Men want Miss Average Article
 

A friend of mine from India sent me this article (it's on a topic that we both discuss on a regular basis.... AND exactly what my boyfriend (who's also from India) said to me last week crazily enough.

What I'm wondering is this just India, or is it everywhere? What do you guys think?



Men want Miss Average, not centrefold babes
12 Jun 2009

Here’s some good news for size 14 women: Gentlemen find the homely shape of the girl-next-door more attractive than the ''perfect'' proportions

Men find Miss Average more attractive than centrefold babes (Getty Images)
of models.

That’s the conclusion of a new study which involved 100 male students. Miss Average can be defined as a 5ft 4in female with a 30in waist and 40in hips.

Aussie boffins asked male volunteers to rate the attractiveness of more than 200 drawings of female torsos of different sizes, The Couriermail reported.

They then compared the most attractive torsos with the vital statistics of eight groups of women, including models, Playboy centrefolds and normal members of the population.

The New Scientist reports that the real women best matched the ideal body shape, with the best fit being a British size 14.

Researcher Dr Martin Grundl said: “Why the subjects prefer this body most of all is pure speculation.

“That is the nature of beauty - it is very easily to recognize but it is very hard to describe and to explain with words.”

Most guys like girls with curves. I have yet to meet a guy that is attracted to stick figured women (i.e. women with bodies like 12 year old boys)

My guy friends tell me they like those sexy curves.

Even though I think this is true, I have yet to embrace my own curves and be happy. =) It matters more to me what I feel and think about myself.

Well, that's all fine and dandy for men wanting what they want.

But being a size 14 would most likely leave me in the obese category. Certainly in the overweight category. Which would leave me at risk for many cancers, heart disease, diabetes, and a slew of many other debilitating and life altering and life threatening diseases. Sorry guys - no can do.

Oh "studies." :dizzy: This version says men like women who are 5'4" with measurements of 36-28-38. But someone in the comments read the actual study and found out what it was ACTUALLY about:

"The work, by Rob Brooks at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues, suggests that the popular notion that a waist-hip ratio of 0.7 is the most attractive only holds if the rest of the body is average." (Behavioral Ecology, DOI: [dx.doi.org] ).

So basically what the media is reporting is totally not the point of the study. They already know that men like women with a waist-to-hip ratio of .7, now they just confirmed that they like it best when you don't have giant shoulders or a huge left hand or something.

First of all, just to clarify, a UK size 14 is a size 10 in the US.

I'm not surprised that men would prefer "average" women to super skinny model types. I mean, there are more of us "average" girls around and very few men are perfect specimens themselves. :)

What annoys me is that these studies seem to imply that men must be shallow, otherwise the scientists and the media wouldn't be surprised by the findings. The majority of men that I know are good guys and personality and compatibility are more important to them than mere looks.

You don't have to be a specific size to be sexy!

WooHoo! I'm very nearly Miss Average.

Kitty

Being a sociology/anthropology major... I was actually more interested in the cultural differences.... but yeah, good points everyone. :)

every man is an individual. find one that loves you for you and cheers for your good health.

Originally Posted by rockinrobin:
Well, that's all fine and dandy for men wanting what they want.

But being a size 14 would most likely leave me in the obese category. Certainly in the overweight category. Which would leave me at risk for many cancers, heart disease, diabetes, and a slew of many other debilitating and life altering and life threatening diseases. Sorry guys - no can do.

Can't agree more with that being fine and dandy for man wanting what they want. I am almost 5'9" so whoever wants measly 5'4" will have to go elsewhere. Besides, it is MY body and I am the only one making the decision about the curves and the weight. Tough luck.

Oh well, I'm no good then :P

My hips are almost the right size - 38" but my waist is all out at 26" :P I think that makes my ratio 0.67. Oh, and I'm too tall at 5'7 hehehe.

...but then again, I haven't had any complaints :P

Studies like those are just a bit of fun - look at the size of the pool sample, a few hundred people at best to decide what billions of people find the most attractive?

...um...yeah, okay lol.

as mentioned, it's all in the guy. I know guys who like average, I know guys who like borderline-anorexic, and i know guys who honestly expect supermodel proportions (these guys are single, wonder why?)

