Scientific reasons why curves and breasts are attractive

I like boobs more! they're fun.

hogwash.
I'm rather large chested and prefer to be submissive sexually...so...instant hogwash on study for me

How YOU doin'?

This article is anecdotes and opinions. "Scientific" should not even be in the title. To state that "men perceive large breasts as “traditional” femininity and “perceive women as meek and weak” and then claim that "men who generally prefer smaller breasts are those who prefer a submissive partner who is easy to control" renders the article both nonsensical and offensive.
Couple the inaccuracy with the serial killer cut-outs of the body parts of famous people, and you have something which is really better placed in Star magazine.

Spanking. It's the answer

Where do I sign up for these studies?

Is it hands on?

Do I get paid?















Do I really care if I get paid?

Preferences change with time. I used to be all about the big boobs. Now, I will take a squat booty on a gym bunny with smaller boobs any day.

I'm just not as big of a fan of them as all the other guys in the world I guess...I don't know. I think maybe I just have a different "type."

The evolutionary perspective in this article is totally out of date (and incorrect)

Breasts are NOT a sign of fertility. They are actually the opposite.

in other primates (and in mammals generally) nipples swell up when the female is lactating - human breasts imitate what lactating breasts look like. Other male primates (and mammals) are not attracted to swollen breasts, as they're a sign that the female is not currently fertile. So this begs the question - why are human males attracted to swollen breasts? Why are they attracted to the look of a non-fertile, lactating nipple? i.e. that of a female who's already born another male's child?

Humans also have hidden oestrus - i.e. you can't look at a human female and tell whether or not she's ovulating and she has sex at any time in her cycle, while in most primate species the females get sexual swellings of their genitals which they flash at males for sex, and only have sex when ovulating.

The main theories on this are quite complex and involve the evolution of other traits such as bipedalism and loss of the large canine teeth of other primates (which male primates use for male-male aggression/displaying, and is a sign of masculinity in many other primate species). The upshot is that hominins seem to have gone down the evolutionary route of females choosing less aggressive males to mate with (smaller canine teeth), who provide them with regular food and regular sex, and males have gone down the route of choosing females that don't look fertile, to eliminate the competition of other males, while he provides her with all this food and regular sex (i.e. a long term relationship). Food sharing in humans goes both ways, but with different foods provided by each gender (male = hunter; female = gatherer) but it's not clear exactly when this division occurred and earlier hominins may have shared all kinds of food with the male providing more food to the female during the initial courtship and while she's too pregnant or nursing a small infant to be able to find so much food...... so anyway, by selecting females that don't look fertile, the male is more likely to actually be the father of the infant born as a result of such a relationship - and the female going for less aggressive males is likely to be due to less aggressive males being more likely to put effort into provisioning for her (and any infant that's born) rather than competing with other males to mate with as many females as possible. It's thought that this strategy evolved early on in hominins, and is what separated early hominins from the ancestors of chimps/bonobos and set hominins on a different evolutionary trajectory.

Thanks for sharing this!

Also, I had wine when I was responding last night. :blushing:

This is a bit of a side comment, but I hate that people seem to think that "if you have small boobs you must have zero curves" or "if you have large breasts then you have curves."

But excuse me. I have small breasts but I also have wider hips (it is so hard for me to find a pair of pants to buy. Because of my hip and *kitten* size manufacturers think my legs must be wide but they aren't). There is literally a ten inch difference between my waist and my hips so I just get very offended when blanket statements are used about body types and also when my particular body type isn't considered to be "sexy."

I've also seen woman with massive breasts but they have very slim hips. Everyone is different.

Men like BOOBS. (period)

The evolutionary perspective in this article is totally out of date (and incorrect)

Breasts are NOT a sign of fertility. They are actually the opposite.

in other primates (and in mammals generally) nipples swell up when the female is lactating - human breasts imitate what lactating breasts look like. Other male primates (and mammals) are not attracted to swollen breasts, as they're a sign that the female is not currently fertile. So this begs the question - why are human males attracted to swollen breasts? Why are they attracted to the look of a non-fertile, lactating nipple? i.e. that of a female who's already born another male's child?

