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The Shaping of Women’s Bodies: Men’s Choice of Fertility or Heat Stress Avoidance?

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The Body Beautiful

Abstract

Beauty matters (Buss, 2004;Miller, 2001). We know from what men tell us, from the images they use when masturbating and from investigations of what men find attractive (Barber, 1995;Buss, 1994;Johnson & Franklin, 1993;Jones, 1995;Singh & Young, 1995;van den Berghe & Frost, 1986) that certain parts of women’s bodies both aesthetically please, and sexually arouse, men. Men like beautiful, young women and, given a choice (Gladue & Delany, 1990), or when engaging in fantasy (Barclay, 1973), men prefer a pretty, young woman. They like to fall in love (Fisher, 1992;Jankowiak, 1995;Sprecher et al., 1994) and would order up humour, intelligence, good work habits, shared values, loyalty, and fidelity (Buss, 1989), but given an option, prefer such things (or a goodly share of them) in a pretty package. Not only are pretty women more likely to arouse men sexually, they are considered more competent, employable, generous, helpful, and intelligent (Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani & Longo, 1991). Men gain status by the beauty of their partner (Sigall & Landy, 1973) in much the same way they do from the clothes they wear and the cars they drive.

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  1. University College London, UK

    Dorothy Einon (Senior Lecturer in Psychology)

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  1. University of Liverpool, UK

    Viren Swami (Research Associate) (Research Associate)

  2. University College London, UK

    Adrian Furnham (Professor of Psychology) (Professor of Psychology)

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© 2007 Dorothy Einon

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Einon, D. (2007). The Shaping of Women’s Bodies: Men’s Choice of Fertility or Heat Stress Avoidance?. In: Swami, V., Furnham, A. (eds) The Body Beautiful. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230596887_8

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