This was what being α was?
I recall once in high school history my teacher telling us that the average American lived like a king compared to Henry VIII. Not implausible considering the conveniences which were the products of only the past few generations, let alone centuries. That being said, people were in abundance during Henry’s period, at least when it came to the whims of the king. So I was surprised when I was skimming over some original documents detailing the English Reformation that several contemporary observers note that Ann Boleyn was rather average in attractiveness. Her exceptionality in appearence was her rather dark complexion for an Englishwoman. In any case, I decided to check out the paintings of Henry’s other wives, and was shocked that they seemed rather unexceptional by an large. I left out Anne of Cleves because she wasn’t picked by Henry, though I suppose Catherine of Aragon is a borderline case since Henry was young enough that he had little choice in the matter. Anyway, makes you wonder about what people actually do when they have power to do what they want to do, and what they value.
Labels: Roissy
People were uglier in the past, largely because of disease.
I’ve got a post almost done on this topic as well — why English women are so ugly today, even though they’re healthy.
Unfair to compare them with Natalie Portman, since Mediterranean groups are under greater selection for good looks, as a signal of good genes where pathogen load is higher.
Another thing — population size matters. England’s population is somewhere between 13 and 17 times as large as in Henry VIII’s time, so we expect to see that times as many females at the Xth percentile nowadays. And when you look far out into the tail, say 1 in a million, you’d expect to find 3 or 4 such women in 1500 — but by chance, you might easily find 0, 1, or 2. With a much larger sample, sampling error probably won’t result in 0 women at the 1 in a million level.
A king would not pick a wife for her physical attractiveness. There were mistresses for that. The requirements for a wife were political suitability and ability to produce heirs. Though it does seem that Henry VIII wanted his wives to be at least tolerably attractive, and Anne Boleyn was reputed to be quite a goer.
BTW, if you want to see some really ugly royals, look at the Spanish Hapsburgs.
“People were uglier in the past, largely because of disease.”
But Razib wrote “several contemporary observers note that Ann Boleyn was rather average in attractiveness.”
IMO Ann Boleyn exceedeth the diuers Otheres heere Pictur’d.
Whoo-eee! Did you check out the dowry on that one?
A king would not pick a wife for her physical attractiveness. There were mistresses for that. The requirements for a wife were political suitability and ability to produce heirs
this is a fair point. but only with anne of cleves and catherine of aragon was henry very constrained. anne of cleves was a ploy to get henry involved in the protestant-catholic wars in germany, and catherine was was part of an alliance with spain. but the other women were simply nobles. albeit, many of them were aligned with particular factions, but there were many protestant or catholic women in the english nobility. i mean, take a look at jane seymour. seriously! paintings are usually flattering, right?
Unfair to compare them with Natalie Portman, since Mediterranean groups are under greater selection for good looks, as a signal of good genes where pathogen load is higher
yeah, true. unfair to compare shiksas to ashkenazi jewsess ;-)
BTW, if you want to see some really ugly royals, look at the Spanish Hapsburgs.
but this was straightforward inbreeding. they weren’t just ugly, the last spanish hapsburg king was an imbecile (this isn’t an insult, he was actually a cognitive imbecile!).
The only thing notable about this post is that Ann Boleyn was average in physical appearance, beyond that there isn’t much that we can infer because:
ictionary.com/by+and+large)
#1) One expects that standards of beauty beyond the usual garbage about symmetry and etc. has changed substantially in the last few centuries.
#2) Who knows how accurate the provided potraits are and, frankly, given the quality of the artwork, do you really believe those are accurate portrayals of the appearance of Henry’s wives?