Humans also have hidden oestrus - i.e. you can't look at a human female and tell whether or not she's ovulating and she has sex at any time in her cycle, while in most primate species the females get sexual swellings of their genitals which they flash at males for sex, and only have sex when ovulating.

The main theories on this are quite complex and involve the evolution of other traits such as bipedalism and loss of the large canine teeth of other primates (which male primates use for male-male aggression/displaying, and is a sign of masculinity in many other primate species). The upshot is that hominins seem to have gone down the evolutionary route of females choosing less aggressive males to mate with (smaller canine teeth), who provide them with regular food and regular sex, and males have gone down the route of choosing females that don't look fertile, to eliminate the competition of other males, while he provides her with all this food and regular sex (i.e. a long term relationship). Food sharing in humans goes both ways, but with different foods provided by each gender (male = hunter; female = gatherer) but it's not clear exactly when this division occurred and earlier hominins may have shared all kinds of food with the male providing more food to the female during the initial courtship and while she's too pregnant or nursing a small infant to be able to find so much food...... so anyway, by selecting females that don't look fertile, the male is more likely to actually be the father of the infant born as a result of such a relationship - and the female going for less aggressive males is likely to be due to less aggressive males being more likely to put effort into provisioning for her (and any infant that's born) rather than competing with other males to mate with as many females as possible. It's thought that this strategy evolved early on in hominins, and is what separated early hominins from the ancestors of chimps/bonobos and set hominins on a different evolutionary trajectory.

So, riddle me this! Why are men such a fan of long hair? Not that there are not exceptions, it's just that I've met very few.

long hair I think is a cultural thing...... before human hair patterns evolved our ancestors would have been hairy like chimpanzees. All of the above probably evolved before human hair patterns evolved - it's thought they evolved as an adaptation to persistence hunting - to keep the head cool (we evolved in Africa and sub-saharan Africans are 100% Homo sapiens, afro hair insulates the head and keeps the heat of the midday sun off it) and the rest of the body cool (hairless body and sweating all over the whole body)....... so the human hair pattern seems to have evolved to stay cool in the midday sun while persistence hunting other mammals that can't withstand the heat so easily (there are other theories as to how our modern hair pattern evolved, this is just one)

Straight hair probably evolved as an adaptation to the cold. People with 100% Homo sapiens DNA have afro hair. Straight hair is possibly a neanderthal trait - instead of being on top of the head insulating it from the midday sun, it falls down the shoulders and back, helping to insulate the whole body against the cold....... having straight hair myself, even a shoulder length hair cut makes a difference - I live in a hot climate and putting my hair up in a pony tail helps me stay cool, because hair on my neck = hot and uncomfortable... but in an ice age winter, long straight hair on your back and shoulders would help keep you warm.

so long straight hair (the kind that western culture tends to promote as feminine and beautiful) is only specific to ethnic groups that have straight or wavy hair... the original Homo sapiens populations probably all had afros.

The thing of men having short hair and women having long hair is a recent cultural phenomenon... I think you can cut hair with stone tools (so shortish/bob length hair was a possibility in the palaeolithic era, but probably not buzz cut length hair), but there's no way of knowing what gender differences in hairstyles palaeolithic people had... could be all kinds of random things......... you have to look at human populations as a whole, across all the different cultures - there's a huge amount of variation and creativity in hairstyles across the entire globe....... the long hair is for women short hair is for men is a modern western culture thing by and large.... there may be some reason for that, e.g. men needing to keep their hair short in fairly recent times for various practical reasons maybe in bronze age or iron age times or something... it's certainly not a universal phenomenon though.

