VBB 304: Richard Prum - The Evolution of Beauty!

Intro [00:00:01]:

Virgin Beauty Bitch Podcast: inspiring women to overcome social stereotypes and share unique life experiences without fear of being defiantly different.  Your hosts, Christopher and Heather.

Let's talk, shall we?

Christopher [00:00:20]:

If beauty is what you want, see a beautician. But if you want to understand why beauty is so critical to our survival, for that, we need a scientist. When I wrote my book, Virgin Beauty, Origin of the Man-Made Woman, for the chapter on beauty, I began with a scientist, Charles Darwin. So, in the first four episodes, where we talk about different aspects of beauty, it's only natural that we begin with a scientist. Our esteemed guest is Richard Prum, an evolutionary biologist and ornithologist, an expert on birds, and author of The Evolution of Beauty. Welcome, Richard, to Virgin Beauty Bitch.

Richard Prum [00:01:07]:

A pleasure to be here.

Christopher [00:01:07]:

Now, Richard, apparently, history has a misunderstanding. It can't be a stretch to say that almost anyone fitted with a first-world education knows the name Charles Darwin and at least his discovery of adaptation by natural selection, mates chosen for the good of the collective gene pool. But apparently, Darwin also discovered that fitness was not the only motivation for choosing a sexual mate, and beauty might play an important role in sexual selection. However, in his day, neither society nor science was ready to accept his ideas fully until books like yours came along. What was your purpose for writing the evolution of beauty?

Richard Prum [00:01:52]:

Interestingly, the conflict you started with you described has affected biology deeply. Even in the modern era, the idea of sexual selection, the idea of mate choice or mating, and competition as an evolutionary force once it was rediscovered after being rejected in Darwin's time was pretty much reinvented in the model of adaptation. That is, it was viewed as a kind of adaptive betterment. Darwin's idea of natural selection is that there's either a struggle to survive or to gather resources that lead to the evolution of heritable traits. But Darwin proposed another radical idea, which was the idea that mate choice or mating competition could similarly structure or change the course of evolution. What I was really trying to do was return to an authentic Darwinism, one that was lost. The idea that, from my perspective, that birds are beautiful because they're beautiful to themselves, that they're not beautiful because they're trying to get better, they're trying to become more efficient or have fitter offspring, that indeed subjective experience, that what it is like to be a bird and to be out in the world and choosing fruits or floral resources or mates does actually affect the course of evolution. So, I wrote the book because my science papers, my correspondence, and my efforts to reach other scientists were not being sufficiently effective. I wanted to broaden the audience.

Richard Prum [00:03:38]:

These ideas reach out to a new community of readers and try to change how people thought about the field, if you will, from the bottom up, from the populace. And so that's the general goal.

Christopher [00:03:50]:

Now, Darwin met with resistance in expressing fully his theories and understandings. Have you met with any kind of pushback?

Richard Prum [00:04:01]:

Sure. Darwin's ideas were, of course, culturally radical in many, many ways. His first idea, of course, adaptation by natural selection of organic evolution, was truly radical and had a lot of pushback. But then his second idea of sexual selection, of differential evolution of traits that are either beautiful, attractive, or weapons that are useful, control over social, control over mating, was, in his proposal, kind of a threat to his first idea. Darwin was a foxy thinker; he had many different ways of thinking about things. However, what he created from his first audience was the idea that natural selection explained all of nature.

Richard Prum [00:04:47]:

And so, in his first review of the Descent of Man, which was his book about sexual selection, he was described as a traitor to his own cause. And indeed, that response is still an element of many of the ways that people responded to the evolution of beauty. The idea of evolution is aesthetically driven in ways that are as arbitrary as the fashions coming out this fall or next spring. That idea has really been a threat to the notion of adaptation as a strong force that explains everything in nature. So, yes, some of the elements of Darwin's critique are still around.

Heather [00:05:34]:

I so enjoyed what you had just spoken on there because of the way that your work reintroduces this aspect of what Darwin was originally trying to say. And then it seems kind of backtracked a bit in order to focus on, know, the main pillar of what he was putting forward in evolution that, you know, I think even today, it permeates into people's minds that a lot of the animal kingdom, it's still about finding the strongest, most capable mate for your offspring to have the best chance of survival. And that is such a driving force for evolution. But then, when you look at certain examples of the beauty in birds or other places in the animal kingdom where the beauty adaptation over time has actually prevented that type of animal from being able to fly more easily or things that would ultimately make their lives a lot more challenging, just how pivotal beauty for beauty's sake has been, rather than the even beauty for the promise of something, you know, further for strong offspring or what have you, that just wanting to, like this mate aesthetically is such a driving force.

