IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0123284.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Preferred Women’s Waist-to-Hip Ratio Variation over the Last 2,500 Years

Author

Listed:
  • Jeanne Bovet
  • Michel Raymond

Abstract

The ratio between the body circumference at the waist and the hips (or WHR) is a secondary sexual trait that is unique to humans and is well known to influence men’s mate preferences. Because a woman's WHR also provides information about her age, health and fertility, men's preference concerning this physical feature may possibly be a cognitive adaptation selected in the human lineage. However, it is unclear whether the preferred WHR in western countries reflects a universal ideal, as geographic variation in non-western areas has been found, and discordances about its temporal consistency remain in the literature. We analyzed the WHR of women considered as ideally beautiful who were depicted in western artworks from 500 BCE to the present. These vestiges of the past feminine ideal were then compared to more recent symbols of beauty: Playboy models and winners of several Miss pageants from 1920 to 2014. We found that the ideal WHR has changed over time in western societies: it was constant during almost a millennium in antiquity (from 500 BCE to 400 CE) and has decreased from the 15th century to the present. Then, based on Playboy models and Miss pageants winners, this decrease appears to slow down or even reverse during the second half of the 20th century. The universality of an ideal WHR is thus challenged, and historical changes in western societies could have caused these variations in men’s preferences. The potential adaptive explanations for these results are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeanne Bovet & Michel Raymond, 2015. "Preferred Women’s Waist-to-Hip Ratio Variation over the Last 2,500 Years," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-13, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0123284
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0123284
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0123284
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0123284&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0123284?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Douglas W. Yu & Glenn H. Shepard, 1998. "Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?," Nature, Nature, vol. 396(6709), pages 321-322, November.
    2. D. I. Perrett & K. J. Lee & I. Penton-Voak & D. Rowland & S. Yoshikawa & D. M. Burt & S. P. Henzi & D. L. Castles & S. Akamatsu, 1998. "Effects of sexual dimorphism on facial attractiveness," Nature, Nature, vol. 394(6696), pages 884-887, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zaneta M Thayer & Seth D Dobson, 2013. "Geographic Variation in Chin Shape Challenges the Universal Facial Attractiveness Hypothesis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(4), pages 1-5, April.
    2. Francisco B. Galarza & Gustavo Yamada, 2017. "Triple penalty in employment access: The role of beauty, race, and sex," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 20, pages 29-47, May.
    3. Weilong Bi & Ho Fai Chan & Benno Torgler, 2020. "“Beauty” premium for social scientists but “unattractiveness” premium for natural scientists in the public speaking market," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-9, December.
    4. Jin-Ying Zhuang & Sen Zhang & Jing Xu & Die Hu, 2014. "Discriminating Males and Unpredictable Females: Males Differentiate Self-Similar Facial Cues More than Females in the Judgment of Opposite-Sex Attractiveness," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(3), pages 1-9, March.
    5. Ghoshal, Gourab & Holme, Petter, 2006. "Attractiveness and activity in Internet communities," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 364(C), pages 603-609.
    6. Anthony C. Little & Vít Třebický & Jan Havlíček & S. Craig Roberts & Karel Kleisner, 2015. "Editor's choice Human perception of fighting ability: facial cues predict winners and losers in mixed martial arts fights," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 26(6), pages 1470-1475.
    7. Borau, Sylvie & Bonnefon, Jean-François, 2020. "Gendered products act as the extended phenotype of human sexual dimorphism: They increase physical attractiveness and desirability," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 498-508.
    8. Isabel M L Scott & Nicholas Pound & Ian D Stephen & Andrew P Clark & Ian S Penton-Voak, 2010. "Does Masculinity Matter? The Contribution of Masculine Face Shape to Male Attractiveness in Humans," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(10), pages 1-10, October.
    9. Erika Limoncin & Caterina Solano & Giacomo Ciocca & Daniele Mollaioli & Elena Colonnello & Andrea Sansone & Filippo Maria Nimbi & Chiara Simonelli & Renata Tambelli & Emmanuele Angelo Jannini, 2020. "Can Physical and/or Sexual Abuse Play a Role in the Female Choice of a Partner? A Cross-Sectional, Correlational Pilot Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(18), pages 1-13, September.
    10. Victor Shiramizu & Ciaran Docherty & Lisa M DeBruine & Benedict C Jones, 2020. "Sexual orientation predicts men’s preferences for sexually dimorphic face-shape characteristics: A replication study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-6, November.
    11. Dariusz P. Danel & Kasper Kalinowski & Natalia Nowak-Szczepanska & Anna Ziomkiewicz-Wichary & Anna Apanasewicz & Krzysztof Borysławski & Sławomir Kozieł & Danuta Kornafel & Pawel Fedurek, 2020. "Shifts in Female Facial Attractiveness during Pregnancy," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(14), pages 1-10, July.
    12. Francisco Galarza & Gustavo Yamada & Carlos Zelada, 2015. "Cuesta arriba para los afroperuanos: evidencia de la discriminación en el acceso al mercado laboral de Lima Metropolitana," Working Papers 15-03, Centro de Investigación, Universidad del Pacífico.
    13. Mariska E Kret & Masaki Tomonaga, 2016. "Getting to the Bottom of Face Processing. Species-Specific Inversion Effects for Faces and Behinds in Humans and Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes)," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-13, November.
    14. Swami, Viren & Tovée, Martin J. & Furnham, Adrian, 2008. "Does financial security influence judgements of female physical attractiveness?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1363-1370, August.
    15. José Antonio Muñoz-Reyes & Marta Iglesias-Julios & Miguel Pita & Enrique Turiegano, 2015. "Facial Features: What Women Perceive as Attractive and What Men Consider Attractive," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-17, July.
    16. Barnaby JW Dixson & Anthony C Little & Henry GW Dixson & Robert C Brooks, 2017. "Do prevailing environmental factors influence human preferences for facial morphology?," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 28(5), pages 1217-1227.
    17. Rainer Voegeli & Rotraut Schoop & Elodie Prestat-Marquis & Anthony V Rawlings & Todd K Shackelford & Bernhard Fink, 2021. "Cross-cultural perception of female facial appearance: A multi-ethnic and multi-centre study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(1), pages 1-18, January.
    18. Nakahashi, Wataru, 2008. "Quantitative genetic models of sexual selection by male choice," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 167-181.
    19. Leda M. Pérez & Pedro Llanos Paredes, 2015. "¿Al fondo del escalafón?: un estado de la cuestión sobre el trabajo doméstico remunerado en el Perú," Working Papers 15-01, Centro de Investigación, Universidad del Pacífico.
    20. Philipp Mitteroecker & Sonja Windhager & Gerd B Müller & Katrin Schaefer, 2015. "The Morphometrics of “Masculinity” in Human Faces," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(2), pages 1-13, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0123284. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.