Esthetics

Springer et al.^{(1, pdf)} showed the following noses individually to 308 judges and asked them to judge whether they belong to women or men.  Each of the four images shows the average of a sample of men or women, none of whom were the judges.

One point that has repeatedly come up in this site’s criticism is that beauty standards fluctuate greatly, an alleged example being that overweight women were preferred in medieval Europe.  Just about everyone points out Peter Paul Rubens’ paintings featuring obese women.  What did medieval Europeans prefer in women’s looks?

Swami et al. examined whether feminist identification in women is associated with different body weight preferences.^{(1, pdf)}

In many animals, including most mammalian species (roughly, milk-producing animals), the male looks much more spectacular than the female and is more dependent on his looks for reproductive success.  A classic example is that of peacocks and peahens, where the male looks magnificent and the female comparatively dull; another example is of lions vs. lionesses.  A general theme in such species is that the investment of the female in producing and rearing offspring is much greater, making the females largely choose the males and the males court the females, for which they need to impress the females, which they often do through their looks.  Among humans, women invest more heavily in raising children, and courtship, with a minority of exceptions, mostly comprises of males seeking to impress women, but the general theme in human societies is that physical attractiveness (henceforth attractiveness) is more important for women.  Why is this so?

Swami et al. showed line drawings of men and women that varied the length of the legs relative to height, and had the figures rated for appeal by men and women.^{(1, pdf)}

In a previously addressed study by Albert Magro, he showed that the widespread appeal of the Barbie doll is best explained by Barbie exaggerating many of the derived features in humans.  Magro followed up this study with a more elaborate one where he used 18 sets of line drawings representing ancestral, intermediate and derived shapes, and had them rated by men, women, children, adults and people of European, sub-Saharan African and East Asian ancestry.^{(1, pdf [6.7 MB])}

A formal criticism of Stephen Marquardt’s Phi (Golden ratio) mask is about to be published.  The electronic version was posted online a few days ago.  Here is the article in its entirety.  It is written for a scientific/medical audience, but its contents have been discussed in a more layperson-friendly manner at this site before.

In a previous article that addressed a literature review of correlates of facial beauty such as averageness, femininity and fluctuating asymmetry (random component of bilateral asymmetry), I posted toward the end a series of pictures of nude women, and asked which of them would be rated as having the most attractive physique by most people.  The pictures were taken from the photography of Akira Gomi.

Some comments on the relatively smaller feet of women.