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DOES MY BMI LOOK BIG IN THIS?

October 02, 2002

What makes a woman`s body attractive? A new study at the University of Newcastle, to be published in the Proceedings B, a learned journal published by the Royal Society, indicates that it`s not so much the shape and the curves that matter but whether a woman`s weight looks right for her height. The researchers hope to use these results in further work on how women suffering from eating disorders, such as anorexia, analyse body image and attractiveness.

"One of the most fundamental problems for any organism is mate selection," says Dr Martin Tovee who led the research." How visual cues are signalled and interpreted in the search for a `fit` reproductive partner is a complex area of research." Two potentially critical factors in humans are shape and Body Mass Index (BMI). BMI is weight scaled for height (in kilograms per metre squared) whilst in research on women shape has focused on the ratio of waist to hip (WHR).

In the experiments 23 male and 23 female undergraduates were asked to rate a set of 60 pictures of real women`s bodies for attractiveness to determine the relative importance of BMI and WHR. Attractiveness was scored on a 0 (least attractive) to 9 (most attractive) basis. Waveform analysis was also performed on the body images to further unravel the two attractiveness factors.

Nice curves?
In the initial experiment the 60 pictures, sampled from a database of 457 women, were selected to favour WHR. Previous work has been interpreted as suggesting that a low WHR (i.e. a curvaceous body) corresponds to the optimal fat distribution for high fertility and therefore should be highly attractive. However, the results showed a far greater correlation for BMI with attractiveness than for WHR.

"To further explore the relative importance of BMI and WHR a second experiment was performed on a subset of images that demonstrated an inverse relationship with between BMI and WHR," says Dr. Martin Tovee who led the research. "In other words, a group where as the women got heavier they also become more curvaceous."

The findings of this experiment also showed BMI to be the better determinant of attractiveness. It was found that as the images became more curvaceous (but with a higher BMI) they were deemed least attractive.

"This inverted the expected result predicted by the WHR theory," says Dr Tovee. "However, the finding that BMI may be the primary determinant of female attractiveness is consistent with the fact that successful female fashion models tends to fall within a narrow BMI range." It is also well established that changes in BMI has a strong impact on health and reproductive potential.

Waveform analysis
It is possible that a simple ratio like WHR would not accurately capture body shape. Therefore body shape was treated like a complex waveform by sampling body size at 68 equally spaced positions on the torso and legs. Two methods of waveform decomposition, Principal Component Analysis and Independent Component Analysis, were used to determine good predictors of attractiveness. "Again this more complex analysis showed that factors linked to body size, and therefore BMI, were good predictors, whilst those related to shape were not," says Dr Tovee.

Conversely studies have shown that attractiveness in males is primarily determined by shape, specifically upper body shape.

Good health is attractive
BMI in adult women can be very closely correlated with health and fertility. "Studies suggest that BMI values which are optimal for health and fertility are also those regarded as the most attractive" says Dr Tovee.
Ends

Inta Communication Ltd