Richard Prum [00:06:54]:

Yeah, yeah, and interesting because if you go back to Victorian critiques of Darwin, you can already see this real discomfort with talking about desire, talking about subjectivity as a scientific topic. And, of course, Darwin was delicately tiptoeing around it, too. But that's what it was about. And the adaptationist response, the idea of like, oh, this isn't really different. It's really the same as natural selection. It's only the way in which it's the same, which is that the preferences are for things that are universally better. They're about getting improvement.

Richard Prum [00:07:32]:

This was a way of taking passion, subjectivity, and desire and bringing it back under the control of rational forces. And, of course, those rational forces were improvements, were betterment, and were in some ways the same forces that were involved in capitalism, which, of course, was the era. These people were at the pinnacle of the biggest and most glorious empire that had ever dominated the planet. The British Empire and Anglo-European power. So, that notion of trying to control the irrationality of desire goes back into the adaptation. Ultimately, it's a scientific blind spot. That's what my work is about. It's how that scientific model is insufficient to describe and come up with an appropriate description of why birds are so beautiful.

Christopher [00:08:31]:

That day, and maybe even still today, with sexual-choice being the preference of the female choosing the male, how much did that play in some of this resistance to his suggestions?

Richard Prum [00:08:49]:

Yeah, well, certainly. What's interesting, for background, is that choice in the diversity of animals operates in all different kinds of ways, so they can be mutual choices. Think of the march of the penguins, right? The penguins come back, and the male and female are indistinguishable. They have identical plumages, big orange faces, and the same calls, right? So this is mutual matriarchs, where males and females are both choosing. Choosing ornamental behaviors that are the same. Of course, you can also have species of birds where the female is larger, controls territory, and lays the eggs, and the males build the nest and take care of the babies all on their own, things like jacanas that have long toes, that walk on lily pads or certain kinds of cuckoos. In these species, the female sings the songs. She has brighter plumages. In some cases, it's 30, 40% bigger. That's just like a difference between a male and a female gorilla, right? They're really huge.

Richard Prum [00:09:59]:

Anyway, there are different ways in which this can happen. So, back to Darwin. Of course, Darwin focused on female choice because it explained the most extreme ornaments. And it's true that in the most elaborate forms of beauty, it seems to be more likely that you have female choice than male choice or mutual male choice. So Darwin's book often focused on display and song as a source of charm and delight to female birds. And, you know, a lot of the responses to Darwin were explicitly misogynistic. Basically, people would be like, you know, female preferences are so fickle. How could that ever arrive at the peacock tale? They want one thing one minute and another thing the next, right? Of course, they had no theory of genetics, and on the other side, armaments like male antlers, as forms of social control that determine sexuality in some species, were considered so rational and obvious.

Richard Prum [00:11:03]:

So, part of sexual selection was supported, the part that incorporated ideas about male social and sexual dominance that were focused on choice. In particular, female choices were often rejected explicitly for with misogynistic language that wasn't even veiled or cryptic. It was right up front.

Heather [00:11:25]:

So, from what you've witnessed in your research, it's interesting to see how female choice over this selection plays out both in the beauty lens and also when it comes to survival of the fittest. So how did it, over time, start to be dismantled, this misogynistic take on things to kind of give it a new look?

Richard Prum [00:11:51]:

Well, it's refreshing to report that science has changed. I mean, we still have lots and lots of remnants and lots of work to do, but the direction is improving. A majority of graduate students and PhDs in ecology and evolutionary biology are women now. So the idea of, you know, the language used to describe sperm and egg going back 50 years ago was explicitly captured, you know, cultural concepts and has been, you know, kind of drummed out or just moved out of the field. We're not anywhere near done yet. But we're moving forward. And indeed, I wish it would be nice if evolutionary science were actually in a position to be leading. They could have been.

Richard Prum [00:12:42]:

They certainly had the data to support the importance of female subjectivity as a selective force in nature before the culture and explain to the culture how nature was, but it didn't actually work that way. But certainly, people have become more interested in female choice in the last 50 years with second-wave feminism and then moving on. So, the culture of science is changing. I think it's much more open, and those kinds of critiques are not happening now, certainly maybe not cryptically, maybe underground, but not so in the open.