I think a study like this would be a little more interesting if it used ACTUAL WOMEN and not drawings. Send in a group of volunteer women (with blindfolds, they can have anonymity) wearing form-fitting (not tight) clothing, and ask the men to rate these real bodies. A drawing does not represent reality.

All the guys I ever knew who wanted super super skinny girls ended up coming out of the closet years later. I dont know why there is this correlation ...just found it funny.

I know this article has been posted on 3FC before and I'll say it again. Most men have a very wide range of what they find attractive and it usually revolves "if she lets me see her naked". :D

A British size 14 is a size 10, perhaps a 12 in the US.

Well, I've got the 5'4" part down...:D

Brown, thank you for such a wise post. That article didn't sit right with me and I didn't take the time to think it through.

Well, I think the underlying biological implications are interesting. A number of studies have shown that men across cultures show a preference for a specific waist/hip ratio in women....

This is attributed to a biological cause. Women's waist/hip ratio is related to fertility, which is related to.... guess what? Overall health.

Women who have truncal obesity, meaning, they carry more weight, proportionally around the waist, have increased health risks: a decreased waist/hip ratio is a marker of risk for insulin resistance, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and PCOS.

Miss Average is healthy. She has a healthy waist/hip ratio. She will usually have fewer problems getting pregnant and having healthy babies. Men, across cultures, seem to have an innate preference for this. Makes sense.

Now, of course, lots of people can and do have healthy babies in spite of a less than perfect waist hip ratio.

But, if we all strive for a healthy waist hip ratio, it will make us healthier for ourselves. That men also will find us more attractive is incidental.

It bugs me that the study refers to the size 14 women as “real” women. Playboy models are real women…centerfolds are real women…

Well maybe in India.....men in Australia a size 14.....the men in USA seem to prefer size 0.....((good luck with that guys!!!))

http://www.momlogic.com/2009/06/size...perfect_10.php

Even more shocking...ever see all 8 parts of "truth about size zero" on youtube??? Interesting watch..... No thanks....never for me!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4XWGvGYFRQ

LOL tea2, me to *giggles*

Originally Posted by SilverLife:
A British size 14 is a size 10, perhaps a 12 in the US.

It definately depends where you go. It makes me laugh to see sizes like that because back in the days, most clothing was measured in inches espicially for pants.

SO in inches I have 32 waist which is a size 14 yet some store I am a size 12 even 10!! Its just to show that these sizes are wrong as some companies reduce the number.

No matter where I go in the world I have a 32 inches waist but depending which store and where I can go from size 10 to 16!

In my personnal experience, I always find foreigners more attracted to me than people from my background (im french canadian). Im not sure if they are just more vocal about it, but I always found that my curves were celebrated a lot more from people around the world then in my own country.

When I went to university, we had a research going on on what is considered beauty in different part of the world. It was extremely interesting as we used not only peoples opinion but also the image on TV, Magazines and drawings (some of the cultures were from africa and did not use technology)
In short, it was obviosu that in some country the image of beauty was more curvy and bountyful. The women in maagzines and on TV were very different than the one we see here.

It all comes down to personal preference... and even more ironic, *sometimes* love. :P

If that is what men prefer why do they put the super skinny women in playboy and on the cover of magazines? And why do Rockettes have to be over 5'8"?

I think the men in the study just picked the woman they would most likely ask out, not prefer to look at. They don't have the self esteem to go for the super skinny model.

That's my very cynical opinion, though.

Thanks for sharing - interesting piece

My boyfriend says he has always been most attracted to the "Superhero" type of female body- so tall, strong, curvaceous.

But if you look through his exes, you'd get the idea he's a chubby chaser (self included before I lost the weight)

However, he also says it isn't all about what you look like (gotta love this guy- 5 years with him!) and that he has always had a "one date" policy where he would go out on a date with any woman because in his words "How do you know if you like somebody without talking to them?"

Men aren't like people make them out to be. There are a lot of genuinely good guys out there who are more interested in making a real connection than simply what you look like.

Personally, I've been obese and I've been thin. I've never had trouble dating. There's somebody for everybody.

Well, either around 10% of those men weren't sexually interested in women at all, or they deliberately filtered for heterosexuality. In which case what else did they filter for? Age, presumably, if they're students, and probably social background for the same reason. Ethnicity? How attractive they were?