Long, healthy, hair in both men and women (including big afro hairstyles not just long straight hair) is a sign of good health and good nutrition though, so I think there is selection pressure that's led to people liking healthy looking hair. Additionally, as every culture on the planet practices some form of body modification - including hair cuts along with body art, scarification, tattoos, piercing, shaving... they're all forms of body modification...... there's been some kind of selection pressure in favour of people who do body modification (maybe because it's a sign of creativity and the ability to innovate), and also you'd expect to see huge cultural variations in terms of what body modifications are sexy and which ones are associated with males and which with females. In the west, shaving and short hair is a common body modification for men. Even men with long hair and full beards still generally keep their hair and beard trimmed and relatively tidy. So the preference of a lot of western men for women with long hair probably comes entirely from culture and social programming - they associate long hair with femininity and short hair with masculinity, same as dresses are feminine... in other cultures, dress-like garments on men are masculine, e.g. the Arabian thobe... it's like a dress but only men wear it. But selection for healthy looking hair and for a liking of body modification probably does come from an evolved preference to choose healthy, creative mates.

I'm female and I find long hair + beard on men to be really hot. Like Thor. Short hair + beard is also hot. I'm not that much into clean-shaven men (there are exeptions though). This is personal preference. So it's not universal in western culture. And some western sub-cultures, such as heavy metal musicians and fans, men typically have long hair. And fashion for hairstyles come and go - like the mullet of the 80s... that's probably something that's universal among human cultures - changing hairstyles and different fads - as different as various cultures around the world may be, they likely also undergo changes in what styles of body modification are popular at different times. In fact one quote from an anthropologist that I read at uni was along the lines of that the most culturally universal compliment you can give to any other human is "I like your hair" because every culture does some kind of hair style modification (along with other body modifications).

The evolutionary perspective in this article is totally out of date (and incorrect)

Breasts are NOT a sign of fertility. They are actually the opposite.

in other primates (and in mammals generally) nipples swell up when the female is lactating - human breasts imitate what lactating breasts look like. Other male primates (and mammals) are not attracted to swollen breasts, as they're a sign that the female is not currently fertile. So this begs the question - why are human males attracted to swollen breasts? Why are they attracted to the look of a non-fertile, lactating nipple? i.e. that of a female who's already born another male's child?

Humans also have hidden oestrus - i.e. you can't look at a human female and tell whether or not she's ovulating and she has sex at any time in her cycle, while in most primate species the females get sexual swellings of their genitals which they flash at males for sex, and only have sex when ovulating.

The main theories on this are quite complex and involve the evolution of other traits such as bipedalism and loss of the large canine teeth of other primates (which male primates use for male-male aggression/displaying, and is a sign of masculinity in many other primate species). The upshot is that hominins seem to have gone down the evolutionary route of females choosing less aggressive males to mate with (smaller canine teeth), who provide them with regular food and regular sex, and males have gone down the route of choosing females that don't look fertile, to eliminate the competition of other males, while he provides her with all this food and regular sex (i.e. a long term relationship). Food sharing in humans goes both ways, but with different foods provided by each gender (male = hunter; female = gatherer) but it's not clear exactly when this division occurred and earlier hominins may have shared all kinds of food with the male providing more food to the female during the initial courtship and while she's too pregnant or nursing a small infant to be able to find so much food...... so anyway, by selecting females that don't look fertile, the male is more likely to actually be the father of the infant born as a result of such a relationship - and the female going for less aggressive males is likely to be due to less aggressive males being more likely to put effort into provisioning for her (and any infant that's born) rather than competing with other males to mate with as many females as possible. It's thought that this strategy evolved early on in hominins, and is what separated early hominins from the ancestors of chimps/bonobos and set hominins on a different evolutionary trajectory.

So, riddle me this! Why are men such a fan of long hair? Not that there are not exceptions, it's just that I've met very few.

long hair I think is a cultural thing...... before human hair patterns evolved our ancestors would have been hairy like chimpanzees. All of the above probably evolved before human hair patterns evolved - it's thought they evolved as an adaptation to persistence hunting - to keep the head cool (we evolved in Africa and sub-saharan Africans are 100% Homo sapiens, afro hair insulates the head and keeps the heat of the midday sun off it) and the rest of the body cool (hairless body and sweating all over the whole body)....... so the human hair pattern seems to have evolved to stay cool in the midday sun while persistence hunting other mammals that can't withstand the heat so easily (there are other theories as to how our modern hair pattern evolved, this is just one)

