Is there such a thing as the perfect human body?
Marilyn Monroe, the Venus de Milo, Sophia Loren, Scarlett Johansson - at different times, these women have all been considered among the most desirable on Earth.
Quite apart from their beautiful faces, they all boast, or boasted, a low waist/hip ratio (WHR).
Used by our hunter-gatherer forefathers to judge the health and fecundity of women, the WHR explains why men find more curvy (but not necessarily overweight) figures such as Scarlett Johansson attractive.
To work out WHR, divide the waist measurement by the hip measurement.
Most women’s WHR falls between 0.7 and 1.0. WHRs of 0.7 or 0.8 are most attractive, with attraction decreasing as the WHR increases.
Unlike breasts, where bigger doesn’t mean better, attraction increases as WHR decreases, even if the waist is artificially cinched in with a belt or corset.
But a woman’s WHR isn’t necessarily lower the thinner she is; it’s about how small her waist is compared with the hips.
“Young women can be chubby, but still have a low WHR,” say the authors of The Psychology Of Physical Attraction.
“As women get older, their waists thicken and their fertility goes down in proportion to their age - that explains why a slim waist, a signal of fertility, is attractive.”
A low WHR doesn’t have universal appeal, though. A Tanzanian tribe, the Hadza, who subsist by foraging for wild foods, are unaffected by the female WHR.
Another isolated tribe, the Matsigenka of southern Peru, simply prefer the larger lady.
It’s all because of what we perceive as healthy. When resources were scarce, being overweight - and thus well fed - was good.
Today, being overweight is associated with health problems.
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