As a scientist doing scads of important research, I am busy, very busy. What with all those midnight experiments in the lab, all that eureka-ing, I hardly have any time to read the journals. Nonetheless, I stopped everything to thoroughly study the May 10, 1999, issue of People magazine, the special double issue, âThe 50 Most Beautiful People in the World.â It was fabulous. In addition to the full-color spreads and helpful grooming tips, the editors of People have gone after one of the central, pressing issues of our time. âNature or nurture?â they ask on the opening page, as in, What gets you in our special issue? âAbout beauty, the arguments can be endlessâ (P. Mag. [1999] 51, 81). Best of all, the write-ups on each of the fifty contain some thoughts from the Chosen Ones or from members of their entourage (significant other, mom, hairdresserâŠ) as to whether their celebrated states are a product of genes or environment.
Now, one should hardly be surprised at the range of answers that would come from a group that includes both a seventeen-year-old singer named Britney Spears and Tom Brokaw. What was striking, though, and, frankly, disappointing to this reporter was that our Fifty Most Beautiful and their inner circles harbor some rather militant ideologues in the realm of the nature/nurture debate.
Consider first the extreme environmentalists, who reject the notion of anything being biologically fixed, with everything, instead, infinitely malleable with the right environmental intervention. Thereâs Ben Affleck, newly arrived on the movie scene in the last few years, who discusses the impact of his pumping iron and getting his teeth capped. âOh my God, you are a movie star!â one of his advisers is reported to have gushed in response to the dentistry (P. Mag. [1999] 51, 105). Mr. Affleck is clearly a disciple of John Watson, famous for the behaviorist/environmentalist credo, âGive me a child and let me control the total environment in which he is raised, and I will turn him into whatever I wish.â It is unclear whether Mr. Watsonâs environmentalist hegemony included turning people into the Fifty Most with cosmetic dentistry, but a torch appears to have been passed to young Mr. Affleck. Thus, it hardly becomes surprising that Mr. Affleckâs much celebrated affair with Gwyneth Paltrow, clearly of the genetic determinist school (see below), was so short-lived.
A strongly environmentalist viewpoint is also advanced by one Jenna Elfman, apparently a successful television star, who attributes her beauty to drinking one hundred ounces of water a day, following the teachings of a book that prescribes diets based on your blood type, and religiously making use of a moisturizer that costs $1,000 a pound. However, even a neophyte in the studies of human developmental biology and anatomy could quickly note that no amount of said moisturizer would result in the inclusion on Peopleâs list of Walter Matthau or, say, me.
Then there is Jaclyn Smith, having moved into the stage of life where People mostly exclaims over the extent to which she still looks like the Charlieâs Angel that she once was, explaining how her beauty has been preserved with good habitsânot smoking, drinking, or doing drugs. This seems reasonable, until one reflects that that salutary nurturing of her self couldnât quite be the whole story, since no similarly ascetic Amish appears on the list of fifty. (A close friend of Ms. Smithâs countered that her beauty is, in fact, maintained by her âhumor, honesty, and unpretentiousnessâ [P. Mag. (1999) 51, 98], which left this reporter sincerely confused as to whether that should count as nature, nurture, or what.)
Perhaps the most extreme stance of this band is advanced by the actress Sandra Bullock, claiming that her beauty is all âsmoke and mirrorsâ (P. Mag. [1999] 51, 81), a viewpoint that aligns her squarely with the Lysenkoism of the Soviet wheat experiments of the 1930s. One need merely to examine her workâfor example, the scene in which she first takes the wheel of the bus in Speedâto detect the undercurrents of this radicalism in her oeuvre.
Naturally, similarly fringe opinions are coming from the opposing ideological faction, namely the genetic determinists among the Most Beautiful. Perhaps the brashest of this school is Josh Brolin, an actor whose statement would seem inflammatory to middle-of-the-roaders, but which could readily serve as a manifesto at the barricades for his cadreââI was given my dadâs good genesâ (P. Mag. [1999] 51, 171). Similar sentiments come from the grandfather of the aforementioned PaltrowââShe was beautiful from the beginningâ (P. Mag. [1999] 51, 169). Ah, young Brolin and Paltrow, an environmentalist adversary might counter, but what if your genetic destiny had encountered a good case of rickets or cowpox along the way, what magazine would you now be gracing?
The epitome of the natalist program, in which genetics is seen to form an imperative trajectory that is impervious to environmental manipulation, festers in the case of TV host Meredith Vieira. One is first told of various disasters that have befallen herâshoddy makeup application, an impetuous and unfortunate peroxide job on her hairâand yet, and yet, it doesnât matter; at each juncture, she is still beautiful because of her âphenomenal genesâ (P. Mag. [1999] 51,158). This reader, for one, blanched at the boldness of this analysis.
Finally, we consider Andrea Casiraghi, he of the Grimaldis of Monaco, grandson of Grace Kelly. Amid the wonderment at his lovely complexion and classically sculpted cheekbones, the word comes outââthoroughbred.â Thorough bred. Oh, could it be so long before his advocates are pushing the eugenics programs that darkened our past? One searches the pages for a middle ground, for the interdisciplinary synthesist who would perceive the contributions of nature and nurture. Hope emerges with seventeen-year-old Jessica Biel, an actress celebrated for her skin, judiciously attributing it to her Choctaw blood plus getting regular facials with Oil of Olay.
And at last, one encounters one of the Chosen whose camp incorporates the most modern, most sophisticated and integrative insights concerning the nature/nurture conundrum, namely the idea that there is an interaction between genes and environment. For this, we consider a singer named Monica, who, despite lacking a last name, is not only one of the Most Beautiful People in the World, but apparently also one of the most important, because of the fame of an album of hers entitled The Boy Is Mine (a work unfamiliar to this reporter, whose association with popular culture ended somewhere around Janis Joplin). We are first informed about her wondrous skill at applying makeup and its role in gaining her acceptance into the Chambers of the Fifty. This, at first, seems like just more environmentalist agitprop. But then one asks, And where does she get this cosmetic aptitude from? Her mother supplies the answer: with Monica, âitâs something thatâs inbornâ (P. Mag. [1999] 51, 146).
Oneâs breath is taken away at this incisive wisdom: a genetic influence on how one interacts with the environment. Too bad a few more people canât think this way when figuring out what genes have to do with, say, intelligence, or substance abuse, or violence.