What does this mean really, particularly in context with what I have already argued? I’ve been providing information about how a specific trait is considered universally attractive. That means numbers, statistics, figures that represent the real world. That is what science does: it builds models of the physical world, in this case of a component of female attractiveness that seems globally prevalent. I’ve been saying from the beginning that WHR is not the only criterion, but I brought up WHR to discuss why women with abdominal adiposity might be considered less attractive on at least one level of perception.
And the pelvic bone shaving sounds like nonsense, so yes, it would surprise me in the extreme. (Rib removal on the other hand, no).
At the risk of sounding harsh, this is a discussion in Great Debates; it is not a support group for women with low self-esteem. And it has already been repeatedly demonstrated that a WHR of 0.7 is indeed considered more attractive than 0.9 or 1.0. And tall men are considered more attractive than short ones. This does very little for a man who is short or a woman with a WHR of 1.0, but that is the harsh reality. However, it is perfectly possible for short men or women with WHR of 1.0 to be found attractive, as already argued.
Interestingly, you bring up a study that I think I have already cited and discussed on the previous page of this thread (your link doesn’t seem to work btw, but I suspect it is the same material, certainly the same researcher). Tovee et al posit that BMI is more important that WHR in determining female attractiveness, and base their conclusions on one single study based on 40 university students. Aside from the fact that you are doing overweight women no favours by bringing up this study – a WHR of 0.7 is more flexible in terms of body fat than an ideal BMI of 19 or 20 – I already noted that this research lacks the weight of evidence to draw conclusions, and relies on a small sample size for results (as opposed to previous studies on WHR, which are rather better supported AFAIK).
Nonetheless, once again I repeat that a WHR of 0.7 is generally found ideally attractive – that doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions.
I have also already noted some of the limitations in the approach to investigating WHR and female attractiveness, notably that subjects are asked to evaluate material in two dimensions, sometimes not even photographs but sketches.
By the way, I read a study that found that even 10-year old boys respond positively to WHR of 0.7.
Humorous popular reference, but not very effective. Statistics is a tool of science. It’s as important as the entire scientific method. Your rebuttal that it is not science sounds identical to the attempts by the Cato institute to declare that there isn’t really an epidemic of obesity taking place (they were attempting to limit government intervention). This is not a reasonable objection in other words.
A classic example of relying too much on analogies to make an argument. Again you talk about the “real world” as if you were instructing me on some fundamental issues, when in fact you haven’t addressed what I was talking about. Weight loss is not a one-off thing: it is a life commitment to your health. Yo-yo dieters and the like (which contribute to only a fraction of the weight loss industry) don’t realize this, and lose weight with an unhealthy regime, then cease it and resume the previous habits that made them overweight to begin with. Yes, that is highly undesirable and unhealthy, I agree with you.
But the weight loss industry, if anything, saves lives overall, because people 1) manage to lose weight and keep it off and 2) don’t become overweight in the first place thanks to healthy practices. That’s in addition to the set of yo-yo dieters who screw with their health.
When you buy a diet soda, it doesn’t stop there: you’ll buy it again and again in preference of the non-diet crap which is packed with 12 teaspoons of sugar. That contributes to the “repeat” customers of the weight loss industry – as do memberships in health clubs etc. It’s not, as you make it sound, just about consumers taking up fad diets and killing themselves with bizarre eating regimes; it’s about exercising, proper nutrition, etc. There’s good and there’s bad, unlike in the tobacco industry, where there is only bad.
It doesn’t, and it’s disingenous to argue that it does. No one has to be a victim of the advertising industry. For every quick-fix diet in the media, there is an equal amount of information about the fact that only changes in eating habits and excercise will have any long term beneficial effect.
Really I came into this thread to challenge the wording in the title: do women want to be extremely thin? I don’t think they do. I don’t even think women want to be thin: I think they want to be slim. Our society values a healthy aspect, and a slim, toned body (male or female) is the epitome of that.
As for the BMI: mine is 21. So I’m fine, and I don’t need to lose any weight. Except that it doesn’t take into account that I have very small bones, so that if I lose 1 pound, people notice that I’ve lost weight, and my entire body fat is superglued to my waist, rather than being evenly distributed. Let’s not even go there with the WHR. However, I value my attractiveness by how people react to me rather than by statistics and ratios, so the relentless onslaught skinny waifs in the media hasn’t ever had a terribly dramatic affect on me, or the people around me.
[QUOTE=Abe]
I’ve been providing information about how a specific trait is considered universally attractive. That means numbers, statistics, figures that represent the real world. That is what science does: it builds models of the physical world, in this case of a component of female attractiveness that seems globally prevalent. I’ve been saying from the beginning that WHR is not the only criterion, but I brought up WHR to discuss why women with abdominal adiposity might be considered less attractive on at least one level of perception.