Also, re: Natalie Portman:
Ashkenazi Jews aren’t usually noted for their beauty. Sure, we’ve got a few winners (Gina Gershon, Natalie Portman, for instance.), but by and large, we’re actually known (within the faith, may I add) to be a pretty homely as ethnic groups go. Also, the usual arguments on this blog (and the ones I, myself, put stock in) is that relative to the gentiles around them Ashkenazim were selected more for intelligence than physical vigor (which correlates with beauty.) Furthermore, Ashkenazi Jews aren’t even pure Mediterraneans. The most logical inference one might make from the extant data is that Ashkenazim are (tightly bottle-necked) Mediterranean (or Semitic)/local European hybrids. Now, if you want to say that it’s unfair to compare Henry’s wives to Portman because she’s gone through an extensive screening process by Hollywood casting directors, I’d say you were on to something, but the (probably tongue in cheek) comment about Mediterranean selection for beauty doesn’t apply….
(Oh and to continue my rant of unnessecary anality:
Razib, the expression is “by _and_ large”
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bya1.htm
http://www.thefreed
#2) Who knows how accurate the provided potraits are and, frankly, given the quality of the artwork, do you really believe those are accurate portrayals of the appearance of Henry’s wives?
some of these women had multiple portraits. you will note i provided link to something called wikipedia within the body of the post (note the highlighted words!), so you could find it out for yourself instead of asking questions which add very little to the discussion (speaking of nothing there). if you’re going to strike that sort of pose try and add a bit more value into the system instead of opining, ok? and, perhaps you know this but decided not to say because you are characterized by mysterious ways, but it is usually said that paintings like this were either accurate reflections or better looking touch-ups (this was the problem with anne of cleves painting). i suppose there might be reasons to make someone look uglier than they are, but that’s aytpical, it seems that most of these artistic fashions of human representation went from realism to idealization and back (e.g., comparing agustus to cato). knowing akenaton’s preference for realism in depiction i would bet that nefertiti wasn’t half-bad looking.
p.s. i don’t actually mind someone who knows something about art history clarifying issues, but i don’t see that in these sorts of comments.
Well, if I’m looking at beautiful actresses of Jewish ancestry, off the top of my head I would include:
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Michelle Trachtenberg
Alona Tal (Israeli)
Yasmine Bleeth (before cocaine)
Laura Prepon
Amanda Bynes
Rachel Bilson
Scarlett Johansson
Ashley Tisdale
Evan Rachel Wood
Shiri Appleby
Elizabeth Banks
Amber Benson
Elizabeth Berkeley
Jennifer Connolly
Soleil Moon Frye
Leah Remini
Sarah Silverman
Alicia Silverstone
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Rena Sofer
Amanda Peet
From Wikipedia
That’s a pretty good list. I’d put their beauty against anyone’s. Instead I would go with small sample size for King Henry, and also some fairly brutal living conditions in urban medieval environments. Disease and lack of sanitation can make many ugly.
Well, if I’m looking at beautiful actresses of Jewish ancestry, off the top of my head I would include:
lots of these are half-jews. peet, silverstone, connolly, johansson and gellar i know for sure. i’ve heard mixed things about bleeth (i don’t know if her algerian ancestry is algerian jewish or not). are israeli ashkenazis known to be homely? seems like there is a strange difference here….
s. Instead I would go with small sample size for King Henry, and also some fairly brutal living conditions in urban medieval environments.
1) very few people lived in urban environments though
2) the gentry and nobility didn’t necessarily spend most of their time in london, did they??? at least during this period.
Razib:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but your basic thesis is that you found it surprising that the portraits available on the web of Henry the VIII’s wives weren’t appealing to you. The issue I take with this is that you are applying your 21th century standard of beauty to a stylized version of 16th century beauty. Now, if it turns out that the appeal of 16th century portraits to Razib is predictive of 16th century perceptions of the beauty of the women depicted, than I would concede that you’re on to something. Otherwise, there isn’t much insight to be garnered by your perceptions.
Incidentally, my understanding of Ann Boleyn’s appeal was that, despite her average appearance, she was quite the charmer. As for the rest of his wives, a brief google search reveals that Catherine of Aragon, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr were thought to be attractive while Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves were less so. Now my question to you is this. Do you think you could predict which portraits were the beauties and which were not without prior knowledge of the 16th century perception? Would you for instance consider Bianca Cappello’s portrait on wikipedia beautiful? I certainly wouldn’t, but she apparently was a great beauty in her time.
