Desmond Morris, in his book The Naked Ape, emphasizes the creative-exploratory, childlike adult. He relates this in particular to a "stimulus struggle": adults no longer experience the stimulation from a struggle to survive and so extend the satisfactions and life patterns of the "non-productive" child on into adult behavior. His general implication is that this is a cultural phenomenon. But a shift of this magnitude could not have occurred without some genetic change.
For example, the desirability of having puppy-like behavior and appearance among adult dogs has resulted in a gross genetic change. We have neotenized all dog breeds, some much more than others. Many dogs (and cats) never really mature behaviorally, fulfilling to a degree the often heard comment, "If they would only remain puppies." Also, our neotenization through selective breeding has affected their anatomy. They retain the high forehead and rounded contours and loose skin characters of little puppies. Both Konrad Lorenz and Eibl-Eibesfeldt have pointed out how much of our physical attraction to young animals is dependent on the softness and rounded contours that bond us to our own offspring.
The second major kind of neoteny is a much newer concept, which might be called social neoteny. Remember that the common signal of appeasement is a more youthful or childlike behavior - decreased height, higher pitched voice, etc. And from appeasement gestures are derived gestures of friendship. A major difference in our social evolution is that we are more prone to establish deep friendship alliances - we are more social.
Where did the psychological machinery for our adult social behavior come from? Perhaps our childhood behavior is extended into adulthood. One of the fox's distant relatives, the wolf, illustrates how this can happen.
As wolf puppies mature, instead of leaving and going it alone, they stay together as a family unit, using those same puppy signals which, in a way, had preadapted them to a life as social adults. The selection for wolf social behavior apparently arose from their ability to bring down much larger prey when cooperating as a pack. Those litters who retained their puppy sociability were able to last the winter better than those who dispersed and played the fox game. Within some litters, the more aggressive young left, or were expurged, to hunt alone while the more dependent puppy-like ones stayed behind, aiding parents in the cooperative hunt. So, within the canids, or dog family, interdependence, cooperation, and friendship bonds (that is, sociability) seem to be neotentic traits. Likewise, this same prolongation of the sibling and early playmate attachment in man's adult life seems to account for the evolutionary road by which we developed our own social character.
Several anthropologists have pointed out that the human transition, before the Ice Age, from gathering to hunting played an important role in the development of our interdependence. As in the example of the wolf, hunting large game also required cooperation and interdependence within the human group.
At a time in our very distant past as nomadic gatherers with a steep social dominance but weak social bonding, male aggression was closely correlated with who reproduced. But in a very social hunting pack, cooperation is imperative and the group has the power to discriminate against an offensive individual. As it became necessary for male aggression to take on a more subtle expression, the inflexible intimidation organs were selected against - we became the naked ape.
A facile way to reduce the adult intimidation organs - the threat paraphernalia - was simply to revert to a more childlike visage. One can picture how this could have functioned, by watching people today. It appears easier for a moderate-to-small, clean-shaven, smooth-skinned, sweet, smelling, neatly-dressed man to make friends than it is for a heavy-browed, dirty, burly, hairy six-and-a-half footer.
The interdependence of the roving band of hunters out alone against the elements, chatting about intimacies by their campfires, began the shift away from the coarse image of the belligerent, rugged despot. This trend continued in the neolithic shift toward agriculture and herding. For unlike the hunting economy, where surplus was sporadic and perhaps infrequent, agriculture standardized surplus and institutionalized leisure. Its main effect on the social structure was in the diversification of labor.
Earlier there had been the hunting males and the homemaking females. Now more specialization was required. And, as in any pattern of class diversity, tasks varied in social value. So the old systems of hierarchy returned but in a quite different way. Instead of a baboon-like reliance on self and immediate associates for status identity, one's social worth was geared to his family and to his class identity - the owner class, the management class, the warrior class, the tiller class, etc.
The most obvious differences between these classes were in such things as the amount of brawn needed, time spent in the sun, and intimacy with the soil. And so these became the foundations for the social signals of class rank. A member of the upper class wore delicately woven finery symbolizing his distance from the soft: white collars, ruffles, gloves, and wide-brimmed hats. Skin whiteness symbolized his lack of necessity to stay out in the sun. But most of all, delicate features and fine bones showed that he did no heavy work - perhaps no work at all. Man's physical weakness was irrelevant to his high dominance, as he owned his own fighters and armies - and one achieved the highest stature not by brute strength but mainly by birthright.
I suspect that this range of physical and behavioral values became traditionalized so that it was part of the cross-class value system. A dark, burly lord gave the appearance of an intruder from a lower class, and a fair, gentle person in the fields appeared as a lord doing commoners' work.
