Flipping through magazines, one can't help but wonder why some gorgeous women chose, ahem, less-than-gorgeous men as partners. A new study has the answer.
According to a report from the University of Tennessee, women who marry less attractive men have happier marriages.
The study, which was published in the Journal of Family Psychology in February, suggested women who married more attractive men are more likely to have negative feelings about their marriages.
Men who married more attractive women are simply happy to enjoy their partners' beauty, and are thus generally happier about the union.
Men who were more attractive than their wives would typically be less emotionally supportive.
The study consisted of 82 newlywed couples in their first six months of marriage. The spouses reported their own levels of happiness along with trained observers reporting on the interactions with each other and levels of attractiveness.
"I don't consider myself to be an ugly guy," Joe Russo, a recently engaged film senior, says. "But I sure am happy with my pretty girl, and she's seems happy with me."
Russo then jokes of his fiancée. "But she does say 'What the hell was I thinking' a lot, so maybe she's not all that happy."
The study says attractive men have more short-term mating partners available to them. Thus, good-looking guys are generally unhappy to stick with just one partner.
Laura Handlery, an education freshman, says she can see why an attractive woman would be happier with a less attractive man.
"The guy would be less conceited," Handlery says, "and you'd feel better about yourself — as bad as that sounds."
Handlery says this study could possibly influence her future choices in men, saying she might now re-consider men she has gotten close to as friends.
"Initially you look at someone's physical appearance, but maybe it'd better with guys you became friends with and got to know not based on looks," she says.
ASU housing and urban development senior Joshua Yen makes his own interpretation for the findings of the study.
"Based on stereotypes, uggo guys are supposed to be nicer," Yen says. "So then the cute girls, though initially attracted to the asshole 'hot' guys, are happier with the uggo if they date them because he's the nice guy to bring home to mom and dad."
Blowing his own theory though, Yen goes on to say, "But who knows, I'm an uggo and I'm not nice, so there goes that."
ASU sociology professor Beverley Cuthbertson Johnson disagrees with the study, saying, "It is the 'person within' who counts the most."
Johnson says people's happiness does not rest on such superficiality as attractiveness when it comes to marriage. The idea of beauty changes depending on whichever culture you're in, she says.
"There is no 'right' beauty framework," says Johnson. "Why do you think we have so much anorexia and bulimia? Our society puts too much emphasis on tall and thin."
A good relationship, Johnson says, is built on the ability to "know, understand and love," the unique qualities of one's spouse and the ability to work together on differences.
A different study done by the University of Texas at Austin published this month in Evolutionary Psychology Journal suggests women will adjust what they desire in a mate based upon her own attractiveness.
The more attractive a woman considers herself, the higher her standards for potential partners.
The study also detailed that if a woman has difficulty finding an up-to-standards potential partner, she will often lower her standards.
The University of Texas study also detailed that women did not only base their standards on men's appearance. A man's resources, parenting skills, and loyalty and devotion were also taken into account.
Though women's selectivity is dependent on how beautiful others perceive them, men on the other hand didn't vary their desires based on their own attractiveness.
Who knew it would be the guys who come out sounding like the decent ones?