Christopher [00:13:18]:

Richard, you have a very unique metaphor for describing the essence of beauty in the money versus fiat currency that you explained. Can you walk us through that? I find that very fascinating and very, very revealing.

Richard Prum [00:13:34]:

This is a metaphor for some of the molecular and genetic mechanisms for how you could have beauty evolving for its own sake. One way to describe this is to contrast beauty, the value of beauty, or what we call the normative value, the broadly accepted idea that certain things are our value. That we can sort of understand some of the aspects of this biology by comparing the value of beauty to the value of money. Historically, we can ask, where does the value of money come from? Or a dollar, for example. Historically, the value of a dollar came because we were on the national; the nation itself was on what they called the gold standard, which meant that the dollar, each dollar, was redeemable for a tiny piece of gold. That was in Fort Knox, where we piled up a lot of gold to support the currency's value and your dollar. If you wanted to, if you were stubborn enough, you go show up and say, I want to trade this in for gold.

Richard Prum [00:14:42]:

And it will be interchangeable on an exchange. In that case, the value of the dollar is not in the dollar; it's extrinsic. It's outside of the dollar. It's the gold in Fort Knox. Don't ask why gold has value. That's a whole other problem. But, you know, gradually, over the 20th century, we left the gold standard. In fact, there are no currencies accepted around the world that are on the gold standard. The value of money comes in some other way.

Richard Prum [00:15:10]:

As one famous economist, Samuelson, described, it's a social contrivance. The value of money, the value of the dollar, now comes from the fact that we all agree that dollars have a certain value we can exchange. Of course, there's a market, and it can change. It's affected by the influences of the world. In that case, the value of the dollar is intrinsic. It's just a dollar. It's just a piece of paper that you and I and others, or even a bunch of ones and zeros on the web.

Richard Prum [00:15:43]:

So in this case, the value is intrinsic. There's nothing else but the social contrivance of value. So, if we compare the extrinsic value of a dollar versus the intrinsic, the idea of the gold standard versus being off the gold standard. It's very much like the difference between the Darwinian world and, as I would call it, the Wallaceian world. My colleagues, who believe that value or beauty is about betterment, are really on the gold standard. They think that value, or beauty, is something else. There's got to be something extrinsic that's really valuable that it's just standing in lieu of. The peacock's tale is not just about the subjective pleasure that it gives to the hen choosing it. It's about, you know, better genes or indication that the individual doesn't have sexually transmitted diseases or in other species, a territory that includes lots of worms and great nesting sites for your baby.

Richard Prum [00:16:38]:

All the kind of extrinsic betterment, right? But in the Darwinian world, the value of beauty is like the value of the dollar. It's just its own sake. It's just the fact that we agree, and as a result, it can be contrived more rapidly and that they, you know, the genetics I skipped over are kind of the versions of the social contrivance of beauty, how beauty arises in the world through choices in populations, and so moving forward. As a scientist, one of the things I say is, how do we study this? How do we tell whether the value of beauty is practical, extrinsic, intrinsic, or kind of arbitrary? Well, we have to get data, do studies, watch a lot of birds, and see whose babies are whose, you know, the kind of ornithology stuff bird people do. But indeed, one of the ways to organize that science is to try to ask yourself, who has the burden of proof? What's our expectation of nature? And I compare this, I say to my colleagues, the peacock's tale and the song of the wood thrush or the blue of an indigo bunning, all these, all the ornaments you can imagine in nature, it's like a rainbow leading to a pot of gold. That pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is the extrinsic value. That's the real. The tail itself is just an artifice.

Richard Prum [00:18:03]:

But really, what's at stake is good genes, no sexually transmitted diseases, or lots of worms to feed your babies. The question is, is there a particle in the rainbow? And if a leprechaun shows up and tells you what the scientists would say, well, show me the money; the burden of proof is on you. But people are so wedded to the idea of adaptation as a strong force in nature. They're so threatened by the idea of beauty as a motivation in evolution for its own sake. They believe in the pot of gold. They really do. So, the goal of the evolution of beauty was to try to rejoin how people think. And maybe people stop thinking, well, maybe I shouldn't believe the leprechaun.

Richard Prum [00:18:52]:

Maybe I should tell you there's a pot of gold. Maybe I should be a little more critical and really realize that the world is filled with beauty because animals are making choices.

