Posted on 12/03/2008 8:36:45 AM PST by Lucky9teen
An imperfect body might be just what the doctor ordered for women and key to their economic success, an anthropologist now says.
While pop culture seems to worship the hourglass figure for females, with a tiny waist, big boobs and curvy hips à la Marilyn Monroe, this may not be optimal, says Elizabeth Cashdan of the University of Utah.
That's because the hormones that make women physically stronger, more competitive and better able to deal with stress also tend to redistribute fat from the hips to the waist.
So in societies and situations where women are under pressure to procure resources and otherwise bring home the bacon, they may be less likely to have the classic hourglass figure, Cashdan hypothesizes in the December issue of the journal Current Anthropology.
Curve crazy
Until now, scientists (and apparently Western society) thought a curvy figure trumped other body shapes. The idea was based on results from medical studies that suggested a curvy waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 or lower (meaning the waist is significantly narrower than the hips) is associated with higher fertility and lower rates of chronic disease.
In addition, past research has revealed that men prefer a ratio of 0.7 or lower when looking for a mate. The preference makes perfect sense, according to evolutionary psychologists, because the low ratio is a reliable signal of a healthy, fertile woman. Along those lines, Playboy centerfolds tend to have a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.68, Cashdan found.
However, women around the world tend to have larger waist-to-hip ratios (more cylindrical than hourglass-shaped) than is considered optimal by these medical and social standards.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Is that Monica Lewinsky?
This is total crap...
Look, they have taken outlines of women, nothing more than drawings, no face, no detals, just body shapes, into the remotest parts of the world and shown them to men who have never seen any western cultural magazine or influence and they all when asked to pick the most attractive woman picked the woman with the hourglass shape. Every single one of them.
Biology is at play here folks, I know the feminists don’t like it and want to blame it on environmental conditioning but its just not true.
Now the push to be size ZERO etc is totally conditionalized by culture, but the hourglass shape itself is not.
Yes, way too skinny.
Round hips and butt, slightly curved tummy, decent (but not grotesque plastic) boobage, pretty face, and most of all a good personality.
“Actually, most of the stereotype for what a “good body” is, has women WAY TOO skinny...”
According to what?
Curvy Woman
Professor Cashdan
The Varga Girls were the ideal shape, IMO. The sort of girl you could paint on the side of a WW-II warplane.
I married one!
I would say that only 2 of the women pictured are too skinny.
hmmm ... “the hormones that make women physically stronger, more competitive and better able to deal with stress”
Can you say ‘androgens’ or more correctly testosterone?
In other words the hormone that makes humans stronger, more aggressive and better able to deal with stress ... makes women more manly, and that is BETTER???
Shaping women like men does not make them better.
Vargas. Antonio Vargas.
i believe this is incorrect. according to fashion experts the perfect woman looks like a pez dispenser.
My ex started out with an hourglass figure which quickly transformed into a hurricane lamp figure.
Or this one
I think that explains it all.
http://www.tidsskriftet.no/lts-img/2004/L04-04-Pro-Int-
Cashdan.jpg
My ideal woman is deaf, dumb, blind and whose father owns a brewry.
Sounds like an excuse to be a shapeless, physically unfit, female, imho. Look at people from the 1940s and 50s. Obesity was the exception, not the rule.
Gonna go throw up now. :O)
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