There are legions of men, and women, who think that a woman’s breast is the focal point of male-female attraction, but this is not the case. Even though breasts have garnered tremendous recent attention, they lag as the best indicators of reproductive fitness. This breast lagging (forgive the pun) is measurable in how men assign attractiveness, relative to breast size. We now know there is more influence in the waists and hips, and (of course) hair, as discussed here.Research has shown that men are genetically programmed to instantly sight a woman’s waist to hip (WTH) ratio, giving the highest attractiveness rating to a ratio of approximately .7. This means if the waist is 25 inches, the preferred hip is 36, for US men. This rating correlates to estrogen levels and reproductive fitness. But is this preference true for African-male ancestries as well? Indeed it is, but with a twist.
Waist to hip studies measure the circumference. White men favor width from the frontal view, while black men favor width viewed in profile, hence the phrases, ‘flat-butt’ and ‘junk in the trunk’. But in both black and white scenarios, the preferred circumference measurements are close enough to say preference differences are minor across ethnicities, and are explainable.
In the male hunting-female gathering evolution of humans there is less gathering in locales further from the equator, like Europe and Scandinavia. This has caused the gatherers (women) to lessen their butts, while still maintaining the desirable WTH ratio. The women who remained closer to the equator kept the gluteus maximus muscles needed for the best gathering. (here)
The rub comes in when plentiful food and sedentary life styles cause obesity to explode, as in America. US men, like their world-wide counterparts, maintain their appetite for casual sex, but show a decline in willingness to sign on to long-term contracts to mates and offspring. This attraction and willingness, or not, to commit is baked into our brains. It is true that social conditioning can offset what our genes tell us to do, but only to a lesser degree.
The behavior of men is additionally influenced by the availability of casual sex, in the wake of declining estrogen-signaling attractiveness. The lowering of the WTH ratio in black women is further aided by the sedentary behavior resulting from costly hairstyles that ward off daily exercise routines. To be fair, men, black and white, also suffer bulging waistlines from obesity, however, testosterone-signaling attraction and behaviors of women toward men is a better subject for another post.
Up Next: Education and Attraction.
James C. Collier
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Technorati Tags: Acting White: Black Women Series, Waist to Hip Ratio and Attraction, WTH Ratio, Breast, Butt, Junk In The Trunk, Acting White
I liked this post alot. It helped me understand why the first word that pops into my mind when I see a nice WTH is "Delicious". It comes from my ancestors watching the booty as dinner was gathered, best butt = best gatherer.
ReplyDelete^ Tracy Morgan has a different way of putting it.
ReplyDeletejames says :
ReplyDeleteWaist to hip studies measure the circumference. White men favor width from the frontal view, while black men favor width viewed in profile, hence the phrases, ‘flat-butt’ and ‘junk in the trunk’. But in both black and white scenarios, the preferred circumference measurements are close enough to say preference differences are minor across ethnicities, and are explainable.
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James,
I just don't understand why frontal and profile WHR are being compared here. They don't represent the same thing at all. A low frontal WHR signals a woman with a very wide pelvis, an actual bony structure. It signals the ability to give birth easily to potentially large brained children. All and all it's a GREAT thing .
Profile WHR is something complately different. A low profile WHR signals a capacity for good fat storage in the ass. At least among the khoisan it is because that huge steatopygic butt of their women is fat, not muscle ( btw i think that bushwoman butt is totally different from what black men usually like. I for one find it extremely unattractive). In any case, i can see how it'd signal a capacity to endure hardship but doesn't seem to have any direct link to fertility and especially the ability to give birth to big brained babies.
What exactly is the point of comparing these 2 measures ?
Also, australian aboriginals were hunter and gatherers until this very century. How are their womens's butts :) ?
Butts and hips aren't strictly a question of locomotion..come on.
I bet the effect of wide and narrow hips as far as locomotion ability only matters at the margin : That is, at the very highest level of "locomotion performance" (100m dash), the narrow hipped woman is better than the large hipped one. But for normal, everyday activities does it matter that much ?
I'll leave with an interesting thing i've noticed lately. It seems to me that a lot of arab, north african and middle eastern women (white ones with no obvious black ancestry) have been selected by their men for both wide hips and large butts. It makes for an interesting combination :)
ogunsiron, my read says that all males respond best to frontal WHR of approx. .7, however, same men are willing to tradeoff for more masculine butts (larger gluts and higher frontal WTH) for greater survival in food gathering. And even so, the WHR circumference measures of preference nearly even out in the end. Fat storage is beyond this analysis, as it comes in many varieties (shoulders to calves). And I would agree that owning both a developed butt and wider hips puts said female at an estrogen-signaling advantage to the widest geographical array of males.
ReplyDeleteSo that explains it. I like nice legs too. Actually, I think my preference is around that .6. I knew about the hair, but what about skin tone?
ReplyDeleteI think this is an interesting area of research, and I thank the gods of the Internet daily, for making this research and similar research so easy to do these days.
ReplyDeleteI'm 27-40. That's not unrealistic (0.69), to answer the question of how a "real woman" would look, it's a lot like Beyonce or Rihanna. Only unattainable for the apple-shaped set.
ReplyDelete