Now, I do agree with you that the calculus by which men of power chose their mates is an interesting subject, but it just doesn’t make much sense to make inferences about their decisions based on our contemporary perception of centuries old artwork that a layman can see is stylized relative to a photograph. We’re better off just looking at what the historical record has to say about the appearance (and other characteristics) of the wives of great men.
Even in more recent times, beauty was different. How about Alma Mahler? She drove men wild in early 20th century Vienna. But, to me, she doesn’t look that amazing.
Anne Boleyn was a close relative of the Butlers of Ormonde – one of the leading Cambro-Norman families in Ireland – with estates surrounding Kilkenny and much of the South East of the Country. So there is the element of strategic alliance there as well.
> Alma Mahler?
Emilie Floege, bitte…
GMM, I think your points about looking at these portraits are pretty convincing.
As for Ashkenazi being selected for intelligence rather than beauty, I think you’re making quite a loose case, unless you are appealing to the Haldane limit. (And if you understand how to argue well for the Haldane limit you are a good ways ahead of me.) What about the Leroi proposal (beauty a function of genetic load, which he himself admits is highly speculative). If that idea is true, then simply increasing the population turnover, ie birth and death rates (something persecution might accomplish), might increase beauty, without any unusual level of positive selection for beauty — thus leaving intelligence alone, even (I think?) if the Haldane limit were to apply.
(Or perhaps reducing genetic load could actually increase intelligence as well — something that might be worth thinking about since we don’t yet have IQ data on the Ashkenazi sphingomyelin-related alleles and the like.)
Here is my attempt to ascertain the ethnic background of Whiskey’s list of Jewish actresses:
Sarah Michelle Gellar: Jewish on both sides.
Michelle Trachtenberg: Ambiguous. Described as Jewish in some articles, but speaks of celebrating both Christmas and H.
Alona Tal:Jewish on both sides.
Yasmine Bleeth: As Razib noted, reports are conficting in regards to her mother.
Laura Prepon: Half Jewish, half Irish.
Amanda Bynes: Half Jewish. Father is non Jewish
Rachel Bilson: Half Jewish. Mother is Italian.
Scarlet Johanson: Half Jewish. Father is DaNISH.
AShley Tisdale: Half Jewish.
Elizabeth Banks: Not ethnically Jewish. She is a convert to Judaism.
Amber Benson: Half Jewish
Elizabeth Berkley: Seems to be Jewish on both sides.
Jennifer Connelly: Half Jewish.
Soleil Moon Frye: Ambiguous data. Some sources merely list her as Jewish, while others describe her as a convert.
Leah Remini: Half Jewish. Father is Italian.
Sarah Silverman: Jewish.
Alicia Silverstone: Half Jewish. Mother is not Jewish.
Jennifer Jason Leigh: Jewish
Amanda Peet: Half Jewish. Father is not Jewish.
For most of the actresses on this list, I relied on Wikipedia;however, for the more ambiguous cases (Bleeth, Trachtenberg, etc) I used multiple sources.
Damn, I left out Shiri Appleby, Evan Rachel Wood and Rena Sofer.
Shiri Appleby: Jewish on both sides; her mother is described as of Sephardic Moroccan descent, which does not help the aesthetic rankings of Ahkenazi Jews.
Evan Rachel Wood:DEscribed as Jewish; however, I strongly suspect that she is half Jewish. Her mother’s name is listed as Sarah Lynn Moore in the Wikipedia article, and this sounds rather non Jewish to me.
REna Sofer: Jewish. Father is a Rabbi.
The issue I take with this is that you are applying your 21th century standard of beauty to a stylized version of 16th century beauty.
right, i actually don’t think that time matters this much. yes, there are temporally localized standards; e.g., sometimes they like fatter chix, sometimes they think unibrows are OK, etc., but beauty is beauty cross-culturally. you might not think person X is good looking, but out of a sample space of people from any era or culture you can tell who has a “good face.” this is anthropologically authenticated.
http://www.thecareandfeedingofman.com/hail-xx/famous-women-in-film-video-mash-up/
Shiri Appleby: Jewish on both sides; her mother is described as of Sephardic Moroccan descent, which does not help the aesthetic rankings of Ahkenazi Jews.
remember one generation of outbreeding can mask anything that’s caused by recessives expressing through inbreeding.