Humans are not widgets. Without understanding the underlying moviations, statistical data concerning human interactions is misleading at best. If you do a search for WHR, you will be lead to diet sites, beauty sites, even a site comparing 20 years of playboy models. Why? Because the statistical data shows that a WHR of 0.7 is universally attractive and people stopped reading and the ‘industry’ can make more money. The beauty/diet industry now has ‘scienticfic’ proof of what’s attractive, but not the reason. The reason why a specific trait exists is equally as important as the data. Especially as the authors of the study you linked are questioning the results of their own study.
The authors of the study themselves say the WHR study is flawed. The authors themselves say that a woman with higher WHR is not considered unhealthy in **contradition of their previous study. The authors themselves say that WHR has an additional meaning besides ‘good’ health and ‘beauty’. link
You have used WHR in conjuction with ‘beauty’, now perhaps you misspoke…fine. The data says not only was the method used flawed, but that the conclusion that a higher rate than 0.8 wasn’t considered unhealthy, nor unattractive. Further the one of the reasons why a WHR was chosen was not because of beauty, but sexual availability. I don’t recall you stating the data was considered flawed. I don’t recall you stating that the data has different interpretations. Your constant theme concerning WHR has been health and beauty and the data shows different.
Yes you admit there’s problems with the study. A study whose authors no longer agree that WHR is means what they thought it did…and all other studies feed from the original one. Which is flawed. What value is there to constantly defend it, except to promote an agenda?
Again, this is not about obesity. It’s about honesty. If I gave an english tests to non-english speaking people and they failed. I could use that statistical data to claim that my group is more intelligent than those who failed. As they couldn’t even pass a simple 1st grade english test. Is that good science? Is that honest science? I have my data. I have my statistics. Should it matter how the test was conducted or just the results? Again, the authors of this study admit they made mistakes.
I’ve addressed your statement and I’ll do it again. Does every commerical for Weight-Watchers, for Jenny Craig, for Slim Fast, tells people that it may take years to lose weight? That they may lose weight for the first 2-3 weeks, then every pound after would be a struggle? Every exercise machine on QVS, has the salesperson telling their customers that they’re gonna have to ride that bike for 20 minutes for the rest of their lives? Or do they ALL have young and attractive, thin people smiling and promising to melt the pounds away? Again having a ‘disclaimer’, doesn’t excuse the overwhelming message that losing weight can be as simple as eating Mr. Atkins food or exercising 5 minutes a day.
That’s what I’m talking about. You may know what it takes to lose weight, the weight-industry counts on people not knowing. 90% of people failing their weight-loss programs, proves they’re right.
I didn’t say it did, I said the “process” can.
“An Epidemic of Obesity Myths,” a recently released CCF report, highlights the pharmaceutical industry’s influence in the obesity debate. The report challenges popular obesity statistics by citing a wide array of health, exercise, and nutrition experts at leading universities, as well as the former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. It further exposes the pharmaceutical industry’s influence on these statistics – drug makers stand to reap great profits if its obesity hype leads Medicare and private insurance to cover their weight loss medications. link2
Combine that with the failure rate of diets, add the most people gain more weight than they lose and continue that pattern until they finally give up.Obese. It benefits the industry to promote that people are fat. It benefits the industry, that most people will chose ‘fad’ diets, fail and try again. It benefits the industry to take a ‘buzz’ word, oh I don’t know… something like a WHR of 0.7 is ‘universally attractive’, without clarifing why it’s attractive and why it’s not
Demonstrated by whom, by which studies? This one says different. Is this one wrong? Why?
*A recent cross-cultural study has also cast some doubt on the universality of the attractiveness of a low WHR. Wetsman & Marlow (1998) pointed out that all of the studies using this variable had been carried in Western industrialised societies. They showed the figures devised by Singh (1993) to male participants from the Hadza tribe from Tanzania who live as foragers and have been isolated from Western culture. A control group of American University students was also tested. Large differences between the samples was found for preference of the 0.7 WHR with the Hadza men not finding this ratio particularly attractive. The Hadza much preferred the higher weight figures.
The results demonstrate that a preference for low WHR’s are not culturally invariant and these results have been replicated by Yu & Shepard (1998) who found that preferences for a low WHR increased in tribal cultures as the degree of Westernisation increased… *
Word. I went through high school at 5’8" and 105 lbs. I was attractive to some men (more because of my face than my body, obviously), but not as many as other women seem to think.
Women would always come up to me with a predatory smile on their face and shriek, “Oh, you’re so skinny!! I hate you!!” and then laugh to show that they were just “kidding.” I grew tired of explaining that most guys thought I was aneorexic, and that I had to eat mountains of food just to keep up with my own body, and that most guys I knew would pass me over in favor of girls with actual breasts and hips.
Since then, I’ve gained about 15 lbs (I now hover around 120lbs, or a BMI of 18), and I get much more male attention. However, my sister is convinced that my ass is too big to be attractive.
