(3) There is one characteristic difference of Man from the anthropoids which his hunting habits do not clearly explain—his relatively naked skin. Darwin attributed this condition to sexual selection.[14] He argued that, on the one hand, so far as Man has had the power of choice, women have been chosen for their beauty; and that, on the other hand, women have had more power of selection, even in the savage state, than is usually supposed, and “would generally choose not merely the handsomest men, according to their standard of taste, but those who were at the same time best able to defend and support them.” Hence, if a partial loss of hair was esteemed ornamental by our ape-like progenitors, sexual selection, operating age after age, might result in relative nakedness. “The faces of several species of monkey and large surfaces at the posterior end of the body have been denuded of hair; and this we may safely attribute to sexual selection.” The beard of the male, and the great length of the hair of the head in some races, especially seem due to this cause. The greater hairiness of Europeans, compared with other races, may be a case of reversion to remote ancestral conditions. But as all races are nearly naked, the common character was probably acquired before the several races had diverged from the common stock.
The species of monkey that have lost the hair on various parts of their bodies, and the beard of males (together with the longer head-hair of women) of our own race are cases that strongly support the ascription of such secondary sexual characters to sexual selection. Yet, going back to the time before the division of modern Man into races (say, 600,000 years), it seems incredible that any women then went unmarried, hair or no hair, if they were healthy (and the unhealthy soon ceased to exist); or that any man went unmarried, if he could do his share in the hunting-field (and, if not, he also soon ceased to exist). No facts observed amongst extant savages—the choice exerted by women, or the polygamy of chiefs—throw much light upon that ancient state of affairs. There were then no chiefs: the hunt-leader of pack or clan had no authority but his personal prowess, no tradition of ancestry or religion, nor probably the prestige of magic, to give him command of women. Unless, at that time, relative nakedness was strongly correlated with personal prowess in the male and efficiency in the female, it is difficult to understand how it can have been preserved and increased by sexual selection. Forgive me for adding an unkind remark: if the selection of women for their beauty has gone on for hundreds of thousands of years, and has had a cumulative effect upon the race, is not the result disappointing? Go into the street and look. That “women have become more beautiful, according to the general opinion, than men,” is not an objective, truly æsthetic judgment, but one determined by causes of which “general opinion” is falsely unconscious. Schopenhauer[15] thought that men are better looking than women; and of average specimens this seems to be true; though, to be sure, he was a sort of misogynist.