Straight hair probably evolved as an adaptation to the cold. People with 100% Homo sapiens DNA have afro hair. Straight hair is possibly a neanderthal trait - instead of being on top of the head insulating it from the midday sun, it falls down the shoulders and back, helping to insulate the whole body against the cold....... having straight hair myself, even a shoulder length hair cut makes a difference - I live in a hot climate and putting my hair up in a pony tail helps me stay cool, because hair on my neck = hot and uncomfortable... but in an ice age winter, long straight hair on your back and shoulders would help keep you warm.

so long straight hair (the kind that western culture tends to promote as feminine and beautiful) is only specific to ethnic groups that have straight or wavy hair... the original Homo sapiens populations probably all had afros.

The thing of men having short hair and women having long hair is a recent cultural phenomenon... I think you can cut hair with stone tools (so shortish/bob length hair was a possibility in the palaeolithic era, but probably not buzz cut length hair), but there's no way of knowing what gender differences in hairstyles palaeolithic people had... could be all kinds of random things......... you have to look at human populations as a whole, across all the different cultures - there's a huge amount of variation and creativity in hairstyles across the entire globe....... the long hair is for women short hair is for men is a modern western culture thing by and large.... there may be some reason for that, e.g. men needing to keep their hair short in fairly recent times for various practical reasons maybe in bronze age or iron age times or something... it's certainly not a universal phenomenon though.

Long, healthy, hair in both men and women (including big afro hairstyles not just long straight hair) is a sign of good health and good nutrition though, so I think there is selection pressure that's led to people liking healthy looking hair. Additionally, as every culture on the planet practices some form of body modification - including hair cuts along with body art, scarification, tattoos, piercing, shaving... they're all forms of body modification...... there's been some kind of selection pressure in favour of people who do body modification (maybe because it's a sign of creativity and the ability to innovate), and also you'd expect to see huge cultural variations in terms of what body modifications are sexy and which ones are associated with males and which with females. In the west, shaving and short hair is a common body modification for men. Even men with long hair and full beards still generally keep their hair and beard trimmed and relatively tidy. So the preference of a lot of western men for women with long hair probably comes entirely from culture and social programming - they associate long hair with femininity and short hair with masculinity, same as dresses are feminine... in other cultures, dress-like garments on men are masculine, e.g. the Arabian thobe... it's like a dress but only men wear it. But selection for healthy looking hair and for a liking of body modification probably does come from an evolved preference to choose healthy, creative mates.

I'm female and I find long hair + beard on men to be really hot. Like Thor. Short hair + beard is also hot. I'm not that much into clean-shaven men (there are exeptions though). This is personal preference. So it's not universal in western culture. And some western sub-cultures, such as heavy metal musicians and fans, men typically have long hair. And fashion for hairstyles come and go - like the mullet of the 80s... that's probably something that's universal among human cultures - changing hairstyles and different fads - as different as various cultures around the world may be, they likely also undergo changes in what styles of body modification are popular at different times. In fact one quote from an anthropologist that I read at uni was along the lines of that the most culturally universal compliment you can give to any other human is "I like your hair" because every culture does some kind of hair style modification (along with other body modifications).

Soooo . . . not a handle then?

I've heard scientists claim many theories as to why some men love curves. But all are theories aas to best of my knowledge.
My favorite theory that seems plausible is that subconsciously men's brains lump women with strudy hips, busty, and with a higher hip to waist ratio into a group containing of reproductively sound. There is no logic in this. As men are not consiously thinking this and may actually still prefer women with small busts and thin. The theory works for me however because of the fact we still maintain some attributes, albeit underlying , of a more primitive brain and ways of thinking.