I’ve come to realize that women have no idea about what men really like.
The answer to op is as to why women want to be extremely thin, i believe is cultural…duh.
Part of discussion has shifted to WHR of 0.7 which is claimed to be generally a universal trait. My problem with that, is that it’s statistical, which IMO is a weak method of measure.
How can you measure human beauty, which my nature must be cultural? It doesn’t require study to know that youth, strength, wealth, health are attractive.
WHR claims to ‘prove’ that a hip ratio of 0.7 is universal. However we have counter arguments that point to that ration being cultural, ie Western influences.
This goes beyond some Isolated tribes, in fact the reason why isolated tribes had to be used, is that Western culture influences the majority of the world.
If we look at original art, not just European art, but art from other cultures we notice that :
*"The relationship between female attractiveness and low waist-tohip ratio (WIHt) has been demonstrated in men from US, England, Germany, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Africa (Guine-Bissau).
Recently Yu and Shepard (1998) argued that the preference for low WHR in all these cultures is caused by exposure to western media. These investigators argue that even minimal exposure to western media can alter centuries-old indigenous beauty ideals. One way to test the validity of this argument is to examine the consensus in body shape preferences in diverse societies prior to the emergence of the western media.
We measured WHR in 286 sculptures from India, Egypt, Greece (Greco-Roman) and Africa. In all these cultures the mean female WHR was significantly lower than the mean male WHR despite cultural within-sex variability. We conclude that preference for female WHR can vary between cultures but the preferred WHR is always lower than the preferred male WHR The western media may alter local beauty ideals by illuminating and exaggerating the perceived difference between male and female WHR"*
What that means to me is that a claim that 0.7 is ideal and universal is vastly over-rate, even generally speaking. linky
Abe I’m not trying to be dick and I may be wrong, but I really think using 0.7 for anything to ‘prove’ universal attractiveness is in error. What we’re witnessing is an artifical measurement, tainted by Western image of beauty, which its self is an illusion.
You are a perfect example of the body types I keep bringing up (“H,” Apple, etc.), and I’m guessing it’s not an hourglass type. But it’s not an unattractive body type. Here’s a more thorough rundown of the figure types. There are different people that fit into each type, and none of them are necessarily “bad” or “unattractive,” .7 HWR notwithstanding. Not that I’m negating the whole .7 hip/waist thing—it’s nice having an hourglass-type figure, to be sure.
However, if someone is not overweight, if they are trying to keep themselves healthy, then screw the fact that their HWR is over .7, or over .8, or whatever. Very likely, no matter how thin they got themselves, it would never be .7. Their body just wasn’t meant to be that way. It’s not a matter of not “trying” hard enough. It just ain’t ever going to happen. And that doesn’t mean that their body is forever destined to be unattractive, either.
And starting a little hijack about measurements, do these measurements of Audrey Hepburn make any sense? She didn’t seem like she was very “hippy” to me, but they give her measurements at 32/20/35. That’s a hip-waist of .57. Many different sources give those measurements, though. Very odd. (Of course, if these were her measurements, it only means that she’s one of the many ample “exceptions” to the .7 HWR rule.) My initial point in bringing up Hepburn was that she seems to be a woman whose body was meant to be lean and very slim. She always was very lovely, even though she was what might be called “skinny.” Some women look like they’re meant to be skinny, but others don’t.
There is no urgent need to understand underlying motivations when observing and recording human behaviour and the preferences expressed in such behaviour. Were it otherwise, entire swathes of medicine and psychology would be considered bunk, since not all human behavioural (or natural for that matter) phenomena are understood to the level of underlying complexity. It is sufficient to observe behaviour and demonstrate that a trend does indeed exist; explanations accounting for trends are tentative at first, but trends can be demonstrated (or not) regardless of the mechanisms they rely on. Science (using its absolutely indispensable tool, statistics) builds models of the physical world. The weight of the evidence we have to date indicates that there is a broad trend in men to find a 0.7 WHR as ideally attractive. There are certain caveats and limitations to this knowledge of course, some of which I brought up before you even raised your objections.
Ah, the vast conspiracy of the weight loss industry, I see where you are going. But the weight loss industry is not monolithic. Even the diet industry is not monolithic (as already discussed). And the beauty industry is actually removed from the previous two, though there is in some areas an overlap (e.g., beauty spas offer “slimming” as well as skin and hair treatments). Your problem actually seems to be with unscrupulous marketing, which can be applied by absolutely any company in any industry (viz. homeopathy or the majority of “natural” remedies – you want a major conspiracy? Look to Congress and the decisions not to regulate “natural” remedies).
What authors, and what study ar you referring to?
