Do you ever wonder what this whole female beauty obsession is all about?

 

When you’ve stabbed your eye twice with the mascara wand and burned your ear with your straightening iron and you look at the clock and you’re running late!

 

Do you ever get so frustrated with society’s fascination with female beauty? Where does this come from? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being beautiful wasn’t

always about how many likes

you could get on Instagram;

being beautiful

was about survival. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Back in the caveman times or, as the professionals call it, the “Stone Age”, female beauty wasn’t arched eyebrows and silky smooth legs (Singh and Singh 727).

 

 

Instead, evolutionary psychologists posit that female

beauty was viewed as a woman’s healthy and

fertile body (Singh and Singh 723). Why look for a

healthy woman? Because that caveman wanted

healthy children (Singh and Singh 724)!

 

 

 

Evolutionary scientists also believe that, through human evolution and natural selection, the human body developed traits deemed more healthy and fertile as well as “psychological mechanisms… to attend to such bodily features in potential mates and find them attractive” (Singh and Singh 725).

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“People are not consciously aware of such a link [between health and fertility and attraction]—therein lies the power of physical attractiveness” (Singh and Singh 725).

 

Isn’t that crazy?! This means you can be attracted to someone and not even know why! So, next time you find you have a crush, think about why. Does this person look healthy? In what way? Does this person look fertile? How can you tell?

 

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We'll help you out.

 

So, one of the traits of a healthy and fertile body is waist to hip ratio (WHR), which measures the “ratio of waist and hips circumferences” (Singh and Singh 723). These measurements are determined by the distribution of fat in the body (Singh and Singh).

 

For both males and females, bodies start to take shape in puberty because of the production of sex hormones (Singh and Singh 725). Testosterone produces abdominal fat but holds back fat in the hips, butt, and thighs (Singh and Singh 725). In contrast, estrogen promotes fat in the hips, butt, and thighs while hindering fat in the abdominal section (Singh and Singh 725).

 

After these sex hormones are released into their respective bodies, “higher levels of testosterone increase the size of WHR, whereas higher levels of estrogen lower the size of WHR” (Singh and Singh 725). Having a higher WHR means you have a flatter figure, where a lower WHR produces a figure with wide-set hips and a small waist. 

 

 

Here’s Figure 1 from this article. Also, be sure to check out the article if you’re interested! I’ve cited the piece in the Sources tab.

 

 

 

 

This figure shows three tiers.

The first tier includes underweight women,

 

 

 

 

 

the second tier has average-sized women,

 

 

 

 

 

 

and the last tier shows overweight women.

 

 

 

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Now, look at that first column of women with the WHRs of 0.7 and 0.8. Does this figure look familiar? Remind you of anyone?

Yes, it’s the hourglass figure! Here are some examples of celebrities with this figure:

 

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Obviously this hourglass figure and low WHR are important because women still have this figure today.

 

 

Well, why is it better to have this figure as opposed to a flatter figure?

 

 

Evolutionary scientists have found that women with a WHR between 0.67-0.80 (considered low WHR) have “fewer health problems and are more likely to successfully reproduce” (Singh and Singh 726). 

 

 

 

Ever heard of the phrase “child-bearing hips”?

 

 

Having a lower WHR is the origin of this idea!

 

When a woman has wider hips,

she is considered healthy and fertile!

 

So in caveman terms, that means

she’s smoking hot and able to have his babies!

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Analyzing a Study:

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This isn’t just an idea! Even today, people find women with low WHR more attractive than women with a flatter shape. 

 

Using Figure 1 shown above, researchers asked a diverse group of participants to rate which figures were most attractive.

 

The judges asserted that “average weight figures with low WHR [are] most attractive, followed by underweight figures, and finally overweight figures” (Singh and Singh 726). 

 

Considering the conditions of caveman times, average-sized women would have been seen as the healthiest (Singh and Singh 727).

 

Not only did people have to hunt for food (which wasn’t always successful) but medicine as we know it did not exist. This meant people could be starving and suffering from disease.

 

Due to the lack of accessibility to food, frail, malnutritioned women and average-sized women were the only female body types seen around (Singh and Singh 727).

 

By comparison to emaciated females, average-sized women were beautiful due to their health and fertility. 

 

Obviously, beauty has evolved and expanded since the Stone Age and, at The Business of Beauty, that’s what we’re here to analyze.

 

 

If you haven’t checked out our Home page,

make sure to do that next to really get a sense of what

The Business of Beauty is all about.

 

 

 

 

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