Nope. Sex-linked traits, in the normal understanding of that term, are traits derived from genes on the X and Y chromosomes. Men and women have the same hipbuilding genes, according to the standard view, but there's some gene(s) on the boy-making chromosome -- is it the X or the Y, I can never remember -- that codes for producing more of some hormone that causes denser bone growth, or a generally bigger somatic scale. Nobody has ever really traced these connections out, but that's the generally accepted hypothesis.
On the generally accepted hypothesis, a higher Beauty Index among the ladies would have to be due to genes on the X or Y or whichever chromosome -- "sex-linked" like color-blindness or facial hair or the ability to pass a shoe store without looking in the window.
But that wasn't the claim of the researcher. He or she thought that beauty-making genes could select for sex, if I read the item correctly. That's turning the standard view on its head -- not that beauty genes are sex-linked, but that sex genes -- or at least their expression -- are beauty-linked. Very big news, if true.
It all seemed to take off from his statistic that gorgeous parents were significantly more likely to have girl children. If true, that is indeed something that requires explanation, because the classic Mendelian picture doesn't give us any way to account for that.
Of course one of the very slippery things here is, how do you assess beauty? If you have, for example, a higher standard for male than for female beauty, then naturally beauty would seem to be more common among females.
I read a novel recently, one of those up-to-date stories where the gay protagonist has a straight friend. There's an exchange between them where the gay guy says, in effect, hey, I might consider having sex with a girl, but you would never consider having sex with a guy. The straight guy responds, Well, maybe if it was Johnny Depp....
-- --Michael J. Smith --mjs at smithbowen.net
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org