I'm also wondering why we never seem to hear about studies into what women prefer in men, let alone what people prefer in same-sex partners. It's 36 years since "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" was published, and we are still assuming that men are the ones who do the looking and women are the ones who are there to be looked at.

Originally Posted by Esofia:
It's 36 years since "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" was published, and we are still assuming that men are the ones who do the looking and women are the ones who are there to be looked at.

This kind of gloomy thought crossed my mind as I watched Sky Sports (sound off) from the rowing machine at the gymn this morning. :(

Wasn't there some thing recently where they tried to force female badminton players to wear skirts and were told, "Er, no, sod off, if people are watching us it's because they want to watch someone playing badminton"?

Ha ha. I hadn't heard that. I'm pleased and impressed. And encouraged. Thanks.

The enlightened times we live in. You'll be glad to hear that the proposed rule was scrapped. Yay for feminist badminton!

Glad to have found this thread. I am 54 and have been back in school for 1 1/2 years and am finding myself horrified repeatedly. Young women think feminism is a bad word, instructors using sexist language, history classes that force reading after reading of outside documents about how evil/worthless/untrustworthy women are (one or two would have driven his point home).
Backlash is real.

Dang, women trashing other women with terms of measly, comparing thin women to boys. When will that change????????????????? We need to stick together they way the boys do, that is why feminism has failed. Oh, that and we still are reducing ourselves to objects by making what men want important. What about what we want? What about how we feel about ourselves independent of the opinions of others? What about celebrating all forms of the female shape? I personally believe objectification is a factor in weight issues. That being said, it is not shallow to be sexually attracted to what you are attracted to, that is something beyond our control. There are plenty of men who marry a woman of small size only to watch her expand through the years, and some still love their wives because it has gone beyond the visual, and sadly some don't. All over I read women trashing other women, making fun on long blonde hair, barbie doll types, etc etc etc. It breaks my heart that there is no sisterhood.

If the majority of men prefer short, chubby women...then why is ALL media full of tall, super-thin women instead of women like me? Because people don't want to see fat.

Any time a "normal" or average woman gets a picture or video put up publicly there are hordes of people calling her fat, people even seem downright insulted or offended that their eyes have been assaulted with such an atrocity. What is sad is that alot of those people complaining are women.

I think it is this media that makes it so difficult for there to be a sisterhood amongst us that goes deeper than how much we weigh. The ideal that is shoved at us from every direction is just too hard for the average woman to achieve and maintain, and that makes the majority feel inferior. With those feelings of inferiority come feelings of resentment.

Let's face facts here. Men may date and marry the average woman, but everybody can't have the minority. There aren't enough perfect people to go around. But those same men are also the ones who are out buying playboy magazine and all the products sold with those ads that feature perfection. Sex sells. Skinny = sexy.

The day I see billboards of chubby women tempting men to buy cars, liquor, jewelry, and clothes is the day I'll believe that the majority of men prefer sizes 10-14. Advertisers are in it for the result, folks. They spend beaucoup bucks finding out exactly what people want to see. If the idea that the majority of men preferred to look at miss average was genuinely true, they would jump on that bandwagon and ride it straight to the bank.

Originally Posted by gonnadoitthistime:
Dang, women trashing other women with terms of measly, comparing thin women to boys. When will that change?????????????????

AMEN!!! I get SO offended when people berate other women for "looking better" than they do. Just yesterday I went on a tirade to my two workout buddies who were trashing this beautiful, thin Asian woman in our class out of jealousy. Dude, SHUT UP! She is SO nice. It's wrong to Hate on people just because you wish you looked like them just as much as it's wrong to Hate on people because they are heavy.

I absolutely HATE how now that I'm fit, people will say things to me like "oh you're too thin" or "Eat a cheeseburger" or "I wouldn't want to lose my curves like you did." Uhoh, my blood is starting to boil right now thinking about this!

We need to stop the appearance-based hate, from all angles.

I agree that we need to stop the appearance-based hate...but if that's so, why assume that people who were talking about a thin woman were doing so out of jealousy? Their actions may have been ugly, but that doesn't make them jealous of a thin woman or mean that they want to look like that.

