Exploring Male and Female Perceptions

Skin color has been thought of primarily in terms of race ever since the postmedieval European expansion and the ensuing creation of multiracial colonial societies. Previously, however, it was perceived in a more homogeneous milieu. Our expression 'the fair sex' harks back to a time when people conceived skin color in terms of sexual identity.

In this earlier environment, the sex difference in complexion may have structured how the mind responds to skin color, at least for minor variations of hue. If so, skin color should evoke different responses from men and women. In our ancestral environment, a person with a dark, male coloration would have meant one thing to a man and another to a woman—either a potential rival or a potential mate.

This view has support from several lines of evidence. It has long been known that a hardwired mental mechanism enables us to recognize human faces and even the gender of human faces (Perrett et al. 1994). Recently, one gender cue has turned out to be complexion. People can distinguish a man's face from a woman's by complexion alone, even when the image is blurred and offers no other details (Russell 2004; Tarr et al.2001). A critical cue seems to be the contrast between facial pigmentation and eye/lip pigmentation (Russell 2003).

Subjects identify the left-hand face as female and the right-hand one as male, even though complexion is the only visual cue. Study by Richard Russell, Sinha Laboratory for Vision Research, MIT

Not only do differences in complexion aid gender recognition, they also seem to influence sexual preference. When a thousand American students were surveyed on their physical preferences in the opposite sex, 30% of the males versus 10% of the females disliked black skin. Conversely, 56% of the males versus 82% of the females disliked very light skin (Feinman & Gill 1978). This kind of female response is well known to the movie and advertising industries, as seen in the 'tall, dark and handsome' look of Hollywood film stars and the brown, ruddy hues of magazine poster boys playing soccer, savoring a cigarette, or putting on after-shave. Some filmmakers even use photo-enhancement to darken the complexions of their male actors (Sailer 1999).

Similar findings came up in a Japanese study where women spoke of skin color to distinguish between 'a beautiful man' and 'an attractive man.' The former had white skin and, though admired almost aesthetically, was seen as being effeminate. The latter had brown skin and was considered virile, dauntless, energetic and self-assertive (Wagatsuma 1967).

It may be that male and female responses to skin color diverge under the influence of diverging hormonal input, i.e., the sex difference in production of androgens and estrogens from seven years of age onwards. In an initial study, children 2 to 5 years old were asked to choose the nicer of two dolls, one of which had a slightly darker complexion. Although no relationship was found between gender and doll choice, children choosing the darker-colored doll had significantly more body fat (Frost 1989). This choice may reflect a higher ratio of estrogen to androgen in the fatter children. Adipose tissue contains aromatase (an enzyme that converts an androgen to an estrogen) and when the gonads are relatively inactive, as is the case below 7 years of age, estrogen blood levels correlate with volume of body fat (Siiteri & MacDonald 1973). This source of estrogen is far from negligible. In prepubertal boys, excessive aromatase activity can even induce breast development and other signs of feminization (Hemsell et al. 1977).

A second study sought to find this apparent hormonal effect in adults. The sex hormones fluctuate over the menstrual cycle: estrogen levels rise from day 0 to day 14, fall gradually with a secondary maximum around day 20 and then decline markedly; progesterone levels increase from day 14 to day 22 and remain high until day 27. In short, the estrogen/progesterone ratio (E/P) is high during the first two-thirds of the cycle and low during the last third. Since progesterone acts as an antiestrogen, skin color preferences should vary with the changing ratio of estrogen to progesterone. Preference for darker complexions should be stronger during the first two-thirds of the cycle and weaker during the last third. Because oral contraceptive (OC) users have consistently high E/P throughout the cycle, their skin color preference should resemble that of non-users during the high E/P phase.

In this second study, six pairs of photos showing human faces of both sexes were presented to 98 women who had to choose the most pleasing one of each pair. Faces within each pair were identical except for a slight difference in complexion. The study found that darker male faces were judged more positively during the first two-thirds of the menstrual cycle when the E/P ratio was high than during the last third when it was low. Female faces did not elicit any cyclical pattern of response. Among OC users, both male and female faces failed to elicit a cyclical pattern (Frost 1994). The results suggest a psychological mechanism exists whose inputs are (1) hormonal state, (2) visual identification of the sex of the face being observed, and (3) visual recognition of complexion, and whose output enters into evaluation of male and female faces. This mental algorithm seems to reflect ancestral conditions when sex and age accounted for most of the observable variation in skin color within any given social environment. Finally, these results are consistent with an emerging view that human evaluation of facial features is to some extent influenced by "hardwired" mental structures.

One failing in both studies was that the subjects were asked to choose between two shades of color, thus compressing their responses along a single axis, i.e., attraction versus repulsion. We therefore lose sight of the different components that may enter into human response to skin color. To identify these components, a more multidimensional approach is needed.

One such approach is the 'color meaning' test that psychologists have used on children in different cultures. In a French study, preschoolers were asked to pair adjectives with pictures of light- and dark-colored people or animals. For the lighter figure, the children most often chose propre (clean), jolie (pretty), gentil (kind), and extraordinaire (wonderful). For the darker figure, they chose only one positive quality: robuste (Best et al. 1975). Although the authors translated this word by 'healthy,' a better rendition would be 'sturdy' or 'rugged.' The use of a virile term like robuste was limited to the French study and apparently resulted from a mistranslation of the English word set. This pattern of color meanings showed no sign of progression from younger to older children. Nor did the meanings correlate with IQ, as they would if learned. Williams and Rousseau (1971) tersely concluded that the absence of a learning curve and the non-correlation with IQ "seems to cast doubt on the effort to explain the meanings of the colors to the child solely on the basis of cultural learning."

References

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Hemsell, D.L., C.D. Edman, J.F. Marks, P.K. Siiteri, and P.C. MacDonald. (1977). "Massive extraglandular aromatization of plasma androstenedione resulting in feminization of a prepubertal boy", Journal of Clinical Investigation 60:455-464.

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Perrett, D.I., K.A. May, and S. Yoshikawa (1994). "Facial shape and judgements of female attractiveness." Nature 368(6468):239-242.

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Russell, R. (2004). "Male and female faces are differently pigmented", Congress of the American Psychological Association, Chicago.

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Sailer, S. (1999). "Why do gentlemen prefer blondes?" The National Post. October 22, 1999.

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Roman painting of Venus and Mars, 1st century