I suggest you re-read your link, because it agrees with what I was talking about. Your summary clearly states that “A growing body of evidence indicates that the WHR is an accurate indicator of reproductive status; as circulating estrogen lowers WHR and testosterone raises it”, which is precisely what I was talking about in all my previous posts – and we should already know, as the summary says, that “All theories of human mate selection based on evolutionary principles assume that attractiveness provides a reliable cue to the reproductive value of the female”.
So at least some aspects of female physical attractiveness thus far provide a measure of reproductive prowess; reproductivity is itself indicated by physical characteristics that we have been discussing. One of those characteristics appears to be the estrogen levels, which are fairly accurately predicted by WHR; another component is good physical health, which is predicted somewhat less accurately by WHR, although there is some correlation (c.f. previous discussions on high deposits of abdominal fat, which, as it happens, is extremely unhealthy). I have already provided all these arguments.
You seem to be focusing on work begun by Tovee et al – which I have also already discussed – that suggests that BMI may be of more relevance than WHR as an index of female attractiveness. The section titled “Problems with WHR” in the summary you link is not the final word, it simply raises some issues of ongoing discussion. Among those problems are the following:
a BMI of 19 may be a more valuable indicator of female attractiveness than 0.7 WHR but that does not render the latter useless
not all cultures display the trend towards preference of a 0.7 BMI; I mentioned earlier a South American tribe that was exempt, and your summary mentions a Tanzanian tribe
recent evidence seems to suggest that low WHR preference increases correspondingly in tribal cultures with the degree of Westernisation
These are issues for discussion and further study, which is why I lighted on them briefly in my previous posts. They do not throw the WHR preference trends already identified out of the window, as you seem to be saying. And the alternative that Tovee et al suggest is, as I already said, hardly an improvement for overweight women with body image problems or some hypothetical conspiracy to sell weight loss products (ideal BMI of 19! Realistically, how many people have a chance to achieve a BMI only slightly above that of fashion models?).
Female attractiveness, beauty, I am indeed using those to mean the same thing. Not exclusively mind you – I said numerous times that there is broad variation in standards of beauty (female attractiveness) not just from culture to culture but also intra-culturally among individuals.
See the quotes from your own summary I provided above to identify why female attractiveness (beauty) is a cue to reproductive ability, and how WHR is an indication of estrogen levels and reproductive ability. You may want to bring up a different definition of beauty, but I honestly see no need, since my use of the term is not limited (i.e., green eyes or a big smile or whatever can be considered beautiful, however they aren’t the subject of the current discussion).
WHR as a cue to reproductive capability, and therefore female attractiveness, is still a fairly established contention. And this is not based on one study, but on one original study establishing the premise and a number of follow-up studies confirming the trend and further investigating it (as your link explains). Furthermore, let me point out the conclusion that your summary provides based on current scientific evidence regarding specific characteristics that are considered ideally attractive in the body of the human female:
“A slim waist, large breasts, a WHR around 0.7 or a BMI around 19”
I overstated the ideal BMI (I actually remembered it as 20) but I seemed to be right on the money about WHR and the hourglass figure. Which I would expect, given that I was basing my arguments on the weight of the evidence presently available.
So, please tell me what sort of agenda I am supposed to be pushing here. I’m not making up these studies and their supporting evidence, nor am I selectively focusing on one side or the other of the discussion, nor am I advocating my own personal preferences in female body types.
As I said before, you have a (soundly justified) problem with questionable marketing, not necessarily with the non-monolithic weight loss industry. Consider this: Weight-watchers and Slim Fast and their ilk do facilitate weight loss; none of the ads I have ever seen claim that a product will cause you to lose weight and keep it off forever if you stop whatever it is the product is doing (lowered caloric intake, exercise, fat-binding, etc.). Similarly, drug companies do not claim that you will never suffer from high blood pressure or essential tremors again, merely that you can manage them with certain medications. On the other hand, drug companies can claim that such and such medication will clear up a fungal infection or defeat a bacterial disease – but they make no promise that you will never need the same medication for the same problem again.
Maintaining a healthy weight is not a destination, it’s a life-long journey (I forget who first said this, but it’s true). The weight loss industry can provide products to assist on that journey, since in the developed world there is a seriously excessive caloric intake in the average diet and a glaring insufficiency of physical exercise (which are the two primary contributors to overweight). So you buy an exercise bike, or take up a Weight-watchers program, or drink a diet (sugar-free) drink instead of a regular one: but it would be foolish to think that that is the end of it!
This is a problem with the culture of the “quick-fix” and of unscrupulous marketing. I have already said that it is my belief that weight loss products should be subject to controls and regulations, particularly in their marketing efforts, but not every diet is bad, and not every product provided by the weight loss industry is bad – on the contrary, pretty much anything that makes you exercise and that reduces your caloric and fat intake (relative to a modern diet in the developed world) can only be considered an advantageous thing.
