“Alchemy” and genetics: About children who are way more beautiful than their parents
This is line with our discussion of beauty and Darwinian theory.
My friend Michael P the genomics guy was in town recently. We remembered to ask him the question which has boggled us for many years:
When a Filipina who is not particularly good-looking* has children with a foreigner who might be downright unprepossessing**, why are the issue usually beautiful***?
* Yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we are oversimplifying for purposes of discussion.
* * You can give us the political correctness lecture, but you know what we shallow people mean.
* * * In Tagalog, which sounds more cruel but possesses a visceral accuracy: Bakit pag nagkaanak ang Pinay na hindi naman kagandahan sa dayuhan na lalong hindi maganda, ang mga anak ay mukhang artista?
“That phenomenon is called transgressive segregation,” Michael said.
There is a name for it!
“It’s when you have two parents with different phenotypes and the progeny have phenotypes that are outside the range that you see in the parents. For example, if the dad is 5’8″ and the mom is 5’0, but some of their kids are 6’1″. Happens a lot,” he continued.
“Why are the children gorgeous when the parents are. . .not?”
“The trait you refer to has multiple genes, so you can get a mix not found in either parent,” said our genetics authority.
Here’s an article on transgressive segregation in Heredity. It is studied in hybrid plant populations.
“Some readers have pointed out that the progeny is more likely to be beautiful if the Filipino parent is the mother rather than the father.”
“Then it is a sex-biased transgressive segregation.”
We should get a grant to do the ground-breaking research.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
November 26th, 2010 at 04:57
Exporting Filipinas in the name of Science (and World Domination)?
November 26th, 2010 at 06:43
meron akong kakilala, magandang pinay at poging kano, nung nagkaanak, hindi cute. sana paglaki nung bata maging maganda. hehe
November 26th, 2010 at 09:26
fascinating!
do we have examples of artistas, who demonstrate this phenomenon?
mikee cojuangco came to mind, but i think only her father looks downright unprepossessing.
November 26th, 2010 at 11:06
It has often been pointed out that this appears to happen more frequently with Filipinos than with other (particularly Asian) nationalities, as historically and culturally, Filipinos are (fortunately or unfortunately) quite welcoming of foreigners and foreign influences.
Unlike people of other cultures, Filipinos also do not have an obsession with racial purity (or whatever is the politically incorrect way of calling that), since to do so would be hypocritical in the face of several centuries of racial mixing.
One factor suggested for this outcome is that the Spanish colonial authorities insisted on converting both the indigenous pre-Hispanic people (essentially of the Malay race) and the immigrants (mainly Chinese) to Roman Catholicism, thus eliminating the religious barrier to interracial marriage. Contrast this to other countries around, where despite the same lengthy periods of immigration and co-habitation, racial mixing has been inhibited by differing (Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, some Christian) religious beliefs.
Thus, you won’t find many “mestizas” outside the Philippines — except maybe in Latin America, and for roughly the same reasons, I suppose.
November 26th, 2010 at 16:50
It’s really about Filipina women wanting light-skinned babies with european features for children. Kasi caucassian-looking = “mukhang artista”.
Kung half-black naman, mukhang…?
November 27th, 2010 at 00:44
great that you’ve addressed this…I think I might be a quintessential example, fitting the profile to the t in that I’m a filipina with mediocre looks although my husband who is of a sri lankan background is not necessarily hard on the eyes….between my almond shaped eyes and his dark complexion, made for some offspring with killer looks…good to know what exactly was at play…from conception till i popped them out:)