The physical attributes of attractiveness and position in another era meaty arms, darkened coarse skin, and a hairy body - became symbols of low stature, as they still are in many societies today. Fine bones, an ivory complexion, and soft smooth skin became "highbrow" badges. They are the differences between the Fairchflds and the Smiths.
Undoubtedly the most important social force in human neoteny is the penetration of status and status signals into courtship and sexual attraction. A number of complicated changes in the human mode of life have resulted in a greater and greater emphasis on one's mate as a part of his social state. One's status can be translated into courtship potential.
As age is an important element in one's courtship potential, the prime courtship age becomes more and more revered. Crows feet, gray streaks, and bald spots are not dreaded so much for their implications about onrushing senility, but as signals of reduced courtship appeal. It isn't so much a matter of always wanting to switch mates: it is just that our unnaturally long courtship period, with swarms of potential partners, has conditioned us to respect that period as a source of status.
More juvenile-looking 35-year-old men receive courtship feelers from a wider spectrum of females than do older-looking men of the same age. All else being equal, this phenomenon would surely be an important selection pressure for social neoteny. And it is even greater for women. A thirty-five-year old woman who for some reason or other has gone unmated or desires to remate is usually more attractive to men if she looks much younger. Since there is a considerable genetic variation in "apparent age" among 35-year-old women, one might expect that, throughout recent history, those who looked younger would leave more offspring hence selecting for younger-looking 35 -year-old women.
Through these slightly different avenues we have become more socially neotenic and have brought much of the juvenile social organs into later stages of our lives. Among the more fascinating is our nakedness.
Desmond Morris' and Eibl-Eibesfeldt's theory that nakedness functioned to help cool during hunting activity would suggest that the male should be the less hairy sex. On the other hand, if hairness became socially undesirable, the selection against it would be greater among females. Their inoffensive nakedness would be more critical, so as not to put off the courting male. What misled Morris was the erroneous idea that hair or feather erection in threat evolved from cooling behavior patterns. Hair erection in threat and heat regulation do use the same motor patterns, or at least organs, but for entirely different purposes. When we examine the hair patterns (length, density, and color) of primates, there is a low correlation with thermoregulatory needs, but a high correlation with the animal's social behavior.
It would seem that nakedness is a neotenic character - a youthful characteristic (quite common among what biologists call altlicial species, those born helpless and dependent). As such, nakedness projects appeasing qualities because of the absence of threat characters. Human nakedness was brought neotenically into the adult stage of development to create a more appealing package. "Baby skin" has become the epitome of female skin beauty.
The term nakedness gouges deep into our emotions. It connotes revealment, exposure, submission, because the reduction of our mat of hair our threat paraphernalia - left us bare to the social eye. The lack of fixed threat devices meant to some degree a sort of fixed submission signal. Clothes, of course, can make for a neutral signal since they are not the intimidating curly hair, yet they conceal our social bareness. But for the most part, clothes replace hair as a social status signal. They are more covert and unlike our former hair are flexible. An executive doesn't have to display his full threat regalia on the weekend as he plays with his kids and putters over hobbies with his pals. He puts on clothes of similar pattern to those he wore as a teenager (or the ones his teenagers wear).
Nudity also has sexual connotations, but these are sometimes inseparable from hierarchy signals. Since, by biological tradition, a female's role in copulation is primarily submissive, her nakedness has a connotation of exposure or a receptive invitation. A male's nakedness on the other hand, is a more aggressive character, since it exposes the tools he uses in his aggressive role in copulation. .
Current skin-flicks and girly-mags, that sell mainly on the basis of their sexual stimulation, may be using the wrong strategy in exposing pubic hairs as the ultimate in stimulation. That crotch triangle is one of the many exceptions to our neotenic pattern. Perhaps it is better that they airbrush them away along with the pimples, rough skin, and wisps of moustache hair on their models, to attain that "Lolita attraction" of bare baby bottoms displaced on mature girls.
Smooth skin texture appears to be another example of social neoteny. The other apes have extremely rough skin as adults, but fairly smooth skin when young. If one can judge our ancestral skin textures from a comparison with other living primates (as we earlier judged our hairiness) it looks as if we have become more baby-like in skin texture. Only in old male humans is the skin particularly rough. There are major differences between the sexes, with some women maintaining very baby-like complexions well past middle age.