Christopher [00:19:02]:

A couple of quotes for you. Beauty evolves for its own sake because it is beautiful - Darwin. And the second quote, you mentioned this off the top. Birds are beautiful because they are beautiful to themselves. They are agents in their own evolution. And I reflected this quote back to you for the sake of womanhood and the burden, that burden of beauty that's placed on them to present themselves to a world beautiful, and their value is measured by that. Whereas turning it inside out, turning that mirror around beauty for you, what kind of a difference would that make in the world?

Richard Prum [00:19:47]:

Well, you know, in The Evolution of Beauty, the last third of the book is about human evolution, the evolution of human beauty, human desire, and human sexuality. One thing I realized is that I thought that was going to be a chapter or even a little pinch chapter, but it got very productive, and I had lots of new ideas and lots of ways to talk. One of the things I realized is that one of the most difficult things to do is to talk about topics like sexuality and beauty rapidly, quickly, or efficiently because you leave so much unsaid along the way. So, going all the way from the beauty of birds to modernization, the contemporary situation that men and women encounter in the world is just many leaps of complexity. So how to actually dive into that one is to say that talk about human beauty is hard because, you know, human history, human evolution includes male choice, female choice, male coercion, you know, the use of social force and threat, violence, even female coercion.

On top of that, we have cultural, nongenetic, heritable, and cultural influences, right? So, to use the term the full monty, everything is going on referring to people. It's very complicated. So it's not an accident that we miss in conversation.

Richard Prum [00:21:25]:

Somebody's talking about one level, in other words, talking at another level, right? So I hesitate to dive in. But my immediate response to that, what is the burden of 21st century conceptions of beauty in the world and particular burden on women that our cultures create? What is that about? You know, for me, that's just a pervasive cultural uptake and use of many of our evolutionary histories and elements. Of course, we have preferences and desires. We live in societies, wherever they have come, under all sorts of uses and purposes. So, the number of phenomena going on between that level and this level is huge. But this is pervasively about human culture, right? And that's interesting to me because birds have culture, too. We study it in non-human species. Half the birds of the world learn their songs from other members of their species, not their parents. And they have been doing culture for tens of millions of years, much, much longer than human beings.

Richard Prum [00:22:50]:

Bird songs, for example, are often useful in mate choice or mating communication. So, like gender in humans, they are culturally affected aspects of the sexual behavior of nonhuman animals. So, we study the culture and sexual culture of birds in ornithology. We don't always frame it that way, but we do. But when I talked about the emergent agency of female choice and its impact on evolution, culture is another kind of emergence. So we have new phenomena going on that aren't the same as our ancient history, the processes that brought us or that evolved along with us or influenced our evolution since our common ancestry. And so whether that complicated way of saying, here we have some commonality with science, but really, this is the realm of cultural critique. Feminists and all sorts of social theorists have been working on this for a long time, and I think often in productive ways. One thing to say, also to say, is that anthropology shows us, and actually even human history, where we're arriving now, shows us that the dichotomy between we have one ornamented sex that's female and males are, you know, that's irrelevant to males.

Richard Prum [00:24:07]:

And this is the way it works. It is really a very narrow perspective on the way humans actually behave. Now, we have teenage boys with perfume blogs and perfume tiktoks that are making their millions possible. As teenagers, because there's so much interest in, among males, straight males as teenagers, collecting perfumes and ornamenting themselves olfactorily. This is culture, too, and it's happening all around us. And so we have a small sliver of history, and I don't think that really reflects anything or much about biology.

Heather [00:24:45]:

Yeah, I love how you've said that. There are so many intersecting phenomena that come alongside Christopher's question. And, you know, throughout human history, to see the ornamentation of men as well, that, you know, at certain points in history were much more flamboyant in how they dressed and that that was an important piece of their status and, you know, what level of society they were coming from. And I do find it interesting that it's kind of in certain ways; I wouldn't say it's come back full circle. But it's come back in a way that for so long, in so many different cultures, how women presented themselves, whether it's binding of the feet or many neck bracelets, in order to make your neck very long pieces of that culture that were prized, so much so that it was exaggerated in order to make a prominent statement to attract a mate with obviously a huge piece of that being securing an economic future for yourself and your offspring. What I find so interesting about today, I mean, clearly with women having much more agency and autonomy to have their own economic projections and direction that men have, I feel that especially in the last ten years, there's much more from when talking to my guy friends my age and younger, there's a lot more pressure to be beautiful as a guy. Maybe it's being handsome as a man, but as you're saying, with perfumes or colognes, more and more men wearing makeup, straight, heterosexual or homosexual, all the different types of sexualities. But I think Christopher poses an interesting question because I think that in today's world, where women feel like we have a lot more choice over our own agency, we're still so constricted that if we don't meet this kind of current standard of beauty, that, you know, you feel lesser than or you don't have the same level of confidence, you don't think that you can secure that kind of a mate.