The reason people suffer the process of yo-yo dieting is simply an unhealthy lifestyle, coupled with a poor choice of weight loss strategy (that may be prompted by irresponsible marketing). The vast majority of people who can stick to a healthy lifestyle --which includes a life-long healthy diet and healthy amounts of physical exercise-- will maintain a healthy stable weight, adjusting for age-related increases; the problem is that most people want a quick-fix solution that panders to their laziness and gluttony. They want to lose weight without effort, and with the ability to pig out on high-calorie foods and drinks they like, from ice-cream to alcohol.
You want to blame someone, blame the food industry, which (on average – obviously the food industry is also not monolithic) packs sugars and fats, including the dangerous trans fats, into their products to improve their taste and durability.
The individual companies I really have a problem with are the makers of some products such as “diet bars” and the like, which are advertised as fat free but are typically sugar bombs with far too many “empty calories”. Yes, entities like that are indeed capitalizing on the fear of fat in the public, and should be held accountable. There are movements in the US towards a healthier approach to nutrition, most recently powerful lobbies by the food industry were finally defeated when it was agreed that nutritional label information should contain figures for trans fats. Progress. Many exponents of the food industry were against this initiative because they claimed it would scare people away from their products and therefore hurt revenues (the same shit they were saying when it became mandatory to list fat and sodium contents etc.). Well, I say stop putting the damn shit in the food to begin with, if your concern for revenues endangers public health.
Notice that Compos has no scientific qualifications whatsoever, and he ends up advocating precisely what his “opponents” (such as the Center for Diseases Control, which the CCF report accuses of conspiring against the public) say all along: exercise, eat healthy, get rid of the excess weight. Dr. David Heber, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at UCLA, put it well – according to the linked article: “It’s not just losing weight, says Dr. Heber, but specifically targeting excess body fat, that helps prevent very real medical problems.”
Now, it is quite possible that the CDC might have made some errors in their hard-hitting study; I will wait for their corrections to come out rather than rely on shrill trumpeted claims that allege collusion with drug companies, that urge complacency in the face of a clear increase in overweight and obesity, and so forth.
If anything, you may make that claim about the specific industry of fad diets, which does indeed prey on the desperation and laziness/gluttony of people. Dieting, both in the sense of a healthy diet and weight loss, is a life-long matter – of course if you lose weight on a particular diet and then resume a high-calorie “developed world” diet you will gain weight, particularly if you are not exercising. But the public should know better by now, they simply appear to be stuck in a process of denial, an active desire to believe in what is too good to be true.
Scientists have investigated and discussed these matters in considerable detail. As always, science can be used for acceptable or unacceptable purposes, but I haven’t come across any weight loss scams talking about 0.7 WHR and how you too can achieve it if you buy XYZ. WHR seems a little bit too obscure for the public when they have something as convenient as BMI, and as stringent: a BMI of 19 would seem to be harder to achieve for a market where overweight is prevalent than a WHR range of 0.68 - 0.72, so it would make sense to use the BMI measure in push-marketing.
But it’s a trend, and there is no better way to demonstrate or identify a trend than to do so statistically. In fact, I would say statistics is the only way.
But it does. Without scientific study the matter remains one of unsupported opinion. Weak anecdotal evidence. Practically worthless. And as for measuring human beauty, it is rather less complicated than one would think: expose a set of subjecs to a variety of specific stimuli considered beautiful (and non), and see which ones are preferred, then employ statistical tools to make sense of the results. The summary link you provided earlier thus provided the conclusion that a slim waist, large breasts, 0.7 WHR, and 19 BMI were attractive features physically speaking. The same can be done for favourite colours (I think red), favourite foods (IIRC Italian and Chinese), and so forth, regardless of the complexities of personal taste and culture. Of course, that doesn’t mean that everyone’s favourite colour is necessarily (whatever) and that they all love (whatever) cuisine.
No it doesn’t, studies simply describes the results found to date. There is no movement to prove anything one way or another. A prevalence of studies so far have found that a WHR of 0.7 is considered ideally attractive by a clear majority of subjects. These subjects have been sampled from a variety of cultures. There is some evidence to indicate that this trend is fairly global and multi-cultural, though as mentioned there have been notable exceptions and the work is subject (as all science is) to certain limitations.
Some evidence may suggest this. I don’t think the case has been sturdily established.
Yes, it is a possibility that Western culturre is so pervasive and influential. it is also possible that at least on some levels (such as female attractiveness) it speaks to those who are predisposed to like certain traits.
This is where the argument hits major stumbling blocks, two that I can think of just off the top of my head. The first is how do we know that the ideal female attractiveness was necessarily conveyed in the art being examined in the study? Do we know whether the models used or the inspirations the works are drawn from were considered paragons of beauty? Do we even know if the art is based on women at all, and not men, as has not been uncommon throughout the ages?
