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 r2) 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.
Highlights
Mate selection is a key behavioral component of reproduction related to the survival of ones’ genes in the future gene pool (Andersson & Simmons, 2006; Trivers, 1985)
Evolutionary model of the relationship between attractiveness and fatness Many studies have associated the risk of developing various diseases with different levels of body fatness (Borugian et al, 2003; Chan et al, 1994; Despres, 2012; Terry, Page & Haskell, 1992)
We expressed the mortality in each BMI class as the excess mortality above that of the lowest BMI class, since this reflects the negative impact of differences in body fatness, and fitted a polynomial to the data for each ethnic group using ordinary least squares regression
Summary
Mate selection is a key behavioral component of reproduction related to the survival of ones’ genes in the future gene pool (Andersson & Simmons, 2006; Trivers, 1985). Our perceptions of attractiveness of potential mates is complex and multi-dimensional, and may include many diverse aspects These include economic parameters, like possessions, wealth and social economic status (SES) (Drury, 2000; Swami et al, 2010), psychological components such as cognitive ability, behavior, personality and social competence (Eagly et al, 1991), physiological aspects such as the major histocompatibility complex status (Thornhill et al, 2003), hormone levels (Pawlowski & Sorokowski, 2008) and age (Borgerhoff Mulder, 1998). Lassek & Gaulin (2008) have suggested that WHR is not associated with health but more related to cognitive abilities It has been noted, that WHR is not independent of body fatness, which may itself be an indicator of physical attractiveness. More recent work has attempted to partition the importance of these two factors, and it has been conclusively shown across numerous studies that variation in attractiveness is much more closely related to variation in body fatness than to differences in WHR (e.g., Henss, 2000; Koscinski, 2013; Smith, Cornelissen & Tovee, 2007; Tassinary & Hansen, 1998; Tovee & Cornelissen, 1999; Tovee et al, 2002; Tovee & Cornelissen, 1999; Tovee et al, 1997; Tovee et al, 1998)
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