The mystery of female beauty

Abstract

Evolutionary psychology suggests that a woman's sexual attractiveness might be based on cues of reproductive potential. It has been proposed that a major determinant of physical attractiveness is the ratio between her waist and hip measurements (the waist-to-hip ratio, or WHR): for example, a woman with a curvaceous body and a WHR of 0.7 is considered to be optimally attractive^1,2,3, presumably because this WHR is the result of a fat distribution that maximizes reproductive potential⁴. It follows that the preference for a curvaceous body shape in women should be universal among men and not be culturally based, because natural selection presumably favours cues indicative of the most fertile body shape.