How different between 'attraction' and 'attractiveness?

Is sexual attractiveness an evolutionary advantage?

• I wondered whether an adaption that made a man have a more symmetrical nose would give no other advantage other than sexual attraction. My friend disagreed, he said that sexual attractiveness was the mode of transfer and that the change had to confer a survival benefit. I argued that a survival benefit to different degrees can be altered by its sexual attractiveness i.e. a bigger jaw being more unattractive than a jaw that is big enough to fulfil its evolutionary purpose. Who is right?

• Answer:

  Of course it is. Being attractive increases the animal's chance of leaving descendants. That is a clear advantage - you cannot leave many children behind if nobody wants to bed you. Darwin wrote masses on sexual selection. It is a huge and varied topic, but his argument can be summarised by saying that some sexually attractive traits (symmetry, the hip/waist ratio in women, strength and fitness) are obviously in themselves evidence of fitness, while others (the aerobatic displays of mating ospreys, the peacock's tail) are in effect a form of boasting: look, I am so fit that I can waste all this energy and still be up for it. We humans - male and female - do it too. My teenage grandsons 'waste' an enormous amount of energy in rowing boats and parade their gold medals before their female club-mates as proudly as the peacock rattles his tail. Women have little natural colour, but 'waste' a lot of time and energy adorning themselves. And so on. All in the interest of catching a mate and leaving descendants. Q.E.D.