Death of a factoid
Ever since it was determined almost a decade ago, everyone knows how men find a specific waist-to-hip ratio attractive in women, immutable and consistent across all cultures and time. Too bad it's wrong.
The oft-repeated claim about the stability and time-invariance of the waist-to-hip ratio of Playboy centerfolds and Miss America winners has been used to support a theory about a highly specific and unmalleable preference built into male psychology through evolution by natural selection. As already noted, there are other reasons to be skeptical of the Darwinian explanation. Yet, regardless of its apparent merits, this paper shows that the empirical description of the self-reported WHR among these two sets of American beauty icons is not correct. For both groups, there is more variation in WHR than has been suggested and a more specific pattern of change over time.
(Via Follow Me Here)
The article doesn't actually address the question of a WHR that is desirable across cultures. It shows that there's an error in one widely quoted study, but that's limited to just Playboy models and Miss America winners; there are other studies that address the cross-cultural question, and their results have not (yet) been discredited.
Posted by Frank on December 11 2002 01:04