First, a theory is not the same thing in science as it is in everyday language.
A theory in science refers to a theoretical framework, or model, of a particular system supported by scientific evidence, e.g., Dopamine Theory of Schizophrenia or the THEORY of Gravity (yes, gravity is a theory).
The way we use "theory" in everyday language is actually closer to a hypothesis in scientific terms, which is a proposed explanation which has yet to to accumulate enough robust evidence to be considered a theory, e.g., Computational-representational Understanding of Mind [hypothesis] or Two-Hit Hypothesis in cancer research.

Second, the brain of the modern human is effectively identical to the brain possess by our caveman/cavewoman ancestry. Large parts of the human brain are actually found, more or less identically, in the reptiles, such as the brainstem and midbrain. These are involved in everything from primitive stimulus responses, orientation to flashes of light or loud noises, regulation of heart rate, hunger, etc. These are all unconscious. Moreover, large parts of what is know as the striatum (aka neocortex, cortex, cerebrum), that wrinkled bit you see when you look at a brain, are actually unconscious. For the most part, it's only the prefrontal cortex (the bit directly behind your forehead) that is conscious. A good way to think of the consciousness is that unconscious thoughts can bubble up to the level of consciousness -- it's not the best metaphor, but it's OK. Get's the job done. That's why we often have to figure out why we're annoyed at people, if we love someone. We have to analyze what has bubbled up and why it bubbled up (instead of staying unconscious).

Third, many of the things we find attractive in other people are mysterious to us. The Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) transfer in saliva (e.g., through kissing) can be used to gage the strength of the immune system for potential offspring. Facial and body symmetry (such as in the breasts, or pectoral muscles for men) signal, or fail to signal, fertility and fitness (very important in a world where lions could eat you at any moment).

Lastly, "no logic behind it" is a tricky thing to say in science. We have learned time and time again in everything from quantum physics to molecular biology that the world often doesn't act the way we "think" it should or might. That is, often times things that we think "make no sense" are, in fact, true. So much of reality is not intuitive, and this extends to how our own mind works.

The evolutionary perspective in this article is totally out of date (and incorrect)

Breasts are NOT a sign of fertility. They are actually the opposite.

in other primates (and in mammals generally) nipples swell up when the female is lactating - human breasts imitate what lactating breasts look like. Other male primates (and mammals) are not attracted to swollen breasts, as they're a sign that the female is not currently fertile. So this begs the question - why are human males attracted to swollen breasts? Why are they attracted to the look of a non-fertile, lactating nipple? i.e. that of a female who's already born another male's child?

Humans also have hidden oestrus - i.e. you can't look at a human female and tell whether or not she's ovulating and she has sex at any time in her cycle, while in most primate species the females get sexual swellings of their genitals which they flash at males for sex, and only have sex when ovulating.

The main theories on this are quite complex and involve the evolution of other traits such as bipedalism and loss of the large canine teeth of other primates (which male primates use for male-male aggression/displaying, and is a sign of masculinity in many other primate species). The upshot is that hominins seem to have gone down the evolutionary route of females choosing less aggressive males to mate with (smaller canine teeth), who provide them with regular food and regular sex, and males have gone down the route of choosing females that don't look fertile, to eliminate the competition of other males, while he provides her with all this food and regular sex (i.e. a long term relationship). Food sharing in humans goes both ways, but with different foods provided by each gender (male = hunter; female = gatherer) but it's not clear exactly when this division occurred and earlier hominins may have shared all kinds of food with the male providing more food to the female during the initial courtship and while she's too pregnant or nursing a small infant to be able to find so much food...... so anyway, by selecting females that don't look fertile, the male is more likely to actually be the father of the infant born as a result of such a relationship - and the female going for less aggressive males is likely to be due to less aggressive males being more likely to put effort into provisioning for her (and any infant that's born) rather than competing with other males to mate with as many females as possible. It's thought that this strategy evolved early on in hominins, and is what separated early hominins from the ancestors of chimps/bonobos and set hominins on a different evolutionary trajectory.

