A common aim is to identify specific features that possibly evolved as signals indicating mate breeding potential.
Several cross-cultural studies have already determined that men from all countries and from all races tend to find hourglass-shaped women more appealing. Even from ancient times, women with larger, curvier hips have been associated with fertility, and so, strictly evolutionarily speaking, it makes more sense for men to be more attracted to these females.
Photography by Krisphoto. Model Nicole Murphy.
–livescience.com/9834-hourglass-figures-affect-men-brains-drug
Researchers have recently determined, in a new scientific study, that watching a woman with an hourglass body type tends to have the reward response in the brain of a male as drinking alcohol or using drugs. The same pleasure centers in the brain light up, as they would if the males were engaged in this type of risky behavior.
It turns out women find similar optimally attractive female bodies as attention-grabbing, albeit for different reasons. Women size up other women in an effort to determine their own relative attractiveness and to maintain mate guarding – or, in other words, keep their mate away from optimally designed females,” explains Georgia Gwinnett College evolutionary cognitive neuroscientist Steven Platek.
–news.softpedia.com/news/Hourglass-Women-Have-Drug-Like-Effect-on-Male-Brain
Based on evolutionary principles assume that attractiveness provides a reliable cue to a woman’s reproductive value. In Primate Sexuality, Alan Dixson records preferred WHR (waist to hip ratio) values of 0.6 for Chinese university students and Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania, 0.7 for Indians and Caucasian Americans, and 0.8 for men in Bakossiland, Cameroon.
–psychologytoday.com/blog/how-we-do-it/201507/waists-hips-and-the-sexy-hourglass-shape