The cognitive dissonance inherent in animals having cognition and instincts can't be ignored. What people say and how they behave is often quite different.

Anecdotes don't refute distributions among populations.

I have to wonder who taught this boy what the word beautiful means, and what kind of biases they passed on as they did so. Kids are like sponges, they are going to pick up cultural bias as easily as they pick up language. They're not neccessarily going to pick it up from media either, more likely is the ever present self-criticism and fat talk the women in their life likely engage in (even the thin ones).

Speaking of beards, has anyone else noticed that once you go paleo, you develop a sudden desire to sport face fur? I shaved right up until post-college, when I briefly grew a bit of restrained goatee/mustache action (then shaved it because a girl didn't like it–isn't overt reproductive selection fun?) but now I can't seem to recall to do it. Maybe I've just become a slob, but I'm otherwise very up on my appearance and general hygiene.

Good thinking! Apparently whatever women in the 1970's saw in Robert Plant's visible rib cage, they liked.

Related – see pg. 218: Sexual Selection and Evolution of the Human Beard

Hmm, it's a good hypothesis. Supporting evidence would be the phenomenon of rock bands and groupies, she's definitely the type to "shop around for genes" in our offensive evopsych parlance.

The culture as predominantly useful mating/living strategy comes from evidence like different temperaments of Chinese and American babies. These babies haven't learned much in their lives, yet if you put a cloth over an American baby's face it struggles and puts up a fight. Put it over a Chinese baby's face and it learn to breathe through its mouth. Take no shit temperament makes the most sense in an abundant environment and take shit and learn to like it temperament makes most sense in an overpopulated environment. The culture reflects these sorts of things. So I was thinking that neat and office-like appearance would be more desirable in North America whereas rugged and wild hair is more desirable wherever people don't tend to rely on cleanliness as much. Northern Europe seems to still have that Viking culture even though it is less and less like that as time passes. Part of the North American bias towards neatness might also be the result of puritanical culture too.

Some day researchers will put this stuff to the test so we don't have to speculate so hardcore.