While men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors, the boffins added. According to a series of studies of physical attractiveness and its links to reproductive success in humans, researchers found that pretty women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern.

In the research, Markus Jokela, a researcher at the University of Helsinki, found beautiful women had up to 16 percent more children than their plainer counterparts. To reach the conclusion, Jokela used data gathered in America, in which 1,244 women and 997 men were followed through four decades of life, reports The Times. Attractiveness was rated on the basis of photographs taken during the study, which also collected data on the number of children they had.