Lorenz believes that the reason why people like this feature is simple-human cubs need a lot of care to survive, and nine times out of ten the cubs you see the most are your own offspring. In order to continue the gene, of course, it is necessary to code the aesthetics into liking the baby and being willing to take care of the baby. This preference may be unstable in childhood, but it will develop more obviously in childbearing age.
In fact, in the Internet age, this preference is most strongly reflected in other animals, especially the pets chosen by human beings. Compared with their ancestor wolves, dogs obviously show a longer infancy: shallow hair, big head, round body, drooping ears, wagging tail and barking, all of which are the characteristics of little wolves. Not to mention those pet breeds that are extremely small. Even some creatures that have not been propagated accordingly, the seller will take "never grow up" as a cover.
However, like almost all social phenomena, the explanation from biology is only a foundation, not a complete answer. People always like cute little girls, but why did Shirley Temple become popular in the half century of 1930s, and there was no such miracle before and after that?
This is related to the background of the Great Depression.
Economic background: Why were cute little girls so popular during the Great Depression?
For those who escaped unscathed during the Great Depression, the most haunting ghost is neither Lenin nor Mussolini (although articles about communism and fascism are everywhere), but the figure of a child. He wore welfare clothes, didn't laugh, didn't respond, his legs were obviously bony, his stomach was slightly swollen, and his eyes crossed the glass of the restaurant or grocery store, motionless. Sometimes this ghost suddenly fainted in the choir, sometimes gathered in groups at the school gate to beg for food, and sometimes turned on the gas with his parents to commit suicide, but it always bothered everyone who still had the energy to consider social problems.
From 65438 to 0930, the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection concluded that 6 million children in the United States suffered from chronic hunger. In this regard, President Hoover actually pointed out that "don't lose heart, we still have 35 million' cheerful human electronics'". 1932, the headline in The New York Times is "No one is hungry", although it is estimated that there may be 20 million people in urgent need of relief on the eve of the election. But the Hoover administration remained indifferent.
Are they so heartless? Actually, it's not. This is the result of ideology. Hoover represents the standard American Rightists (conservatives), emphasizing personal struggle and self-sufficiency, and thinking that the tragic fate is mainly caused by personal failure to work hard. What about depression? Raise import tariffs and consolidate domestic capital resources in order to make a comeback. Recovery depends on money, not labor; Precious tax revenue should be used to stimulate the overall economic market, how can it be wasted on large-scale assistance? What's more, the general view at that time was that relief would make the poor lazy and cause irreversible damage to their moral status. Relief projects in Britain are often used as negative teaching materials.
Whether this attitude will eventually have a good or bad influence is not discussed here. But in any case, even when Roosevelt took office, the relief project was much cry and little rain. 1934 1 Roosevelt clearly stated in his speech in Congress that the goal is "more enterprises, greater profits, higher employment and less relief expenses". In this scene, both the upper class with uneasy conscience and the hard-working and worried lower class need an innocent and happy little girl to help them get rid of the ghost mentioned at the beginning-and this little girl happens to be Shirley Temple.
In the movie, her identity is multiple. She is often taken care of by unemployed proletarians, but she is almost never a worker's daughter (with two exceptions, her worker's parents died before or during the film). Scenes of workers working are rarely shown. In fact, proletarians mostly beg and steal. Comedy and satire, on the other hand, dilute these contents and give the upper class a sense of superiority while the lower class has no obvious feeling of being offended. For the Great Depression, Lan Xiu's solution was to love and care for those people and change the world with little girl's love (instead of real financial assistance)-of course, this is a daydream in reality, but isn't that what movies are for?
Cultural background: Why didn't the naive little girl bring today's sexual metaphor?
In today's popular culture, cute little girls still firmly occupy a place. However, compared with the innocent Shirley Temple, they are completely different. The topic of Lolita and pedophilia is becoming more and more common, and Lorenz's definition of "arousing parenting instinct rather than sexual instinct" is increasingly unsuitable for today's little girl image. It seems that it is difficult to portray Lan Xiu's innocent image.