Not to be forgotten that a lot of Hollywood actresses, Jewish or not, have had cosmetic surgery.
Razib:
Do you actually believe
this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_aragon
is considerably more attractive then
this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Boleyn
Futhermore, do you think this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianca_Cappello
represents the height of beauty? (To be sure, the population was smaller, but do you even think Cappello reaches 2 std above the mean? Would you turn for a second glance if you passed her on the street?)
If I presented you with those three pictures, do you think you would rank them in the same order as 16th century observers would?
My thesis has little to do with the universality of beauty. My thesis concerns the local issue that, I don’t believe that your interpretation of those portraits tells us, the GNXP readers, much about Henry VIII selection criteria for his mates.
The Catherines were acknowledged to be attractive by their contemporaries. So, yes, Henry cared about beauty. Also, he was pissed when Anne of Cleves didn’t have the goods she was purported to have. Finally, Anne Boleyn was plain, but made up for it by being so charming that “the young men of the court swarmed around her” and Jane Seymour served Boleyn until Boleyn’s death. At which point, she was immediatly betrothed to Henry. You can infer from that what you will.
Basically, to be clear, I do believe some standards of beauty are conserved across culture, but the variation is great enough and those portraits are low fidelity enough that you probably aren’t able to make useful inferences about how Henry viewed his wives centuries ago.
Furthermore, these are answerable questions, we don’t need to use the portraits as a proxy. The Annes and Jane were average to below average and the Catherines were attractive. Why not just take that as the springboard for your conversations.
Eric:
Yeah, I’ll grant that my argument Re:Ashkenazi beauty was pretty handy-wavy. I stand by the Semitic/European hybrid vs. pure Mediterranean part and I think the idea that Ashkenazim have been selected for intelligence has pretty good support (the raw current IQ numbers, the long standing importance of literacy for social acceptance (and thus probably breeding), a social niche which required relatively abstract reasoning, etc. etc.), but I stand on relatively weak ground for the rest of it and frankly I don’t feeling like doing the footwork to defend that position any better. If you wish, I concede the point, but if you’d allow me to, I’d rather defer it to someone more interested in defending it.
. The Annes and Jane were average to below average and the Catherines were attractive. Why not just take that as the springboard for your conversations.
fair enough. now, that still begs the question why henry would have lower realized standards that roissy.
he was pissed when Anne of Cleves didn’t have the goods she was purported to have
re: anne, she had had some sort of pox and smelled for some reason from what i recall (that is, she was smellier than the norm). binning into even 3 categories misses some of the variation. if henry had *not* been frankly repulsed that would be information about some fetish….
the easiest way to answer my question would be to compare henry’s wives with those of comparable potentates, normalizing for political exigencies. also, you would expect that women from more politically powerful/critical backgrounds would be less attractive because males would have less discretion in their choice. something to assman….
re the Hapsburgs … didn’t many of them have a sort of inherited facial deformity?
GMM, don’t worry, no footwork needed! I’m truly not sure I’d be able to follow you anyway: I wasn’t being rhetorical, I really do have a hard time mastering the debate on the Haldane limit.
ssionid=316us210hscbl.alexandra
I definitely see your point, that Ashkenazi values and economic roles constitute evidence for the IQ difference being due to positive selection, rather than faster purgation of genetic load. I had overlooked that aspect.
Not being fully seasoned as a student of evo/genetics, I wonder if I am correct in thinking that the Leroi genetic load idea might apply in principle to intelligence (and to the immune system) as well as to facial beauty. It seems like it might apply to any complex organ or system, as long as the system’s overall function depends on lots of loci, and has low tolerance for modestly deleterious alleles within that set of loci. I notice that in GNXP comment 04.13.05-12:10am, Razib says that “many” think the Leroi idea could apply to the immunity to parasites.
