Unlike some other female primates, women do not display obvious sexual swellings during the high-fertility phase of their ovulatory cycles. This simple observation has led some researchers to assume that women’s ovulatory status is completely concealed (Gangestad and Thornhill 2008). By contrast with this assumption, however, several lines of recent research suggest that women do display detectable cues of their ovulatory status, albeit ones that are considerably more subtle than those observed in some other primates.
For example, studies have presented evidence that women’s clothing choices can act as a cue to their ovulatory status (Durante et al. 2008; Haselton et al. 2007). Women tend to display more bare skin and wear clothing judged by others as an attempt to look more attractive during the high-fertility phase of the menstrual cycle than they do during low-fertility phases (Durante et al. 2008; Haselton et al. 2007). Relatedly, women are more likely to wear red clothing (a...
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Jones, B., Hahn, A. (2018). Cues of Female Estrous. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2002-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2002-1
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