Tall, dark and handsome

"Tall, dark, and handsome" is a phrase that refers to an appealing man, often found in romantic fiction aimed at women.[1]

History

The term came to prominent use in the early 1900s and was commonly used in Hollywood during the 1920s to describe Rudolph Valentino.[2] As an idiom it is both lexically and sequentially fixed.[3]

Studies

David Puts is an associate professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University who has studied the evolutionary bases of human sexuality. In 2017 he was asked if "tall, dark and handsome" is universally attractive in the human experience and he stated that not enough cross-cultural work had been conducted to be very confident in the concept's scientific validity.[4]

See also

References

  1. Nigel Rees; Mark My Words: Great Quotations and the Stories Behind Them - page: 564
  2. L. F. Shitova ; 350 Idioms with Their Origin, or The Idiomatic Cake You Can Eat and Have It Too - page: 130
  3. Chitra Fernando; Idioms and Idiomaticity - page: 30
  4. Sarah Sloat (November 20, 2017). "The Science of 'Tall, Dark, and Handsome' Is Extremely Complicated". Inverse. Retrieved June 30, 2019.

Further reading

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