Konrad Lorenz has emphasized the importance of rounded contours in the signal of childlikeness. Adults of all species generally have more angular features than their young. This is why we react so readily to young animals with a human "brood care" response: soft little ducklings and puppies are cuddly. The rounded forehead and cheeks of babies have been neotenized into some adult "babes." Many cute girls have that slightly rounded, protruding forehead and peachy cheeks that you could just pinch (the Early Debbie Reynolds syndrome). Eibl-Eibesfeldt has proposed that the bulging cheeks of children have evolved specifically as social organs acting as signaling devices.
I would extend this line of reasoning to its neotenic counterpart in some women: the pink cheek spot. We associate pink cheeks with youth and vigor. They have become a neotenic trait among adult women. Those women who do not come by it naturally often use pigments (rouges) to mimic their lost youth. Some even pinch their cheeks thoroughly before a social performance to enliven the pink spot.
Dimples occur more commonly among babies than adults and more commonly among girls than boys. That little indentation in those round protruding cheeks adds emphasis to the rounded contour in the same manner that a mole (or artificial beauty spot) on a delicate white skin makes the skin appear even whiter.
That girl in the Breck hair shampoo ad is a type-specimen neotenic. The soft, silky, luxuriant hair of the beautician's ideal is the scalp hair of a prepuberty child.
The Maybelline girl has the eyes of a child, disproportionately large for the size of her face. The sclera is exposed from rim to rim and the irises are larger than most. The lashes are long and curl away from the eye just as they do in a child. Corrections for extreme myopia give a person a "beady-eyed" appearance. In the same way, extreme corrections for farsightedness have an almost startling "bug-eyed" effect, giving the person a childish air.
Chimps are born Caucasian, in a manner of speaking; their skin is a light flesh pink and their eyes a deep blue. But as they begin to mature their skin darkens to a purple-black in some individuals or a rich cinnamon in others. Even in the black-skinned gorilla, the most heavily pigmented of the hominoids, the young are born with very little pigment. This is in essence true of all the apes, including the races of man. Any time the child's physical appearance elicits care and protection from the adult, adults may often profit by mimicking those characters. Crying by adults has a similar effect. For the moment the adult becomes a child to be comforted, pitied, and cared for. Women and girls profited from looking more childlike than men, and whiteness is by extension an effeminate character. Studies in reflectometry have found sexual differences in color among most human racial groups on areas of the body protected from sunlight.
After a baby nurses, its lips are distended and the capillaries engorged with blood from the suction. The outer portion is a crimson red and the inner parts are blanched pale. As I have already mentioned, the nursing suck is an important gesture which we have incorporated into the parent child bonding ritual, the greeting gesture, male-female bonding, and the development of copulatory behavior. Beneath the superficial role everted lips play in bringing milk into the mouth, they have become cardinal organs of social communication. But their complex role as mobile transmitters and sculptors of sound obscure, to the casual eye, their neotenic signal. The exaggerated everted lip of the lipstick ad model is similar to the Lifebuoy baby-complexion ad - they are "bigger than life" babies. The thin-lipped, square-jawed Montana face is the antithesis of youth; he is the surly, tough, old male carrying a signal of dominance. But that tight-lipped look of the other anthropoids has apparently been on the wane among humans. The everted lip is more prominent among women who desire a baby-like appearance.
Desmond Morris has proposed that the everted red lips of humans are a mimic of the genital labia. It is true that there are behavioral associations between the female genitals and the mouth among different primate groups, and there are colors in common - the blends of blues and pinks. But the major differences in orientation and the lack of eversion of the labia majora suggest that the uniqueness of the adult everted and colored lips is a primarily neotenic trait, with only secondary sexual aspects.
Waxing one's lips bright red, like powdering the face whiter than baby-white, is a form of superstimulus where the original signal is exaggerated to strengthen the response. These are cultural shortcuts paralleling the evolutionary phenomena of social neoteny. Though they are not neoteny, we can use them to analyze how and why social neoteny has taken place.
At different times in history, depending on the spirit of the times, women have capitalized on the clothes of the reproductively immature. The "little girl" look of the late 60's is a good example. Dresses and skirts went up to the upper thigh, like a little girl's dress. Hats, shoes, cut of blouse, lack of obvious makeup, and long scalp hair all took on aspects of children's wear and styles from previous decades. The extreme example was "Twiggy", a skinny, dish-chested, gangly-limbed, early teenage-looking girl.
Neoteny of the human body hasn't been only skin deep. The smooth round contours of the skull (again, particularly in women), the fine lines of the jaw and brow are all in sharp contrast to those of our ancestors a few thousand generations ago. Our hands, feet, and other limb elements have become slender and fragile. There is no reason to believe some of these trends except where limited by other body hot spots, will not continue.