I'm guilty of saying things like, "Damn, Candice Swanepoel needs to eat a sandwich!" in the privacy of my own living room, I admit it. But that's someone who's paid to be in the public eye, to look a certain way, to convince me to buy clothes--and when she looks like a bag of bones, I do not say she looks like a bag of bones because I wished I looked that way too. It's a little different because Swanepoel's profession demands that people look at her, unlike the thin woman in your classroom, but I still don't know that it's always jealousy that says "ew" at another person's body type.

I don't wish I looked like anyone else but me--but I do wish to look like (and am working toward) a leaner, healthier me. :)

Anyone who told you that you "lost your curves," by the way, has no eyes, because your "after" picture looks fit, healthy, and still quite curvy. THAT was clearly a jealousy-motivated comment as there is no truth to it. No wonder that one made your blood boil!

As for men liking "Miss Average," I do think there's a kernel of truth to it. Some of the stars men consider hottest are robust, curvy, and/or athletic body types. They may be hourglasses, apples, pears or bananas, but they look healthy. Everyone's tastes vary, but most men I've known think that Kate Winslet or even Kate Middleton has a sexier body than Kate Moss. Beauty ideals also get influenced by what people see on a daily basis, so it's hard to say how much of what we or men consider beautiful is native to us and how much is distorted by the heavily Photoshopped images we see in magazines and on billboards.

Are thin bodies sexy to us, or are we simply told so often that sexy bodies are thin that we internalize that lesson? I'd like to think that eventually, we'll realize that healthy bodies of all sizes are sexy in different ways and to different people.

Different strokes for different folks. I don't know many men who are so picky about proportions that they whip out measuring tape in order to determine whether they are attracted to women.

I do know it's stupid to get snarky at other women about bodies, especially harping on healthy sized people for having/lacking T&A or whatever you want to call it. It's not like people have autonomous control over how their fat distributes.

Also LOLOLOL at those tactless dingdongs who would say something like "I don't want to lose my curves like you did."

I find it quite telling to look at a very famous myth.

Take the Trojan War. In reality, it was most likely a series of wars fought over control to the Bosphorus Strait, a key position for controlling trade routes. The version we know about has a warrior prancing around sulking, and a woman who allegedly started the whole thing. In the mythic version, Helen of Troy (who should better be known as Helen of Sparta, she never chose Troy) was originally married to the king of Sparta, and then the Trojan prince Paris came and stole her, took her back to Troy, and a war was started to retrieve her. As far as I recall (my Greek's fuzzier than my Latin), the word used means both "stole" and "raped"; evidently it was handy to have a word meaning both back then. There is no suggestion that her actions were in any way voluntary.

Then there's the idea that she was the prize in a beauty contest amongst goddesses; again, Helen still has no choice here. But somehow it turned into the idea that it was consensual adultery, and on the way to this we get the notion that even if it wasn't, it was all her fault for being so beautiful. "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" says Faustus in Marlowe's play (1592). Somehow, she has moved from being a rape victim to an entire war being all her fault. After that a general hate-fest set in, and Helen took her place alongside the biblical Eve as one of the most loathed women in mythology. The name is still used to conjure up an evil woman, evil precisely because she is beautiful. It is still completely acceptable to hate Helen of Troy, it's the default position and it's never changed. I have read oodles of writers who revision mythology with a feminist slant, and the only thing that even comes close to exonerating Helen is Christa Wolf's Cassandra, where Helen never actually gets to Troy at all and the whole thing is political spin. The otherwise-superb Sara Maitland has a short story in which Helen is sort of apologetic and sort of defiant about the consequences of her chosen adultery, and that's about the best you can usually find. In fact, despite being a keen classicist from the age of eleven and lifelong feminist, it only occurred to me to challenge this a few years ago.

So I'm not terribly surprised that women are still encouraged to hate beautiful women. It all boils down to a patriarchal system of control and scapegoating. You can do a much better job of staying on top of subordinates if you turn them against each other, so that they won't get around to fighting you instead. Feminism has had many victories, but even in the Western world we still live in what is very much a patriarchy, and in the rest of the world it's worse.

As for clothing, I think there are many factors and that by now it's spun so far out of reality that it's farcical. Read about how the best catwalk model for women's clothing is a lean man. (Which is at least a small victory for cross-dressing issues, but dear lord, this whole fashion thing is way off the rails by now.)

I've read this thread with interest.

It's so true that a "normal" woman looks like ... well... whatever she looks like when she wakes up in the morning!

