The Science of Attraction: Is Beauty Skin Deep?

Many of you will know by now that I am deeply skeptical of evolutionary psychology and sociobiology (see Jessiroo's previous post). These are sciences that claim to "explain" current behavior by evaluating its evolutionary usefulness (for example, men are just "destined" to screw around because they have less parental investment). Aside from being determinist, these studies often implicitly justify or naturalize misogynist behavior or practices.

But today I'm going to talk about the science of attraction! Because clearly, we all want to attract someone of the opposite sex (preferably white), so let's use science to explain it!!! (warning: this is sarcasm.)

These types of articles pop up in the news every once in a while, I suppose because they have pop-science appeal as well as making us feel better or worse about certain biological traits. Last week two articles crossed my radar: in the NYTimes, "For Long Term, Men Favor Face Over Figure" and in National Geographic News, "Women Prefer Men With Yellow, Red Faces."

Which one is better looking?

I am left wondering three things:
1) OMG SO WHAT? Are men going to go off and start powdering their faces with yellow make-up (yes, it exists)???
2) So I can stop working out, I just have to have a pretty face?
3) How are these studies justified or funded? Looking at the previous two questions, perhaps Cover Girl is behind the veil, but a lot of these studies focus on non-physical behaviors.

I don't mean to discredit an entire field of study: in fact there are probably good insights about criminal behavior, ethics of care, etc. that we can discover through these approaches, but these seem utterly frivolous. Take the case of the stripper study, where a bunch of scientists "studied" whether ovulating women act sexier (aka received better tips). For a hilarious critique on this and similar period studies, check out this piece in Slate. And if you want a hard-hitting article about this topic in general (and whether we can blame rape and infidelity on evolutionary biology), be sure to read Sharon Begley's article in Newsweek.

I'd be interested to know how many of these PI's are male vs. female. Do you think that if women had more say in designing research questions and allocating funding, that research priorities might shift to something like the ethics of maternal care, rather than the science of rape and attraction?