A number of men (not all by any means ) are wired to find the full(er) breasts, small(er) waist physical combo on women attractive. Why?
Sorry, this won’t be a terribly informative post, but I do recall some recent skepticism in regards to some of the untestable after the fact conclusion of evolutionary psychologists that hypothesized and explained about all of our social attractions. For instance, they predicted that the “sexiest” ratio of 2:3 hips:waist ratio was also the type of hips least likely to lead to complications in child-birth, but study of actual levels of complications in vaginal birth doesn’t seem to necessarily bear this out. So, I’m not sure that there’s enough good research out there to fully answer this question. Hopefully a better Doper will have a better answer.
I’d want a cite that men are ‘wired’ for any such thing before I speculate on a cause…
Which is, incidently, all that can be done with this question.
Well, if you go by this television program I watched awhile back, not sure what the name was, it has to do with survival of the fittest. Biologically, a man cannot help but be more attracted to a woman with the hourglass figure. It signifies health, therefore the object of desire would produce healthy offspring. There may be some basis in fact to this.
Another interesting part of the program I watched was that people are attracted to symmetry in face and form. Not only because of appearance, but they did a study, and the more symmetrical a person is, the better they smell. I don’t know how scientifically valid this program was, though, so if anyone else can give more reliable information on the subject, please do.
Citation please. Ever look at renaissance nude paintings of women? The standard of beauty for women then is females that would be called “fatsos” today. Small waists hardly were considered attractive.
BTW, isn’t “genetic fitness” an all kinds of modern concept? Human evolution moves at a snail’s pace. What man 300 years ago would have looked at a woman and said “gee, that chick sure looks genetically fit”?
If it was a conscious process, but there’s no reason why it must be.
I’d love to say ‘a recent study showed…’, but then I’d have to find the cite, which I can’t be bothered to do; suffice it to say that I remember being told, and believing, that research had shown that it wasn’t so much thin waists, but rather the ratio between hips and waist that triggered responses in men, the reasoning being that it isn’t the waist, but the ‘hildbearing hips’ that are the attractive factor.
How could this possibly be?
Hypothetically; take 100 men; introduce them to 100 women, if there’s some heritable factor in some of the men that induces them to choose a partner that is most likely to bear them children (and if that choice is based on some discernible bodily aspect in the females) then that factor should be more common in the next generation of men. (vast oversimplification)
Waist to hip ratio is one of the standards of beauty that seems to have stayed incredibly stable from ancient female fertility figures to renessaince paintings to modern day psychological studies.
Barbie would not have had an easy time bearing children.
Besides, I’ve read that her proportions were off so much that she would have had difficulty actually standing up in real life. Not buying it.
From my Biology of Sex Class IVC Spring 2005 and this awesome video:
In heterosexual attraction, people prefer individuals of the opposite sex who have gender specific traits. For example, men prefer females that look as though they have a healthy abundance of estrogen - softer face, nice hip-waist (not breast-waist) ratio. For women, it depends on if they are looking for a long term or short term mate and their time of month. When women are most fertile and for short term mates, they prefer men that look as though they have lots of testosterone. For long term, they prefer more ‘feminine’ males.
What’s interesting to note is that women can apparently smell good genes. They had women smell tshirts that were worn by various males and the ones they rated the highest were the ones that had the best mix of genetic material for them.
Note that if full breasts and small waists effectively attract mates, then this alone constitutes “greater genetic fitness”, even without any more concrete benefits like superior childbearing ability. Take, for example, the boy peacock with his showy tailfeathers. Do showy tailfeathers make boy peacocks genetically more fit? Well, no, not in the conventional sense. Actually, growing them soaks up all kinds of resources that could be put to more practical uses. Except that girl peacocks just adore showy tailfeathers, and only mate with boy peacocks if they’ve got that beautiful plumage. Hence, having showy tailfeathers makes boy peacocks more likely to pass on their genes, and that’s by definition greater genetic fitness from the viewpoint of evolution, which doesn’t much care how efficient your engineering is, but only about how many grandchildren you have.
By the same measure, if full breasts and small waists tend to attract better male sexual partners (that is, better in the sense that you’ll end up with more grandchildren if they father your babies), then full breasts and small waists contribute to inclusive fitness (unless of course they carry penalties which outweigh that benefit).