Secondly, if we look at Venus figurines, those were prehistorical (and therefore definitely untainted by Western civilizations) ideals of beauty – with exaggerated hips and other features. And though they are all statuettes of seriously overweight or pregnant women, many, or at least some, appear to have a waist to hip ratio in the range of 0.7 in spite of the fact that they are rendered as obese – probably because their large dimensions indicate plenty and an abundance of food, certainly very important factors to humans in the Palaeolithic.
Thirdly, European art has traditionally valued 0.7 WHR, which is why it came to be called the “golden ratio”. Ruben’s corpulent women, for example, have the magic number.
This study doesn’t actually seem to invalidate other WHR research. Aside from being one of the lone studies against a greater weight of evidence as far as I know, it may cast some doubt on some of the previous findings, and it posits the overarching ifnluence of Western media, yes, but that’s it. And it specifically emphasizes that lower WHR are found to be attractive features in women all around the world (with the few exceptions where the apple shape is preferred)
For a humourous point on the Matsigenka, the South American tribe I mentioned earlier who was an exception to the 0.7 WHR preference, read this. Untainted by Western media indeed!
Here is a basic but fair summary of the work on WHR and what it is actually saying. As the writers note, this field is still a work in progress. The weight of the evidence, however, leans more towards WHR as a reasonably accurate predictor of female physical attractiveness (which in turn suggests reproductive potential). Not the only factor of attractiveness of course, but an important trend and one that with only a very few isolated exceptions appears to dominate.
Said that, I repeat that I don’t think 0.7 WHR is the sole ultimate standard of attractiveness. The summary you linked to, Holmes, provides a good list of prevalent and widely applicable standards of beauty, several of which I have raised over the past few weeks of this discussion.
There’s a couple of issues here. One is using WHR as a symbol for reproduction availability, which I don’t think anyone, including me, is questioning. Women usually have wider hips then men, no one’s disputing that. A woman whose too thin or too fat, may be considered less availability sexually, i.e too young, too old, already pregnant. A person can look at a WHR of a woman and depending on that ratio, make a judgement as to whether or not that woman is sexually available. No problem there and I’ve never said differently.
What i’m disputing is that a WHR of 0.7 is the universal preference for health and beauty and using that to define ‘attractiveness’. That’s my problem. That a WHR of 0.7 is considered the MOST attractive ratio, throughout the world. That a WHR of 0.7=beauty, “generally speaking”, not withstanding. It is not true and there’s more than one voice questioning it.
You have Henss:
*Henss (1995) carried out a similar study to the original Singh (1993) experiment but also included male figures to provide a control condition. These figures were line drawings that differed in terms of WHR and overall body weights…It was found that the female figure with the WHR of 0.8 was considered to be most attractive, but for the male figures the ratio of 0.9 was the most attractive. * Am I reading the data wrong? 0.7 isn’t considered most attractive in this study, correct?
You have a study by** Furnham et al., (1997)** * pointed out that there are problems with the ranking measures used in the previous studies. In their study participants were asked to rate each figure on a 7-point bipolar scale. Their results echoed those of the previous studies as normal weight males and females were judged as being most attractive and the female figures with a WHR of 0.7 were thought of as being the most attractive. However, they did not find that the figures with a WHR of 0.7 were considered to be more healthy or more youthful, or that figures with a high WHR were considered as being more unhealthy which contradicts previous findings…* So in this study, 0.7 was considered most attractive, but the other figures were considered just as ‘healthy’.
That’s not counting, the studies listed in the “problems” section which is more than just one lone voice ( Tovée, Tassinary and Hansen, Wetsman & Marlow, and Yu & Shepard (who replicated W&M’s results): Or this study in 2000:
Tassinary and Hansen (1998) have noted another problem with Singh’s line drawings – there are* no WHRs below 0.7**. It is possible therefore that men might prefer even lower WHRs, but are constrained to select the predicted value of 0.7 by the absence of these body shapes.
Tassinary and Hansen (1998) presented their subjects with a set of 27 newly created line drawings, each varying systematically and independently in weight, waist size, and hip size; the lowest WHR being 0.5. They found ** no ** consistent preferences for any particular WHR, but found that overweight figures were consistently ranked as least attractive. Tassinary and Hansen’s new stimuli have been criticized as less naturalistic and appealing than Singh’s (1993) original line drawings (Henns, 2000). It is also possible that the large number of stimuli they used may have reduced the reliability of their participants’ rankings because of discrimination problems (Mehrens & Lehman, 1978), and so reduced the impact of any WHR preference.