Short, tall, average, thin, fat, curvy, slender... if she woke up with a vagina she's a normal woman! Damnit!

Do I get jealous? Sometimes. Sometimes I think "gosh I wish I had hair/breasts/legs/eyes/lips/butt/stomach like that".

But to hate a person...truly hate a person for what they look like... well, I've been on the receiving end of that for not being attractive enough... and it's hurtful. So, why would I want to encourage hate for someone just based on what they look like when I know it's hurt me in the past?

What I do hate, and what I don't know how to change, is that it's somehow okay to hate people based on what they look like. It might not be right, but it's socially okay to hate a woman you've never talked to because of what she looks like. I feel a hate building inside of me about that. How many times have I heard a man or a woman say about another woman "I hate her, she's so thin/tall/pretty/ugly/fat"? How many times have I heard a man say the same about another man? ... I'm trying to recall even one moment when that's happened, and I'm having a tough time.

And then I hear that it's only natural that women try to put down other women so that they can "put down the competition" for men. And I think to myself... really? Really, we're gonna sit here and try to say it's natural? That all women want is to giggle and run around in order to pick up men? That's where our motivation lies, that's our goal on earth? To get a man? Men, in order to take out competition, just... punch each other in the face and then become best friends, but I'm supposed to talk about a woman behind her back viciously. Sure everyone needs to vent every once in a while, but come on.

And that's another thing. If a guy talks about another guy it's venting, if a woman talks about a woman it's gossiping. Which is it?!

There are so many women I run into who say the same thing "I don't get along with women. I only have male friends." I won't lie... it sometimes makes me angry and sad. To be hated by a fellow human before they get to know me... because I'm a woman. And yet, I know why they say it. I know why it persists. It's easier to be friends with men, because they aren't petty (or so it's implied).

But, honestly? I've cherished my friendships. And I've had just as many petty arguments and eye-rolling moments with male friends as I've had with women friends. It makes me so sad, because I want to cultivate normal friendships with other women, and it's harder to do because I'm a woman! I feel like that somehow means I'm not as good of a friend or person. AND THAT MAKES ME FURIOUS!

...and then of course, my angry feminist side comes out... and that perpetuates the stereotype that feminists are all just angry and hate men, and that makes me so angry that I want to roll into a ball on the floor and start drooling and twitching...

It's so "silly" for women to get mad... we're just being "hormonal"... we're just "angry lesbians" (don't get me started on the pages worth of stuff I could write about that response I've heard)... we're just "being cute" and we'll "grow out of it"....

I don't know how to change it. I don't know how to make it right. I don't know how to make sense of the differences. I don't know...

*sighs and rubs her temples* Sorry for getting... how I can I even put it? Passionate? Venting and ranting.

I just... I just want to be a human being.

I think many famous women starve themselves thin because they *think* that's what people want to look at, probably because people making the shows and movies are telling them that. Fashion models are thin because it's easier for the designers (I guess that's what they say), although I think most high fashion clothes are ridiculous and unflattering.

I agree that every woman is a real woman, but if I hear another famous woman breezily tell us she eats fries and cake and junk and "hates exercise," only to publish her memoir about her eating disorder 5 years later, well.... grr, it doesn't matter what I'll want to do, since it's sure to happen.

Originally Posted by Nola Celeste:
I agree that we need to stop the appearance-based hate...but if that's so, why assume that people who were talking about a thin woman were doing so out of jealousy? Their actions may have been ugly, but that doesn't make them jealous of a thin woman or mean that they want to look like that.

I agree, it isn't always the case. But a lot of times it IS the case that these comments are made out of jealousy. In the case of my two workout buddies and the thin Asian girl in our class- it's DEFINITELY jealousy. They say things like "She's just too perfect" or "I hope she has some personality flaws to make up for that body."

A lot of very thin models look genuinely ill because they are so underweight. In those cases, I have also been known to make comments *in private* about how they would look better if they gained some weight. That's kind of different than what I was talking about- which is the reaction a lot of women have to women who are very beautiful by societal standards. It's like we resent them for having the gall to be so gorgeous. Either one is wrong, IMO. It's really none of my business what any other woman's body looks like. And from now on, I'm going to make a true effort not to judge or make comments, even in the privacy of my home.