Does my size matter ?
Does body size matter?
Pick up any fashion magazine today and you could be forgiven for thinking that the ideal female body shape is that of an adolescent boy.
But although the most fashionable silhouette in recent years has been an extremely slender one, its not one we necessarily find attractive.
Studies have shown that people favour those who are of normal weight, and that people caught up in an accident are far more likely to be rescued if they are of a normal weight than their underweight - or overweight - peers.
Slenderness (as exemplified by Audrey Hepburn) is regarded as a cultural preference.
In poorer cultures, being portly can be a sign of wealth, and therefore desirability.
People value thinness more “as you move up the social and economic scale”, Adrian Furnham says.
“As you get richer, you get thinner. Where food is scarce, tubbier women are thought of as more attractive.”
That aside, Furnham and his co-author Viren Swami found that body size matters very little in the grand scheme of things.
Being a fairly superficial lot, what we really care about are people’s faces and how attractive they are.
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