Woe unto the bearded hipsters: Your breed may be dying out. A new study from the University of New South Wales in Sydney asked men and women to rate the attractiveness of "four standard levels of beardedness” in different groupings. Both beards and clean-shaven faces were rated more attractive when they were rare. It reflects an evolutionary phenomenon known as negative frequency-dependent sexual selection, which essentially means less frequently appearing traits are more sexually appealing in certain cases. But, as anyone who has moseyed through a Williamsburg bar will confirm, “We've hit 'peak beard,'” said one of the study's authors, Prof. Rob Brooks. That means if the PBR crowd wants to pass on their genes, so to speak, they may want to scrap the beard.
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