Considering how birds and butterflies show intricate patters with what looks (to humans) like perfect uniformity between individuals, I find it really odd to think that humans can’t simply produce the optimal face (or the optimal immune system, or optimal intelligence) in every individual. In the same comment thread already cited, “tc” asked “does this apply to animals as well? Do we know what a beautiful mouse or monkey looks like?” Razib answered:
“Yes, there is evidence that symmetrical animals, animals with bright coats, shiny fur, long tails and dazzling songs are healthier. There is also evidence than their offspring are healthier, that is, their fitness is heritable (this makes sense if they start out with low genetic load to begin with).”
I’m not sure I find this quite satisfying — with the exception of dazzling songs, these characteristics aren’t quite like a beautiful face, because they aren’t an attempt to approximate certain ideal versions of a complex pattern. Instead they look like indices of general vigor, or possibly a Zahavi handicap in the case of long tails.
So, are individual birds and butterflies from the same population as alike as they seem, or does this simply reflect our lack of brainware for distinguishing them? Here are some links on individual Blue Jays apparently recognizing one another (not necessarily by sight); American Robins possibly not recognizing each other; and Pied Flycatchers, a not very intricately patterned bird, somehow recognizing each other for purposes of reciprocal altruism:
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/beh/1991/00000118/F0020001/art00008;jse
http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/080706_flycatcher.htm
It would be interesting to do fieldwork to see if other taxa have variable attractiveness related to deviation from some sort of ideal “face” (of course the “face” of a butterfly might be mostly the wings). (I wonder if people here agree on whether beautiful human faces conform to a single ideal.)
By the way, I was confused for a while, as to whether the (estimated) 280 or 300 modestly-deleterious mutations per person discussed by Leroi are mostly supposed to be recessive, or what. In fact, Razib mentions on the already-cited GNXP thread that many of them are thought not to be fully recessive to the wild-type, only partially so. An interesting discussion of this (and other aspects of deleterious mutations) is Evolution: From Molecules to Ecosystems pp 20-32.
In fact, Razib mentions on the already-cited GNXP thread that many of them are thought not to be fully recessive to the wild-type, only partially so.
they may be fully recessive when evaluated for lethality. obviously.
not necessarily for other traits.
re re Hapsburgs -
Peter – they had exceptionally large jaw bones and lip deformities due to inbreeding. Some suffered from intelligence problems, and sexual dysfunction.
exceptional attractiveness is pervasive with mass communication and choice is diminished in the absence quick transportation
makeup and application techniques are also better today and studies show ~15% improvement in attractiveness before any plastic surgery to refine features and diminish dominant negative flaws
the implication that power should increase choice might be constrained by stratification in class that isn’t experienced today, more so in insular affairs of a King, as supposed above by others
relative scales in choice like similarity (in features and overall levels of attractiveness) may also be discounted more than they should be. females are probably more motivated today to actively seek out otherwise inferior partners as the legal remedies for divorce include transfer of wealth, there are more opportunities for cheating/trading up, etc
not that it explains away the question which still stands.
1) In addition to conventions / stylisation issues, portraiture in the times of Henry VIII was simply not reliable. According to the wiki article, Henry himself was apparently misled about the attractiveness of a putative wife by a portrait.
2) Physical attractiveness is only one among several causal factors for emotional attachment. Anne Boleyn was witty, elegant, always the center of attention – the prototypical “alpha female”. Also she probably went out of her way to seduce Henry. Basically, the guy had a crush, period.
When the crush faded away, the charitable interpretation is that he grew estranged from her due to her inability to produce a male heir. The other interpretation is that he got rid of what had become a hindrance in his pursuit of new flesh (even by medieval royalty standards, Henry VIII was one sick bastard).
since Mediterranean groups are under greater selection for good looks, as a signal of good genes where pathogen load is higher
I’d like to know how you explain the differential between English at one extreme, and Irish and Scandinavian at the other. Other than obvious social class division + just plain drift, of course.