Richard Prum [00:26:59]:

One thing that my biological critique does or functions in this context is really interesting. You know, if the value of BD is extrinsic, right, that then your flaws, you know, asymmetries or whatever, are indications of kind of constitutional or essential, you know, detriments or whatever. And so I think that this idea of beauty as a kind of essential, honest signal about your essential qualities or one's essential qualities has really trickled down to teenagers, to adolescents who rightly look in the mirror, imagining their own sexual futures, are really taken in this idea that beauty is about quality and this biologically or evolutionarily. One thing I say is how rare or how much of a knife edge that is. How odd that situation is, how broad that beauty is essentially arbitrary. Now, that doesn't free you from the forces of normativity, but it does say that we are each individual, and the ways in which we vary are not about quality. They're just, you know, superficial. And that, in fact, if you really look at human history, you see that the overwhelming set of things are about the social, the social personality, the way in which people relate to each other, that conversation, or humor, or interest, or just attention.

Richard Prum [00:28:42]:

You know, all the things that people, you know, drive, fascination, and engagement, and ultimately affection and love. Those features are other, and they're social and they matter to men and to women. And so the picture, if we allow the data to be focused on a much different part of human experience.

Heather [00:29:13]:

I enjoy how what you just said ties back to some of your other work in that, you know, especially in today's world, a woman isn't necessarily picking a male partner or a partner just because they're what beauty can bring from a social standpoint, but that the beauty sometimes is just aesthetically pleasing in and of itself. And that's enough for that person to want to engage with you with this potential mate.

Richard Prum [00:29:42]:

Yeah. I wish I'd studied up, but in evolutionary, I cite some fascinating work from a researcher at the University of Texas who studied kids in a class. It was a psychology class. I don't know. You have to get permission, but they're part of the study. And when they got into the seminar, a really small class, 20. It was about attraction, and they were all asked to rate members of the class in the first class. They don't know these people. They never met them. So it's who's hot and who's not, right? And the ratings were all very, very congruent. Everybody had very similar things. But over the semester, they interact, they go to class, and they do it again, and eventually, that breaks up. People got to know each other, and when they got to know each other, they ended up differing in their opinions. But in a special way, the opinions were correlated.

Richard Prum [00:30:42]:

That is, people found each other specifically more attractive, mutually. That social interaction mattered. Such that at the point, you know, that what everybody thought was hot when they didn't know anything turned out they weren't that attractive once you got to know them. And of course, it's extrapolating, like this one study, but I think it really says something, which is that one? And I don't know if this means expanding our conception of beauty.

Richard Prum [00:31:16]:

That's what I would do beyond the surface, including all kinds of subjective engagements and judgments. Wow, I really like that. That was a really funny joke. All those aspects of our personalities that we differ, that we vary, and then secondly, that this implies that everybody is built for happiness, that people become attracted to each other, and that they become mutually attractive. This is also related to the fact that although we don't talk a lot about it, We're so interested in sex differences that we don't talk about the overwhelming fact that the experience of love is extraordinarily similar among all people. Right. Not being in and out of love, of course, varies, right? But that head-over-heels attraction, what it means to be engaged, what it means to regard, and what it means to invest- we're all built for it, and it's kind of the same.

Richard Prum [00:32:15]:

And that feeling, you know, anyway, so what this means is that there's no evolutionary support for the idea that the hottest have more pleasure. And all you gotta do is look at the Hollywood, you know, news and realize, wow, these people are beautiful, and their lives are a mess. They are not in a better situation. I mean, they're not like, oh, wow, these are the highest quality people because they're the most beautiful. It's not working out that way most of the time. And there's a reason, because that idea is a pride.

Christopher [00:32:51]:

It's fascinating because Heather and I put this series together to get to where you are talking about right now. This is the first of four episodes. But inevitably, beauty, in the sense that you just painted a beautiful picture of the whole human being, is where we want to get to eventually.

