What 92 Naked Women Can Tell You
Symmetry and Attraction
Not long ago, in an obscure lab at a University, one woman at a time entered a single room where scientists waited…with camera equipment…in a well lit room…with what must have been an uncanny mixture of an uncomfortable, yet excited expression -masked with what they could muster of professionalism.
Each time a woman entered, she was instructed to remove her clothes. Once clothes were successfully removed from the situation, photographs were taken of her from different angles. When the photographers finished with one woman, she was ushered out as quickly as she arrived. Total number of women – 92.
This short period of time featured an assembly line of women, photographing each in an identical manner, requiring very little effort on their part. If you could take off your clothes and were a woman, you were eligible (clearly a man was behind this). All that was needed: to stand relatively still, maintain a basic stance, as well as a neutral posture. At the end of each woman’s turn, she was paid.
Science Doesn’t Always Need Clothes
Although this might sound like the beginning of a plot to a movie that you wouldn’t want your parents to catch you watching, what was actually happening was a very legitimate scientific experiment (and you thought science was dull).
Dating Begins With Establishing Fundamentals
Although certainly entertaining to the photographers, the study was for more than just casual amusement. It was to figure out (or rather to re-confirm) an age-old secret that has only really become a realization over the last century.
Just like most secrets that have only been recently explored, the answers have been right in front of our eyes for millennia; however, have remained an enigma, as many aspects of human reproduction/attraction/mating have remained for ages. In science, facts are rarely clear facts, but more-so, constantly altering shape-shifters, who represent multiple results (depending on when, where and how you look).
If you followed all that mumbo-jumbo above, the basic point is that people feel in similar ways about certain things, but usually don’t know why.
Sometimes, behaviors are so innate that we don’t even realize we’re doing them. Case in point: ATTRACTION
In Science, the basic process of proving something goes like this:
- Someone has a hunch (hypothesis)
- Eventually this person (or someone later) decides to explore this
- They test the hypothesis
- It might or might not be true, but will almost always lead to further questions regardless of the results
- Once something has been proved enough times (and yes, it usually takes several experiments by multiple experimenters), then it gets written into the textbooks forever as fact (unless unproven later)
Back to the Experiment…
What does photographing a bunch of naked women prove? After all, we already know that every heterosexual man with a set of eye-balls will like this.
Well, the photography was only the first part of the experiment.
- The second part was having a second set of participants of men (non-naked) to review the photos. Once again, it pays to volunteer for science.
These men were asked specifically to evaluate women’s attractiveness based on their body (as the heads were cropped out to provide at least some degree of privacy).
- Pure and simple, men were asked to do something they’ve been doing without thinking since they were babies.
The Importance of the Study – Symmetry
Why care about symmetry? For humans – and most animals for that matter – symmetry is a built-in mechanism that works without conscious effort; meaning, like breathing, or your beating heart, you don’t have to think consciously to know you like something. Humans love symmetry in all walks of life, from your furniture and architecture, to your paintings (minus most modern-art).
Many studies have also continuously shown unequivocally that symmetry is a fundamental key to attraction.
Why Care about Attraction?
- Attractive people earn more.
- Attractive people garner more attention.
- Attractive people are viewed as being more honest.
- Attractive people are pinpointed as containing nearly any and every quality related to anything positive compared to their unattractive counterpart.
What this means is that attractive people are found less guilty by juries – regardless of evidence – than their “ugly” or “average” counterparts; attractive people are loaded with more money to spend on average; and everyone’s probably laughing at their jokes harder, even if yours were funnier (unless you are that attractive person, in which case, you might not be as funny as you think you are).
It Starts With Men
Ask any woman – there’ll be a part of her that thinks every man has a hint of superficial a**hole in him. To be fair, she’s probably dead-on. That’s not to say women are free and clear, as they tend to qualify for the superficial role biologically a bit more than they’d like to admit, but that’s for a different day.
Youth Is Beauty
Men’s focus on women’s looks stems from the importance of youthful characteristics, which indicate signs of fertility (both perceived and actual).
The details of this will be discussed in future posts, but to simplify things (if you’re male), think of an extremely older (think 80+), non-related woman you know. Got it? Now, on a 1-10 scale, how attracted are you to her? If you put more than 3 and you’re not a senior citizen, you’re sick. (Just kidding)
In all seriousness though, there’s a reason why as women age, their attraction goes down. Saying “they’re old” isn’t a self-evident answer; there’s a reason why below the surface, a reason that’s evident without even thinking.
An older look (including an older look in a young individual) is indicative of a less healthy individual. This automated response in your brain roughly equates to the same way that you’re not attracted to (even a fertile) female dog or cat.
It’s simply not an adaptive benefit. If a person did have an attraction to an individual that wasn’t fertile or a species that they couldn’t mate with, this person and everything they are (including their genes which makeup everything about them, including their innate desires), would soon vanish.
WHR, Waist-Hip Ratio
When you look at a beautiful body of the opposite sex, what do you see?
For men, you probably see a luscious bottom, narrow hips, and large, firm…okay, you get the picture. Important to the experiment at the heart of the article, that is what men find attractive.
Sure, there will be an oddball here or there that might have lived next to a power-plant who likes less-healthy women, but average the billions of men’s opinions in the world together and you will get a predictable answer.
- And not just subjectively similar – the answer can be measured exactly.
What is it – WHR, or Waist-to-Hip Ratio. WHR preference is something that’s been researched and re-confirmed over the past couple of decades.
For women, the optimal waist-to-hip ratio (referring to the most optimal ratio to attract men) is .7.
Want to Know Your WHR?
Put a tape-measure around your waist (your belly-button), then put a tape-measure around your hips (the widest part) and then write down the number. Divide the two (be careful not to do it backwards or you might start crying before you realize your mistake).
Now if I take that same luscious bottom that every man is attracted to and gradually increase the waist (keeping the bottom the exact same), the attraction will go down because of the ratio alteration.
Interestingly, zebras have also been studied and proved to be extremely fickle when it comes to members of the opposite sex. Change the symmetry in stripes even slightly and you can turn a beautiful zebra into an ugly spud and vice-versa.
Why Though!
The experiment involving 92 women was a re-confirmation, meaning they were attempting to re-prove something that’s already been well-established over the last couple of decades; however, they were putting a different spin on it by chopping the heads off (only in the photos) and then measuring ratings from different angles, including both the front and back (Incidentally, whether from the front or back, .7 proved optimal in all circumstances).
A far more interesting question is why men enjoy that .7 ratio (and fyi, women enjoy a .9 ratio on men); after all, attraction isn’t arbitrary.
At least we all have an excuse for gawking.
Check Out Tomorrow’s Post, Attractiveness and Fecundity – Is This Sentence Dirty?, For More On This!
