Do women and men agree on the ideal body for them and their partner?

This was the question a group of British neurologists asked themselves. [1] To address this question they asked forty caucasian women and forty caucasian men aged around twenty to create male and female bodies that they thought ideal using a 3D modeling program. To remove any bias that the starting point might generate the participants had to fulfill their task twice: Once starting from a thin and once starting from an overweight body. To account for differences between preference and reality the bodies resulting from these sessions were compared to the actual bodies of the participants. Waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), waist-to-chest ratio (WCR) and body mass index (BMI) were used as indicators.

The result: Yes, men and women have a similar preference concerning ideal female and male bodies. The authors explain this consensus by turning to mate selection theory, which expects women and men to have a ‘very precise and accurate idea of what the opposite sex find attractive’. [2]

Both sexes preferred a female body that is just not underweight on BMI scale, which is consistent with previous results identifying a low BMI as main indicator of female attractiveness. Still the body shape remains an important criterion, since the study also showed that a slim but curvaceous female body is desired by both sexes.

Concerning the ideal male body both sexes preferred a body with a slender waist and narrow hips but with an extremely broad and muscular chest, creating a V-shaped torso. This puts the bodies at the upper limit of the healthy BMI range (since the BMI does not reflect the fat-to-muscle ratio), which might still be an underestimate, as the authors point out.

The ideal BMI for women was lower than the BMI of 39 out of the 40 female participants, while half of the men were below and the other half above their ‘ideal’ BMI. A surprising difference in what the participants desired for themselves and what the other sex preferred was that women wanted to be larger in bust size than the men preferred them, while the men wanted to be (even) more muscular than the women preferred them. If there would be an influence of the media men should prefer heavier and bustier women instead, since female models in men’s magazines are like that. [3]

This leads to the question where this desired overcompensation of an attractive feature comes from. Also still open are the questions whether these body ideals differ with age, nationality and social status. And the most important question of all: How happy are we with striving for a body that is so significantly different than our actual body?

Felix Spenkuch