At the linked page there is a biography, and more relevantly, a gallery of portraits for each of the queens. Sometimes the portraits are so different that one wonders if this might have been the same woman.
At the Catherine Parr page, there’s a portrait that was thought to be one of lady Jane Gray. If this is really Parr, she was quite pretty even by our standards.
why am not surprised that this theme provokes idiotic comments: people were uglier because of disease; English are ugly today, blah, blah. No. People were not “uglier” in those days. They’ll be saying the same about some of what we think is so “hot”.
The really great Tudor beauty was Henry’s younger sister, Mary Tudor (not Mary Queen of Scots, daughter of Henry’s older sister, Mary), who married the elderly King of France at 18, and when he soon died, married per a pre-plan, the man she loved, Francis Brandon. Mary Tudor, younger sister of Henry VIII, was considered exquisite. When she rode through the streets of Paris, the people thought they were seeing an angel. Her portrait with Brandon shows a young girl with a smooth-planed brow, oval face, serene expression, straight perfect nose, cherry mouth, round chin, high compressed cheekbones and even after 500 years, a dazzling complexion. This lot was a family resemblance she shared with Henry, a fine figure of a man before various diseases and obesity ravaged him, as they still do to us today.
At a tournament in England, a Frenchman approached Mary Tudor Brandon and said wistfully, “My lady, they do not know how to treat such beautiful women in this country. You should have remained in France.” A good pick-up line, but he was just admiring her. He then went on his way, perhaps to write a poem.
She died at 36 and when her tomb was opened 200 years later during repairs to the Cathedral, her body was found to be incorrupt and her fingernails and blond hair had continued to grow. If England had still been Roman Catholic she probably would have been canonized. She had not joined the Reformation, remaining Roman Catholic and loyal to Catherine of Aragon; however, she was the grandmother of the Protestant 6-day Queen, Lady Jane Grey.
Back to the “people were ugly in those days.” Smallpox took a toll, but the largely sugar free, high fiber diet ensured mostly good teeth and well shaped facial bones, as archeologists have noted. In pre-17th c. skulls, the palates are wider and the teeth carie free. The undernourished may have suffered–the average height in 1790 in London was 5’2″ for men among the poor. Even well nourished people were shorter, but not THAT short. Henry VIII was nearly 6 ft. tall, unusual, but not freakish. Some characters from an Austen novel opined that no man should be allowed to be naval officers unless they were at least 5’11″.
Descriptions of what is considered beautiful in a person can be found in books and sonnets–rosy cheeks, clear skin, shining hair, straight nose, cherry lips, good teeth. Same checklist as today (modified for race/ethnicity of course). There are books from the era on grooming and hygiene as well bred people were not expected to be dirty and smelly, though there was a bit more tolerance about armpits as long as the sweat was fresh and not rancid. In fact they had a bit of a fetish there, if one or two of Shakespeare’s sonnets are to be believed. Total immersion bathing was considered a little dangerous to undertake very often, but sponges and flowered essences were in common use for both sexes.
The images in the portraits are fairly realistic for the era, but still somewhat stylized. They get mens’ likenesses better than womens’. Catherine of Aragon was red haired like Henry, small featured and pretty. This does show in the portrait. Catherine Howard was the youngest and prettiest. Her nose appears a little long in the one possible painting of her (never verified for certain), but I’ve seen actresses considered beautiful who look something like the painting. Maybe the young Jane Seymour would have been a good Anne Boleyn or even Catherine Howard.
Anyway, judging the population of an era lasting centuries and numbering in the millions, on the basis of one rather stylized painting for each of Henry’s wives, is really, well, frivolous. I think quite a few of the popular types today would look grotesque to the Renaissance connoisseur of beauty.
Three words: Camilla Parker Bowles
Three more words: Melinda French Gates
Also: 16th C. English artists weren’t known for their terrific painting skills.
And funny that we give Jews credit for choosing brains over beauty but blame royals for perhaps doing the same.
Nice thread.