The results of this study should not be surprising, and one might think it remarkable that some researcher would spend time documenting this, but hard evidence that feminists have been unfairly blaming patriarchy, yet again, is welcome.
This is a French study. Nicolas Gueguen(1, pdf) selected a 20-year-old woman that was rated as having average physical attractiveness by 15 young men. She weighed 123.45 pounds at a height of 5-foot-6, had a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.71 and A-cup breasts. With the help of padding, her bust could be increased to a B-cup (average for young French women) and a C-cup. Her task was to be in a nightclub and the pavement area of a bar on separate occasions with different bust sizes and in the same clothing each time. Her clothes comprised of jeans, light-colored sneakers and a white figure-hugging sweatshirt that highlighted her bust. She was instructed not to gaze at or to smile at men in the nightclub or in the bar, and her behavior was similar across the trials. The number of men who approached her was recorded (Table 1).
Table 1. Number of men’s approaches according to the experimental bust-size conditions.
Number of times approached by men
Bra cup size
A
B
C
Experiment 1 – Nightclub (3 one-hour observation periods in each experimental condition)
13
19
44
Experiment 2 – Pavement area of a bar (7 one-hour observation periods in each experimental condition)
5
9
16
So when many women desire larger breasts and sometimes get breast implants, is patriarchy to blame or is it that women realize what would work to their advantage, i.e., the greater the number of men who approach them, the more selective they can be?
The results of this study are consistent with expectation and some other studies, but Gueguen cited one study where men rated women’s bodies in side view and found smaller breasts more appealing. This may have resulted from the sampling. For instance, the larger breasts could be excessively large or if the women with larger breasts in this study had sagging breasts, then it is understandable that men would prefer smaller and perkier breasts. I will look up this study and comment later. At least in the present study, since the increased bust size was achieved via padding, there was no sag for sure and a C-cup is not very large (In English women, a C-cup is the average bra size).
As a side note, Nicolas Gueguen mentioned, “A WHR of 0.70 seems to be the best value for high attractiveness (Singh, 2002),” but it has been discussed before that this is not true.
References
- Gueguen, N., Women's bust size and men's courtship solicitation, Body Image, 4, 386 (2007), doi:10.1016/j.bodyim.2007.06.006.
you're so full of shit
It's goodluck for that girl that she has a lovely tiny breasts and could be attacted by the prince or some successfull bussiness man and all classy gentle men, than to be a whore with big sack breasts whom can be only a partner for half nights of some bastards in a Nightclub.
Hey Erik, here are a couple beauty-related things to check out:
Machine judging of facial attractiveness:
http://www.primidi.com/2008/03/31.html
Composite photos from hot or not:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pierre_tourigny/146532556/sizes/l/
Methodology described here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pierre_tourigny/146532556/
Notice that the composite of the 10s looks feminine enough that one of the comments stereotypes her as talking on a cell phone all day and loving to shop (mouse over for the comments).
Yep (otherwise going as Zonneschijn and other names): You must stick to using a single name.
Hugh Ristik: Thank you for your suggestions. I have already addressed and critiqued the study on machines judging human beauty. I had seen the “hot or not” composite images, but the find is similar to some published studies that I have addressed, and I am not much of a fan of generating facial composites in the manner used.
Saw the "controversial" picture of LeBron on Giselle on Vogue. I'm as hetero as they come, but couldn't help being attracted to LeBron more.
Men and women aesthetically prefer women with small breasts?
I got the pdf of the study that reported an aesthetic preference for small women’s breasts in both men and women, but the article does not provide the images that the authors used. However, they mentioned that the silhouettes depicting large breasts were unrealistic.
Here is the study:
Chances are that the authors’ study images were absurd. They attempt to explain their find in a number of ways, apart from the oddity of the stimuli used. They say:
Furnham and Swami are referring to the 20th century trends above, and they had better read the reason why behind the trend.
They also wrote the following.
They have cited 12-year-old statistics. In 2007, American women underwent around 350,000 breast augmentation surgeries and about 125,000 breast reduction surgeries. So it appears that augmentation is more popular, but breast reduction is not classified as cosmetic surgery, i.e., for predominantly aesthetic reasons, given the typical purpose, namely, spinal/posture problems associated with large breasts.
Anyway, it is true that breast size by itself is not very important to women’s beauty. There are plenty of very attractive women with very small breasts just as there are plenty of unattractive women with large breasts. But other things being equal, if proper stimuli are used – physiques with a healthy amount of body weight, realistic images – then a central tendency to prefer somewhat above average breasts size should be observed.
Hugh Ristik: I hadn’t closely looked at your reference to the “machine judgment of beauty” study. The one that I have addressed is the previous version, but you cited the new version, which had more measurements and hence a better correlation with human judgment. Anyway, the shortcomings of the previous approach still apply. I will add a description of the new study to where I addressed the previous one from these authors.
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