The relationship of female physical attractiveness to body fatness

Guanlin Wang, Kurosh Djafarian, Chima A Egedigwe, Asmaa El Hamdouchi, Robert Ojiambo, Harris Ramuth, Sandra Johanna Wallner-Liebmann, Sonja Lackner, Adama Diouf, Justina Sauciuvenaite, Catherine Hambly, Lobke M Vaanholt, Mark D Faries, John R Speakman

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

Aspects of the female body may be attractive because they signal evolutionary fitness. Greater body fatness might reflect greater potential to survive famines, but individuals carrying larger fat stores may have poor health and lower fertility in non-famine conditions. A mathematical statistical model using epidemiological data linking fatness to fitness traits, predicted a peaked relationship between fatness and attractiveness (maximum at body mass index (BMI) = 22.8 to 24.8 depending on ethnicity and assumptions). Participants from three Caucasian populations (Austria, Lithuania and the UK), three Asian populations (China, Iran and Mauritius) and four African populations (Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and Senegal) rated attractiveness of a series of female images varying in fatness (BMI) and waist to hip ratio (WHR). There was an inverse linear relationship between physical attractiveness and body fatness or BMI in all populations. Lower body fat was more attractive, down to at least BMI = 19. There was no peak in the relationship over the range we studied in any population. WHR was a significant independent but less important factor, which was more important (greater r (2)) in African populations. Predictions based on the fitness model were not supported. Raters appeared to use body fat percentage (BF%) and BMI as markers of age. The covariance of BF% and BMI with age indicates that the role of body fatness alone, as a marker of attractiveness, has been overestimated.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere1155
JournalPeerJ
Volume3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 25 Aug 2015

Bibliographical note

Funding
This work was supported by NSFC grant 91431102 from the National Science Foundation of China. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Acknowledgements
We are grateful to all the participants from all the countries and all the members of Molecular Energetics Group for their help on the investigation and discussion of the results.

Keywords

  • evolutionary studies
  • mathematical biology
  • epidemiology
  • public health
  • statistics
  • evolution
  • mate selection
  • female physical attractiveness
  • body fat
  • waist to hip ratio
  • fertility
  • age
  • thrifty gene hypothesis
  • health

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