Richard Prum [00:33:12]:

Yeah. What I would say is that wholeness is really supported by our evolutionary history as a primate. What makes us so different from other primates is the role of choice in our social, sexual lives, you know, association. Right. And then also the overwhelming engagement. We usually think. And again, we're so focused on sex differences, sex differences that we don't actually see. What makes us so different from other primates is mutual engagement. That's part of our behavior. And so we're trying to explain why we are human. Overwhelmingly, it's about that whole body, not just the physical body. Of course. There's a lot to explain there, too, but our social and personalities.

Heather [00:34:10]:

I really enjoyed how you coined it when you said the art that is your personality. I think that that really speaks to me.

Richard Prum [00:34:17]:

Yeah, well, you know, the aesthetic elements of our personalities. Right? Because there are things that we do that are surprisingly aesthetic. I mean, sometimes it's humor, and sometimes it's physical presentation and our physical bodies. Sometimes, it's science, and scientists have aesthetic experiences all the time. Wow, what a beautiful idea. What a beautiful data set. Right? And it's. And it's true that they express it that way.

Richard Prum [00:34:45]:

Because that's how they're expressing, these are aesthetic aspects of unexpected aspects. And, of course, some of my work has gone into this sort of area of aesthetic philosophy.

Heather [00:34:56]:

I'd love to ask you this question, and I know that this has been the crux of our conversation as a whole, but I guess I just want to hear a gut reaction from you and we ask some sort of question similar to this to all of our guests, but I'd like to know, what does beauty mean to you?

Richard Prum [00:35:14]:

Beauty is a co-evolved attraction. And that's a little like a poem. Gotta unpack it and analyze it. A little bit of. Some of that is scientifically so. What do I mean by that? I mean, beauty is attraction. It's an engagement. It's an invitation to further engagement.

Richard Prum [00:35:39]:

It's attraction wanting to be closer to it. It's clearly sensory, right? It's perceivable. And it's also co-evolved. And what I mean by that is that the flip side to beauty is that we could reframe and have the whole conversation about taste. What is co-evolving with beauty? What's co-evolving with beauty is the preference for it or the taste, the aesthetic liking of it. In science, we talk about the coevolution of display and preferences, the peacock's tail, and the peahen's judgments of his tail. And they are shaping one another. Another way to look at it is to say that beauty is not universal. There are no laws; there are no lessons to be learned in that regard.

Richard Prum [00:36:37]:

The quality of being beautiful is not just in the material object; that's being or in the experience. It's not just in the eye and the beholder but in the way in which they've been entrained with each other. The history of the way ornament and preference, trait, and desire have influenced each other over time. So, as an evolutionary biologist, of course, I get most comfortable when the answers are set in a historical way. So, what is beauty? Beauty is this co-evolved attraction, which applies a history of choices and expression, preferences and traits, and how they've influenced one another. I apply that myself in peacocks or birds, where it's mostly genetic, but I think it's equally applicable and equally functional in a cultural context where it's about taste and expression.

Christopher [00:37:37]:

I just had an image come to mind: you sitting down in a room with Darwin and having a conversation, being a fly on the wall for that. Your book. Tell us about your book. Where can people get your book and learn more about your perspective?

Richard Prum [00:37:56]:

Sure. The Evolution of Beauty is published with Doubleday and available wherever books are sold, including the web, Amazon, ebooks, etcetera. And dive because it's written for a public audience. Everything you need to understand is in the book. So you don't have to feel like an evolutionary biology expert or even a bird fan. And we haven't gotten another aspect, which is pleasure. There's a whole chapter on the evolution of orgasm, which everybody ought to read and especially every woman ought to read and every young woman ought to read. And so there's a lot in there that humans need to know.

Christopher [00:38:46]:

Fantastic.

Heather [00:38:47]:

Well, you're leaving us wanting more, so we're going to have to have you back just to talk about that.

Richard Prum [00:38:54]:

It is a pleasure to talk to you, and I look forward to the rest of the series.

Christopher [00:38:59]:

Fantastic. This is the first of a four-part series. And come on back. You've been listening to the virgin, the.

Heather [00:39:06]:

Beauty and the bitch.

Christopher [00:39:07]:

Find us. Like us. Share us. And like I said, there's more to come. So, come on back and become a partner in the VBB community. We invite you to find us at Virgin Beauty, bitch.com, like us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. And share us with people who are Definitely Different, like you. Until next time, thanks for listening.