Does media impact our evolution?

Question

Does media portrayal of specific individuals help change our culture's view of beauty and thus the way we choose partners and evolve? Is there no impact?

For example, skinny white people are in the media a lot, are they more appealing and thus more likely to make it through genepool selections?

Answer 1

The media influences a lot of people. However, the media in this situation may just be taking what is already true and accelerating it. Beauty is an attractive quality, a necessary ingredient for sex and reproduction. Attractive people are more likely to mate than unattractive people. The problem is, people are attracted to one another for more reasons that just the Hollywood standard. In fact, probe a little more deeply, and you will see it's the Hollywood couples that are less likely to stick together as mates and family because their standards of attractiveness are so shallow. So yes, they affect the mating instinct, but they have a detrimental effect on the family unit, which is the most basic human institution for survival. They only survive because they have lots of money that goes a long way in supporting broken families and can pay others to raise their children. The difficulty lies in the way they influence people that don't have the resources to survive. Poor people often get into big trouble thinking they can emulate the people on the big screen.

Answer 2

The media influences a lot of people. However, the media in this situation may just be taking what is already true and accelerating it. Beauty is an attractive quality, a necessary ingredient for sex and reproduction. Attractive people are more likely to mate than unattractive people. The problem is, people are attracted to one another for more reasons that just the Hollywood standard. In fact, probe a little more deeply, and you will see it's the Hollywood couples that are less likely to stick together as mates and family because their standards of attractiveness are so shallow. So yes, they affect the mating instinct, but they have a detrimental effect on the family unit, which is the most basic human institution for survival. They only survive because they have lots of money that goes a long way in supporting broken families and can pay others to raise their children. The difficulty lies in the way they influence people that don't have the resources to survive. Poor people often get into big trouble thinking they can emulate the people

Answer 3

Since the major impact of the news media and popular press came about this century, not likely. Evolution takes a lot of time, even for a moderately deleterious or for some reason undesirable trait being sexually selected against, it would take more than just a few generations to make an impact. Also news media has limited influence in that only those who have the means to view and or the money to afford to be influence by it will be, and that is not a big percentage of the world's population. Evolutions doesn't happen that fast, at least not for something like this with minor if any selective pressure.