To investigate this possibility, we (MH and RG) – (Heaney, 2000) conducted a study with line drawing based on Singh’s (1993) original stimuli, but manipulated the waist to include figures with WHR’s as low as 0.5 (fig. 11.3). The overwhelming preference of our 147 University of Auckland undergraduate male subjects (as opposed to 40) was figures in the “normal” weight range with a WHR of 0.5. The next most highly ranked shape was a WHR of 0.6 in the “normal” weight range. Only eight out of the 147 subjects assigned their top rank to figures with a WHR of 0.7 in the “normal” weight range. Just two men preferred any of the figures in the “overweight” class. *
The authors say it better than I have: “None of problems that have been discovered with the WHR theory mean that the initial idea was sloppy science. It was certainly better than much of the folk psychology with post hoc adaptive storiesthat passes for evolutionary psychology (e.g., Buss, 1994). What has been poor is the lack of critical evaluation of the evidence for this theory. Paper after paper and book after book has touted this research as an excellent example of EP in action (Buss, 1999; Miller, 2000; Miller & Todd, 1998;Pinker, 1997). If EP really is to meet the challenge of adaptive explanation, then its proponents should require more from their classic cases than a plausible story.”
It doesn’t look like the weight of evidence supports this theory to me. Am I reading the studies wrong? I have no problems using the ratio of WHR to convey sexual readiness, but to use to a specific measurement to signify universal preference; not only of sexual readiness, but in some cases ‘beauty’? I think WHR fails.
Actually, it’s an interesting situation. We are agreed that 0.7 WHR is a good indicator of reproductive potential and thus linked to female attractiveness, which means it constitutes an important component of theories of beauty. I don’t think 0.7 WHR is necessarily universal – it simply appears to be a prevalent global trend, that is to say that in the majority of experiments to date 0.7 WHR was found to be a preference for whatever reasons (i.e. cultural influence or whatnot). Let’s take a look at the dissenting voices.
Sounds to me like you might be presenting some results selectively. The only studies I am aware of where a low WHR ratio such as 0.8 or 0.9 are the statistically preferred ones were the very few “exceptional” cases, such as the Matsigenka people discussed earlier. Details of this study are not included in your link, and I am not familiar with it.
Indeed, this would appear to be further confirmation for 0.7 WHR as sexually attractive. The fact that the subjects did not appear able to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy is not necessarily relevant, because it is extremely likely that the process is a subconscious filter; as I said a week or two ago, we respond to various stimuli without knowing how or why, the best example of which is a face with good bilateral symmetry (which can indicate good developmental health, but is more likely than asymmetrical faces to be considered attractive, without the subject consciously acknowledging the underlying mechanisms or even the symmetry he or she is looking at).
I addressed and summarized the salient problems. That’s nothing unusual in the scientific process, it is a constant process of refining hypotheses and theories. What I pointed out was that in spite of various problems in the field of research, the weight of the evidence still supports the contention that 0.7 WHR is considered attractive in most of the world. The results say as much, though it is entirely possible that new evidence will cause a refinement to the theory (see below). And I can’t claim to be up to speed on all the latest research, I have however not heard of revolutionary invalidating material arising recently.
Methodological problems with this study; as the above extract says, the problem seems to have been with the types of stimuli. See below for a discussion on ratios below 0.7 (though I agree lower values should have been included by Singh in his original study, it is not uncommon however for first landmark studies to be somewhat incomplete).
With the above study we are really getting somewhere, and may even be able to address (albeit very loosely) the question posed above regarding the charmingly named “ghetto booty”. Firstly I must note that once again the sample of subjects is from a very narrow set (New Zealand university students) and not multicultural etc. Also, there is the question of replicability of results. These are important considerations. That aside, some interesting things may be happening. Visual stimuli such as breasts, buttocks, WHR and so forth are sexual signals. What this study has found is a preference for super signals, which is not terribly surprising, especially among male university students. A natural WHR of 0.5 is rather unrealistic, since we’re approaching Jessica Rabbit proportions here (imagine 16" waist on 32" hips). But the reason Jessica Rabbit worked so well as a cartoon character is most likely that her proportions are colossal super signals – quite aside from her gigantic breasts and kilometric legs (super signals) she has an hourglass figure you’d have trouble squeezing grains of sand through (super signal). Who cares if such a woman could not possibly exist in the flesh? She was hot regardless.
The link that you presented arguments from actually goes on to explain exactly this concept:
What this would suggest (apart explaining why corsets are sexy) is that WHR of 0.7 is not necessarily a universal ideal, but an attainable and healthy realistic standard that actually occurs in the population at a rate that is not impossibly rare. WHR of 0.5, on the other hand, is nothing of the sort, even though there may be a few women who are built like that naturally (??). That is the difference between, say, a Sophia Loren – a very sexy woman – and Jessica Rabbit – a ridiculously sexy woman.
The author of your paper then goes on to claim that the WHR theory is destroyed by a couple of exceptions; IMO that is only true if you consider that 1) 0.7 WHR is necessarily a universal standard and 2) that there can be no exceptions to a trend. I think both of these are false assumptions. Plus I must note that she was talking about 0.7 WHR in terms of evolutionary adaptivity, not in terms of recognizable trend (which is where we were). As she says in the conclusion that you quoted, “None of problems that have been discovered with the WHR theory mean that the initial idea was sloppy science.” Although there is some serious questioning of 0.7 WHR as an adaptive trait, the trend is still readily observed and widespread, and there is even the note that “There is no need for natural selection to mold a specific WHR selection mechanism when a generic mechanism already produces the same result.” Meaning that this trend undoubtedly exists. This of course assuming that the results the author found were accurate and replicable around the world.