So, riddle me this! Why are men such a fan of long hair? Not that there are not exceptions, it's just that I've met very few.

long hair I think is a cultural thing...... before human hair patterns evolved our ancestors would have been hairy like chimpanzees. All of the above probably evolved before human hair patterns evolved - it's thought they evolved as an adaptation to persistence hunting - to keep the head cool (we evolved in Africa and sub-saharan Africans are 100% Homo sapiens, afro hair insulates the head and keeps the heat of the midday sun off it) and the rest of the body cool (hairless body and sweating all over the whole body)....... so the human hair pattern seems to have evolved to stay cool in the midday sun while persistence hunting other mammals that can't withstand the heat so easily (there are other theories as to how our modern hair pattern evolved, this is just one)

Straight hair probably evolved as an adaptation to the cold. People with 100% Homo sapiens DNA have afro hair. Straight hair is possibly a neanderthal trait - instead of being on top of the head insulating it from the midday sun, it falls down the shoulders and back, helping to insulate the whole body against the cold....... having straight hair myself, even a shoulder length hair cut makes a difference - I live in a hot climate and putting my hair up in a pony tail helps me stay cool, because hair on my neck = hot and uncomfortable... but in an ice age winter, long straight hair on your back and shoulders would help keep you warm.

so long straight hair (the kind that western culture tends to promote as feminine and beautiful) is only specific to ethnic groups that have straight or wavy hair... the original Homo sapiens populations probably all had afros.

The thing of men having short hair and women having long hair is a recent cultural phenomenon... I think you can cut hair with stone tools (so shortish/bob length hair was a possibility in the palaeolithic era, but probably not buzz cut length hair), but there's no way of knowing what gender differences in hairstyles palaeolithic people had... could be all kinds of random things......... you have to look at human populations as a whole, across all the different cultures - there's a huge amount of variation and creativity in hairstyles across the entire globe....... the long hair is for women short hair is for men is a modern western culture thing by and large.... there may be some reason for that, e.g. men needing to keep their hair short in fairly recent times for various practical reasons maybe in bronze age or iron age times or something... it's certainly not a universal phenomenon though.

Long, healthy, hair in both men and women (including big afro hairstyles not just long straight hair) is a sign of good health and good nutrition though, so I think there is selection pressure that's led to people liking healthy looking hair. Additionally, as every culture on the planet practices some form of body modification - including hair cuts along with body art, scarification, tattoos, piercing, shaving... they're all forms of body modification...... there's been some kind of selection pressure in favour of people who do body modification (maybe because it's a sign of creativity and the ability to innovate), and also you'd expect to see huge cultural variations in terms of what body modifications are sexy and which ones are associated with males and which with females. In the west, shaving and short hair is a common body modification for men. Even men with long hair and full beards still generally keep their hair and beard trimmed and relatively tidy. So the preference of a lot of western men for women with long hair probably comes entirely from culture and social programming - they associate long hair with femininity and short hair with masculinity, same as dresses are feminine... in other cultures, dress-like garments on men are masculine, e.g. the Arabian thobe... it's like a dress but only men wear it. But selection for healthy looking hair and for a liking of body modification probably does come from an evolved preference to choose healthy, creative mates.

I'm female and I find long hair + beard on men to be really hot. Like Thor. Short hair + beard is also hot. I'm not that much into clean-shaven men (there are exeptions though). This is personal preference. So it's not universal in western culture. And some western sub-cultures, such as heavy metal musicians and fans, men typically have long hair. And fashion for hairstyles come and go - like the mullet of the 80s... that's probably something that's universal among human cultures - changing hairstyles and different fads - as different as various cultures around the world may be, they likely also undergo changes in what styles of body modification are popular at different times. In fact one quote from an anthropologist that I read at uni was along the lines of that the most culturally universal compliment you can give to any other human is "I like your hair" because every culture does some kind of hair style modification (along with other body modifications).

Very interesting. Long hair makes more for ways to adorn it and I imagine (as such) it could be viewed as a sign of being well off if you have the time to make complicated updos and stick all kinds of items in it as decoration.

Some of the American Indian tribes only let their men have long hair. The women kept theirs shorn so it stayed out of the way of their work. Maybe I should have been a squaw, because I prefer shorter hair on myself and long on my men (and no facial hair).

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