There are good, awful, and absolutely dreadful methods to discuss scientific results. Unfortunately, an article in lifestyle magazine AskMen regarding female appearance appears to have fallen into the third category. I mean, I always have low expectations when a male author talks about how guys prefer it when women are slim, but when the phrase “big, honking jugs” is used without irony, something has gone horribly wrong.
To be fair to Ian Lang, the author of this entertaining post, the study he’s referring to is legitimate, and the results are roughly what he claims. Based on data from 1,327 participants, both men and women, in ten countries across Africa, Asia, and Europe, researchers discovered that men find women with a lower Body Mass Index more attractive.
This finding, of course, contradicts the evolutionary hypothesis that people are drawn to heavier companions because it suggests that they are more likely to survive if food becomes scarce. The concept that tastes may have shifted is an intriguing topic to discuss. People have been attempting to decipher the “logic” of sexual desire for decades, and they show no signs of stopping.
“A little extra cushion for the pushin’ may have been ideal a few thousand years ago,” Ian Lang writes in a piece for AskMen, “but now we recognize that child-bearing hips aren’t worth much if she’s going to keel over from a heart attack a year from now.” Really? Are you aware that being overweight does not always imply poor health? And that simply glancing at someone does not tell you anything about their health?
People cannot control who they find attractive, but you can dispel the myth that a few extra pounds will cause someone to “keel over from a heart attack a year from now.” And it isn’t even the worst part. The worst part comes when he adds, “It’s believed that men prefer curvier women because their wider hips and big, honking jugs suggest fertility.”
Lang claims that this study is significant because people should “stop trotting out the same, tired evo-psych explanations for human behavior,” but in reality, he is peddling other tired, overused, misguided narratives, such as those about what health “looks” like and how sexual attraction works. What people find appealing differs greatly from person to person. Are there any trends? Sure.
Are they absolutes? No. Do we actually grasp everything at this point? Definitely not. Making broad assertions like “Real men don’t prefer curves, actually,” is ridiculous. And, more crucially, continually referring to women’s bodies in overtly demeaning ways while discussing which bodies males find beautiful is simply unacceptable.
The entire affair supports the notion that women’s bodies are not ours, but rather community property, on display for anybody to comment on, make fun of, or lust after as males see fit. It’s textbook masculine stare. It’s insulting. It is disgusting. So, if we’re going to talk about research on what guys find beautiful, could we at least pretend to be respectful? That would be excellent.