Barbie’s Birthday –Why girls and woman buy Barbie’s dolls and Why men our drawn to her hourglass figure.
Why are men attracted to the hourglass shape? Why do men like Barbies girls?
Large-breasted, narrow-waisted women have the highest reproductive potential, according to the newest research. Therefore, it is not a surprise that men are attracted to women with an hourglass shape. The attraction has a biological justification. If men choose to a woman with an hourglass shape they increase the chance that they will bear a child with her. (OK, perhaps not on the top of men's conscious minds when they are out cruising at a bar, put their primal wiring is working at the subconscious level. Their attraction has a biological justification. Poor men they just can’t help themselves. They love Barbie.
The research on the hour glass shape attraction shows that woman with a relatively low waist-to-hip ratio and large breasts had about 30 per cent higher levels of the female reproductive hormone estradiol than do women with other combinations of body shapes. (Research by Dr. Grazyna Jasienska, at Jagiellonian University in Krakow)
Barbie curves are now justified by science.
Writing in Proceedings B, the researchers led by Dr Grazyna Jasienska of Harvard University, said the hourglass figure was popular in Western cultures, but not in others across the world. (Just tell me where a short woman with a big tummy is attractive so I know where to move.)
She said men in non-Western societies did not seem to favor women with hourglass figures, and broader figures, indicating good nutritional status, were considered most attractive. (I think I show good nutritional status, mint thin Girl Scout cookies are very nutritious.)
However, in Western societies, the cultural icon of Barbie as a symbol of female beauty seems to have some biological grounding," added Dr Jasienska.
In Europeans it may well be that the hourglass body shape for women is more highly correlated with fecundity ( ability to get pregnant.) than is the case with other groups and that this is due to average genetic differences. There may have been co-evolution of the hourglass body shape as more fecund along with genetic changes that increased the attraction to that body shape.
The higher level of estradiol translates into 3 times higher likelihood to get pregnant.
"If there are 30 per cent higher levels, it means they are roughly three times more likely to get pregnant," Jasienska, a human biologist, told New Scientist.
The experts tell us that the physical features and characteristics considered to be "beautiful" are in fact subconscious indicators of fertility and good health, while some other features and characteristics are considered”unattractive" because they render a person less fertile or more susceptible to disease and parasite assaults. For example, a woman with an oestrogenized small chin and a small waist-to-hip ratio appears to be beautiful because these are physical features that indicate good fertility, childbearing ability and general health. In addition, of course a man has reciprocal features to indicate his facility to sire healthy children, and (apparently less importantly) support them and the mother.
Judging beauty involves looking at another person and subconsciously figuring out whether you want your children to carry that person's genes. We judge each other by nonverbal rules that we're often not even aware of at the conscious level. We may consciously admire Heidi Klum’s legs, but we're also viscerally attuned to small variations in the size and symmetry of facial bones and the placement of weight on the body.
Research correlates the physical attraction of human males to human females to certain basic physical features, regardless of culture. These include:
· signs of youthfulness (vigor, flexibility, bounciness, smooth skin);
· signs of health (clear skin, lack of disease, physical fitness);
· a good figure with an optimal hip-waist ratio and generous bust;
· facial and body symmetry;
· An infant like face.
The possession of beautiful characteristics by a woman acts as a 'certification of biological quality', offering her a significant mating advantage over other women in the competition for partners and reproduction - historically and today. All men are innately attracted to a beautiful woman, and she is thus more likely to be able to attract and select a high quality, high status, man as her mate - but women can often be pragmatic and he may not be the most beautiful (aka most handsome and physically attractive) partner available. It can be argued that women have an inherent ruthless streak that urges them to seek out the most beautiful mate to sire her children, and separately (and if necessary deceitfully) a high value partner who will best look after her and her children. Modern DNA testing is certainly revealing in many instances a woman's children are actually be sired by another, presumably often more "beautiful" man, than their husband - one study found that 1 in 8 of the children tested were probably calling the wrong man "Daddy"!