So, if I can summarize, 0.7 WHR remains a dominant trend in attractive preference; as I stated earlier, however, the evidence indicates that this trend is in fact 0.7 and lower (I mentioned that at least a few times in earlier posts). Towards 0.65, 0.6 and below, however, the ratio increasingly becomes unrealistic and is the domain of fantasy rather than the attribute of the vast majority of women.
It is important however to remember that a trend is just that: a trend. It is not an inflexible rule by which all must abide, exceptions are not only expected, but help to refine the theory. And the trend just helps to identify what the greatest number of subjects find most attractive, not what all subjects find binarily attractive. And, to go back to my original point, it would likewise seem a trend to select normal as opposed to overweight women for attractiveness. It is certainly not a stretch to say (as I did) that abdominal fat resulting from overweight raises the ratio (i.e. generally renders a woman less attractive in terms of WHR) since it repeatedly seems that lower ratios are considered attractive. To this however must be added several other factors, such as BMI, breast size, degree of neoteny, etc.
[sup]Regarding “ghetto booty”, or the undemonstrated specific rear preference of some men (primarily African-American but also American Latino) for a certain size and shape, there are at least two possible explanations I provide out of complete conjecture: one is that they are accustomed to women with slightly larger posteriors of certain proportions (the so-called “black ass”); the other is that they appreciate slightly more overt signals in the buttocks department, and therefore prefer them larger than certain other populations might. For what reasons I have no idea, nor can I guess at the mechanisms involved for a phenomenon that remains anecdotal. I bring this up for purposes of discussion only, in truth I have no clue and make no claims on this subject.[/sup]
I’d like to wade in, and make an observation from my own experience on this:
When I was seventeen, a couple of things happened. Among them, my father decided that I was fat (at 4’10, I weighed 105) and harangued me about it. Also, my mother hit the age of 40, went into a crazy midlife crisis, and starved herself down to 92 pounds (she’s 4’11".) So I starved myself. Of course, I obsessed about food every second, and I was miserably hungry all the time, but by god I lost 10 lbs.
I had been invisible before. Nobody noticed me. Boys in high school certainly never looked at me once, let alone twice. But when I lost that ten pounds, I started getting attention like you can’t believe. I’d get stares and catcalls and “appreciative” comments from strangers. People turned to look when I walked down the street.
It terrified me. Don’t think for a moment that I felt sexier. I wanted to go back to being invisible. Invisible is safe. Invisible isn’t threatened by aggressive attention from strange men.
Then I spent a year as an exchange student in Mexico and came home 25 lbs heavier. I felt horrible about that, and eventually got back to 110. A nice safe invisible weight, but not so heavy that I thought myself fat.
My husband thinks I’m beautiful. Actually, he says it makes no difference to him if I weigh 110 or 130. At one point about 3 years ago, I decided I wanted to lose some weight for me, for myself. My clothes were too tight and I refused to buy larger clothes. So I joined an online diet thing and it was …awful. For about a month, I relived the awful emotional experience from when I was 17. Folks, I’m 37 years old, and a 20 year old wave of fear and self-loathing just washed over me and staggered me. I nearly bailed the idea of the diet entirely.
Eventually, I decided that I wanted to lose weight for myself, not so much that I had to buy smaller clothes, but enough that my clothes felt good…and that’s what I did. But I was still afraid of aggressive, threatening “attention” from strange men for whom, thanks to 5 or 10 lbs, I was no longer invisible.
Anyway, I’m back to 130 lbs, thanks to another pregnancy and an unwillingness to obsess over cooking calorie-counted meals when some days it’s all I can do to get 3 balanced meals of any sort on the table in front of the kids, and my husband doesn’t care. He likes me. And I’ll take that over being hungry all the time, and worrying about when I’m allowed to eat my next meal, and whether I’ll be hungry immediately when it’s eaten, and cooking one thing for me and something else for everybody else in the family, and all that.
You know, screw the .7 ratio thing. I don’t WANT to be “attractive to men”, if the kind of attention I’ve had in the past when I “measured up” is all there is. It sucked. Leers, stares, catcalls. If a thin body brings out that kind of attitude in men, let me be fat. It’s a lot more peaceful.
I am very thin, but I don’t necessarily choose to be this way. Not that I choose not to be this way. I just wanted to say that not ALL women want to be extremely thin.
And may I point out that anorexia can be defined as mental condition. Some women might just get sucked into by doubtful thoughts, peer pressure, media. So, you can’t just say that in all cases, it’s because women want to be beautiful.