S e c o n d e d I t I o n 1 Reading for the Real World 1

fertility
, men may 
subconsciously
view a 
woman with an hourglass figure as a good 
candidate
for 
producing children. Therefore, according to Dr. Singh, the men who 
choose these types of women have the 
potential
for having more 
children. Over time, evolution would favor men who have 
inherited
genes from their fathers which influence the 
selection of this type of “fertile” woman.
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hourglass --- an instrument filled with sand to measure time
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critical --- most necessary
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fertility --- the ability to have children
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subconsciously --- without thought
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candidate --- a person to choose
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potential --- capable of doing
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inherit --- to get; to receive
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Douglas Yu, a biologist at Imperial College in London, 
disagrees with Dr. Singh’s hypothesis. Dr. Yu thinks that 
culture, especially culture developed through 
exposure to
mass entertainment and advertising, 
has had the largest influence on how men judge 
beauty. In order to test his theory, Dr. Yu traveled to 
southeast Peru to interview men in an isolated 
community far from the reach of modern television, 
movies, and magazines. Through his own survey, Dr. Yu 
found that the men in this isolated community preferred 
heavier women with a wider waist than the body shape 
preferred by the men in Dr. Singh’s study. Because this 
small community has lived apart from western mass communication, their own 
culture has not been influenced by outside standards of beauty.
In order to check the 
reliability
of his study, Dr. Yu surveyed two other 
groups of men from this same community. However, the second and third 
groups surveyed by Dr. Yu had more exposure to western entertainment and 
advertising. The results of these later surveys showed that as men from this 
isolated community came into contact with western movies and magazines, their 
standards of beauty began to change more toward the western standard of 
beauty. Dr. Yu concluded from these findings that even if evolution played a part 
in men’s selection of mates, cultural influences are more powerful in the end and 
work faster in changing men’s standards.
With both satellite communication and the Internet flooding every corner of 
the world with images and information from almost every culture, it is becoming 
harder and harder to find isolated communities. Soon it may be impossible to 
prove which side is correct in the genetics