What would “the best mix” be? Did the video claim that some men are simply genetically better for some women than others?
This book has an interesting discussion of this matter.
I always thought it wasn’t so much that the waste was smaller than an average waist, but that its proportion to the breasts and hips was smaller, meaning the breasts and hips were larger.
It’s not a totally crackpot idea. Broader hips may correlate with more successful birthing, and larger breasts may correlate with more ample breast milk. This would make a woman better at producing offspring. That males who find these features more attractive might come to predominate in the gene pool isn’t much of a leap from there, as the object of desire is a more succesful breeding partner.
Going from this hypothesis to good scientific research and demonstration, though, has obviously been problematic and controversial.
Not only can this kind of ani-logic work its way into genetic selection criteria for reproduction, it can also be a demonstration of superior fitness. The unwieldiness and extra resources required of the peacocks tail also force it to be exceptionally agile, alert, speedy, et cetera, in order to avoid being killed in its pre-reproductive period, thereby demonstrating greater fitness than a bird with more utiltarian plumage. So, like bodybuilders, media moguls, and Ferrari enthusiasts, it demonstrates its superiority by showing how much time and resources it can afford to waste on superficial characteristics.
For instance, a peacock with an eighteen inch tail need only be fast enough to stay one inch in front of a pursuing predator (say, a coyote). By being just as fast as a peacock with a fifteen inch tail despite the encumbrance, it is superior. There is a limiting condition, an equilibrium between flash and fast, which evolutionary zoologists call the utilitarian optimum. By being just faster than the peacock who has a twenty inch tail, it keeps from being dinner. This also leads to new and amusingly diabolical rationales for herd behavior. Keep this in mind the next time you are selecting companions for a hike in mountain lion country.
There is no strictly reproductive explaination for oversized female breasts, or the (for apes) enormous male genitalia of human males, among other features, but the “fittest of the handicapped” explaination for peacock tails, exaggerated hourglass figures, cigarette boats, and the film “Titanic” goes a long way toward making sense of these things.
This isn’t a new idea–this is addressed in the technical literature going back to R. A. Fisher–but Dawkins has a rather clear explaination of it in The Blind Watchmaker, chapter 8.
And it certainly gives an entirely new perspective on the fashion industry. 
Stranger
Strictly speaking, larger breasts don’t correlate with greater milk production. Rounder, fuller breasts demonstrate good health, but most of the breast is fatty tissue that doesn’t contribute to milk production.
Broader hips, though, are a definite correlate to survival of childbirth for both the mother and offspring, particularly given the grossly oversized head of the human fetus. Having narrow hips in pre-Cesarian delivery days meant a high chance of complications and death, or very low birthweight.
The tradeoff is the awkward, hip-rolling gate of women we males love to observe.
Stranger
Yep, if you’ve ever heard the term “goddess body” it refers to this.
No kidding. Or if you’ve ever looked at one of the fertility goddess statues from about 3,000 years ago, you’d see that these revered goddesses were anything but slim. Pendulous breasts, enormous butts, often very thick waists. Here’s a link: Venus Figurines. This particular photo is one of the famed “Venus of Willendorf.” Some of the Venus figurines are “thin,” but not really in the sense we would consider thin. In other words, they’re not nearly as round as the Venus of Willendorf, but they still have fairly large bottoms and breasts, and aren’t exactly sporting six-pack abs. From what I can tell, the concept of scrawniness or even an hourglass figure equalling fertility appears to be very, very new.
I was also taught in anthropology that, in many cultures, a woman who is very, urm, round, is considered a tribute to her husband’s wealth. In other words, he has so many extra resources that his wife can be fat and he can afford to have other people do her work for her. A round wife sort of underscores her husband’s riches because her size indicates that her husband is well-off enough that not only can she overeat, but she also doesn’t have to expend her energy doing common household chores, chores that often involve a lot of walking, carrying, and lifting, and all burn off quite a few calories.
Nuts, I just realized I forgot to put in a digit or two. These figures were actually created mostly between 32,000 - 25,000 years ago. If I recall correctly, they were Paleolithic Age statues.