Role of Body Fat and Body Shape on Judgment of Female Health and Attractiveness: An Evolutionary Perspective

The main aim of this paper is to present an evolutionary perspective for why women’s attractiveness is assigned a great importance in practically all human societies. We present the data that the woman’s body shape, or hourglass figure as defined by the size of waist-to-hip-ratio (WHR), reliably conveys information about a woman’s age, fertility, and health and that systematic variation in women’s WHR invokes systematic changes in attractiveness judgment by participants both in Western and non-Western societies. We also present evidence that attractiveness judgments based on the size of WHR are not artifact of body weight reduction. Then we present cross-cultural and historical data which attest to the universal appeal of WHR. We conclude that the current trend of describing attractiveness solely on the basis of body weight presents an incomplete, and perhaps inaccurate, picture of women’s attractiveness