Mechanism of beauty accumulation at high skill levels in partner dancing communities by marginal selective advantage among new dancers*.

Bugs Question of the Day post again!  I feel like it's sort of inappropriate for me to post many-multi-paragraph responses to the QOTD (or my new favorite abbreviation that I just saw on the page, "?/day", when I have my own personal blog for that sort of thing. So since this is my own space, here is my really long answer to today's ?/day.  


First, the question:

@gregory Dyke asks: "A tongue in-cheek question to balance out the overly serious nature of the past few discussions. Is the theory set forward in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqmd75VsVFU @1.30 correct? Beauty and good dancing in women are linked because men do the asking, are shallow and therefore invite the beautiful women, thus affording them more opportunity to dance and become good?"

And here is my initial response:

Holy long response that I just typed out and have decided would be a better blog post. Short answer: as an evolutionary biologist, this theory (as in, prettier girls have more OPPORTUNITY to become better dancers because they'll get asked more often at the beginning) is totally plausible and would not require a large bias at all. A very small (or unconscious bias) would be plenty sufficient. As a follow whose default look is butch and scruffy but who can clean up to what might be described as glamour tomboy, I can say that when I make more effort to look more attractive, I get more dances, hands down.

But here is my slightly more complete response....

Target Weight

Went to the doctor today for sinus shit.  Was told in no uncertain terms to not lose any more weight.  Gonna call that "hitting my target weight."  Is that sick?

[I wasn't planning on losing any more weight anyway.  I actually already hit my target weight about a week ago, ending the weight loss goal I've had for a little less than a year of dropping from 128 back to 110, which is what I weighed in college at my fittest.  Done through food journaling but not really calorie restricting, just trying to eat less junk, and working out (climbing, hiking, dancing, pullups/pushups/leg lifts/ hangboard stuff.)]

ULHS class

There were classes Saturday morning at Showdown, but they started at 10am, and I was not awake at that time, so I did not go. There were also classes Sunday afternoon.  

Due to my indulgence very late Saturday night, and the corresponding amount of sleep that I got, I felt awesome by the time I got up on Sunday afternoon, and, consequently, the only class I made it to all weekend was the final one, Chance Bushman and Bobby Bonsey’s Collaboration and Competition in Solo Jazz Contests.  It started at 6pm, and I actually just listened and watched rather than participated. 

(I was kinda really bummed, because I heard that Evita’s Solo Blues class was really good, but after me and my roomies got up and got lunch… we fell back asleep.)

So the first thing that Chance and Bobby talked about