By Jeraldine Phneah

Anyone who knows anything about beauty science and social psychology would tell you that the attempt to be thin won't make you more attractive. While going from fat to "just nice" is helpful... going from "just nice" to skinny just makes you unattractive to the opposite gender.

Reason being: Men prefer curvy body shapes, not stick thin figures.

If you open men's magazines, you will find that the type of models being used there are very different from the ones in female magazines. This is a very clear indicator that the type of ideal female beauty which appeals to women generally is different from those which appeal to men.

Curves are attractive to men because they signal - fertility and health. This has been supported by several studies:

Researchers at Georgia Gwinnett College and the University of Texas at Austin say that curvy womenreward the male brains the same ways a drug does. Their study asked a group of men to look at photographs of women’s naked bodies before and after plastic surgery. None of the women lost weight. Instead their fat had been redistributed to other places. Some essentially gained weight to become more curvy after surgery. MRI scans of the observers’ brains when they looked at curvy women showed activity in the same reward centers activated by pleasurable drugs.

In another research conducted in 2013 by social psychologist Sarah Gervais of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, it was found that bodies with larger breasts, narrower waists and bigger hips often prompted longer looks from men and these women were also given more positive personality ratings.

The two psychological studies above are supported by a recent survey by UK lingerie brand Bluebella. They found that men and women have wildly different views on the ideal female body. According to the survey,women preferred other women with fit, toned builds. On the other hand, men preferred women with bigger curves.

The scientific basis for preferring women who are curvy is because women who are more shapely are seen as more fertile and have bodies which are better equipped for child bearing.

Also, curvy women live longer, are smarter and can produce healthier and smarter offspring. A UC Santa Barbara study suggests that women with thicker backsides and thighs may have a reproductive advantage. Extra fat in these areas contain omega-3 fatty acids to help moms and their baby's brain during pregnancy.

While most men prefer wider hips which come with smaller waists, men's preference for breast size actually differs based on culture and also various other factors.

1) Men who perceive themselves as 'not rich enough' prefer larger breasts

Studies by psychologists have shown that men experiencing relative resource insecurity (those who lack material goods, perceive themselves as not having as much money or resources as they would like to) would find larger breasts more desirable than men experiencing resource security (those who have material goods).

Their research was conducted across 266 men in Malaysia. The men from low socioeconomic backgrounds rated larger breast as more attractive than men from medium socioeconomic backgrounds, who in turn endorsed larger breasts as more attractive than men from high socioeconomic backgrounds.

Reason being? The study suggests that one view on women’s breast size is that it acts as a “signal of fat reserves, which in turn advertises access to resources”.

2) Sexist men prefer larger breasts

Another type of men who prefer larger breasts are generally those who hold sexist attitudes.

According to a study from the University of Westminster, men who exhibit sexist attitudes towards women are also likely to have a preference for large breasts. The findings, which show a connection between sexism in men and breast size, involved 361 white men from 18-68 years of age being shown 3D models of women with a range of breast sizes.

The research found that the largest percentage of men (32.7 per cent) rated medium-sized breasts “most attractive”, followed by large (24.4 per cent) and then very large breasts (19.1 percent). The majority of men interested in large to very large breasts admitted to displaying behavioral traits of sexism and hostile attitudes towards women.

The study concluded that men perceive large breasts as “traditional” femininity and “perceive women as meek and weak”. The researchers of the study said, “it is arguable that benevolently sexist men perceived larger female breasts as attractive because larger breast size on a woman is associated with perceived femininity”.

3) Men who prefer smaller breasts are those who want a submissive partner

The third type of men who generally prefer smaller breasts are those who prefer a submissive partner who is easy to control.

According to psychologist, Stuart Fischoff,. Ph.D., men who like women with small breasts are generally seeking a more submissive, non-threatening partner. He explains that women with smaller breasts are generally seen as not trying to compete with other women who have larger breasts, and therefore will be loyal.

If you enjoyed this entry, the specific subject which studies the science of attraction is - Social Psychology or Evolutionary Psychology.

This topic is very interesting to me because I am not the type of person who buys the cliche statements: "Everyone is beautiful in their own ways" or "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder".As a practical and logical person, I prefer to trust scientific standards of attractiveness and beauty.

While there are some differences, thereexists objective universal standards of attractiveness on which most of us can agree on.

Human are basically animals. Subconsciously, we care about survival, successful reproduction and raising of our off spring.

People find the opposite gender beautiful when they exhibit features which signal four key traits...

(1) Fertility - The ability to produce healthy offspring and provide for them (hip waist ratio, breasts)

(2) Sexual Arousal / Interest (redder lips, darker eyes, dilated pupils)

(3) Health (good skin, long legs)

(4) Youth (large eyes, small noses etc)
* Men are not judged by women so much on physical attractiveness but rather on ability to provide i.e. wealth, stability

Most recent evidence finds that people like faces that possess both Adult Sexuality and Infantile faces: large eyes and a small nose, full sexual lips, and a strong jaw and chin (Cunningham, Barbee, Pike, 1990).

However, there are some interesting exceptions on how people perceive attractiveness and why we do not always pair with the partner we deem the most attractive or able to provide:

1. Cultural reasons do affect one's perception of beauty.

According to a study by Michael R. Cunningham of the Department of Psychology at the University of Louisville, generally men of all races prefer women who had "neonate large eyes, greater distance between eyes, and small noses" and that "shiny" was also deemed attractive because it is indicative of "neonate vitality".

However, among all the men, there was a "difference" in the preferences of Asian and white judges with Asian judges preferring women with "less mature faces" and smaller mouths than the White judges.

2. Some studies have shown that men prefer to settle down with less attractive women.
This is due to some research which has shown that better looking women are generally likelier to cheat.

3. People can compensate poorer physical attractiveness with other factors
Matching hypothesis (first introduced in the 1960s) states that people tend to pair up with others who are equally physical attractiveness due to realistic constraints. People settle for mating within “their league” whether they want to or not.

However, recent research has shown that there are greater instances of complex matching, which occurs when people are able to attract partners far more physically attractive than themselves by offering compensatory assets—say, status, power, or financial standing. i.e. Rich middle aged balding fat man with gorgeous young model

4. Sometimes those who have a high level of physical attractiveness seek less attractive mates in order to wield more power and control over them (‘settler’).

Conversely, less attractive people may attract more attractive mates because they are more likely to yield to their whims (‘reacher’). eg. average looking girl and wealthy guy who could have easily gotten someone of a higher standard in terms of attractiveness with his money.

Ending off, I would just like to say that if you are not fat but dieting and exercising a lot, aiming to be skinny to be more attractive to guys... please don't. Besides being unhealthy, numerous research has shown that guys don't really care about "skinny" but find women of healthy weight and who are curvy more attractive.

So, please don't be fooled by media portrayal and also pressure from your friends. All these trying to lose weight to be super skinny will only make you look like some a rectangular block or pre-pubescent kid.

Source: Jeraldine Phneah