Attractiveness and Fecundity – Is This Sentence Dirty?
Yesterday’s article, “What 92 Naked Women Can Tell You,” profiled any man’s dream science experiment. Scientists invited hoards of women into the lab (92 to be exact), one at a time, had them undress, then proceeded to photograph them from different angles.
The pictures were cropped, removing the head of the female. Then a second set of participants, males (less naked) this time, were asked to come and review the photos. Their attractiveness ratings were scored and eye-tracking was monitored.
- Attractiveness Ratings were extremely useful in that they could help re-confirm what previous experiments had shown; namely, what proportions attract men the most.
- Eye-Tracking provided icing on the cake as it showed the flow of men’s eyeballs – in regards to which part of the nude bodies they viewed, as well as when and how often they viewed different sections.
Why Care About Ratings?
Ratings are particularly useful.
Why?
Because humans want to break things down fundamentally to simple elements (not always the easiest thing to do!). The curious mechanic will take apart a car; a heart surgeon must understand every component of the heart; and a chef lacking a single ingredient can alter the taste of an entire meal.
It starts with numbers.
Bodies can be measured. Over the last 20 years, one of the key ratios that has consistently found its way into human mating studies is:
WHR, Waist-to-Hip Ratio
The comparison of your waist-to-hips is remarkably useful in predicting your body’s attractiveness. Alternative to WHR – breasts, skin texture/color, faces and personality are also ingredients of attraction.
Scientists have even researched the pages of Playboy and have found one thing in common – a WHR average of:
.7 – the magic number
Why Eye-Tracking?
Common sense tells us exactly where men’s eyes will flow on a page with a nude female model, but common sense isn’t science.
If something is worth knowing, it’s worth understanding. Hidden mysteries often lay at the center of common sense answers.
The amount, as well as timing, of eye-tracking shows experimenters the locations that draw the first, as well as most, attention from men.
What Men Are Really Looking At
According to research:
Views from the front, on average, immediately go to the breasts first. Shocker, right?
- The interesting aspect was that size of breasts was irrelevant; whether big, wide, long, short, or small, men stare at breasts first (when subjected to a frontal view of a woman).
- Incidentally, if you’re wondering about the scientific perspective on men’s preference of breast-size, they prefer medium to large breasts over smaller ones (however, men, being relatively un-picky creatures, tend to take what they can get).
- The point of preference for the eye upon the breast? The aereola.
Experiments have even pinpointed the apparent color preference of areolas, preferring a dark contrast to the skin as compared to a lighter coloration.
Views from the back show that men’s eyes oscillate between the derriere and the midriff.
- When men’s eyes are looking from behind, the Waist-Hip-Ratio becomes the number one criteria.
The Most Important Question of Them All – Why?
Okay, so we know what men prefer, but the real question in science is…why?
- Attraction is not an arbitrary force; rather, it is something selected “in favor of” over thousands of years, causing constant alteration in human bodies (as well as attraction).
Attraction evolves each day, little by little. Over the past few thousand years, it has changed a relatively small amount; however, if you took a time-machine back a million years to walk with human’s most recent common ancestors, such as Australopithecus or Homo-Erectus, it has most certainly evolved a tremendous amount.
Darwin Didn’t Touch It
Darwin – although genius – has unfortunately remained in hot water for well over a century. He’s set the train in motion along the tracks and today’s scientists all hop on-board, using evolution as a tool in nearly every arena of scientific study.
When forming the basis of Natural Selection (having had no knowledge of DNA), Darwin noted preferences in attraction. He saw that not only do certain animals have a higher survival rate via alterations produced in offspring, but that female and male preference evolved to favor those with the greatest chance of survival.
To expect Darwin to make evaluations regarding the “why” driving attraction would be asking a little much.
The first real thought that attractive people might be attractive for a reason was in 1921 – when a hypothesis surfaced:
People’s Level Of Attraction Might Be An Adaptive Trait. This “Adaptive Trait” Might Be Adaptive Because It Relates To The Fecundity Of The Opposite Sex.
(Side note: Fecundity refers to the reproductive capability of a man/woman.)
So, Are We Hot Because We’re Fertile?
Rather than a simple, simplistic unit, the body is an incredibly diverse and detailed machine, made up of several interconnecting parts and pieces.
Many of our small deviations (referring to our appearance) occur because of environmental influences, such as infection and disease (as well as genetic factors).
More importantly, during the majority of our species’ lifespan, when modern medicine was a thing of the past), people with genetic weaknesses, or poor immune systems, often didn’t make it. Think about the sickest you’ve ever been in your life…would you still be here reading this without the advent of medical breakthroughs?
The key, though, isn’t necessarily fertility alone – although this is a critical cornerstone of being a “healthy” individual – more-so, the focus is upon:
The Healthiness of the Genes Being Passed On
That’s not to dismiss that a major portion of being healthy is the ability to be fertile, but it is to view the subject from the proper angle and understand that many unhealthy individuals – who have a lesser chance of survival than others – might have an equal ability to reproduce (as compared to a healthier individual – especially in today’s modern society).
I’m Hot and Healthy
Experiments proving that someone appears healthy are extremely easy for scientists to conduct.
And not surprisingly, throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, scientists have been lining up, consistently proving in experiment after experiment that the closer an individual falls to the mathematical “perfect shape,” the more healthy they are viewed as being. Please note the bold/italicize/underline combo under “viewed as being.”
Are Hotter Individuals Really Healthier, or Are They Just Fooling Us?
That’s the more important question of the two.
It’s easy to establish that these “chosen-ones” appear to be healthier, regardless of the reasoning, but does this perception line-up in the reality of their actual health?
Slightly tougher to evaluate, experiments attempting to draw a direct correlation between actual health and attractiveness usually focus upon obtaining past medical records and then performing an analysis based upon the actual measurements regarding a person’s attractiveness.
And Guess What
These “attractive” people not only get to enjoy the luxury of actually being attractive, they also live healthier lives (from a natural standpoint).
- Attractive people are attractive because they’re healthier.
Continuing the science of attractiveness, we’ll discuss a third part to this series, featuring more in-depth analysis and research as to why attraction results in the features we know as attractive features.
