Men Preferring 'Curves' in Women has an Evolutionary Basis

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The fact that men are attracted to women with curvy backside could have an evolutionary basis reports a study conducted by the University of Texas, Austin published in Evolution and Human Behavior.

The study reports that women with an optimal angle of lumbar curvature of about 45.5 degree from back to buttocks are more preferred by men. This kind of behavior of men could have an evolutionary root back in nomadic age possibly because of an advantage in women with such curves to handle multiple pregnancies with ease and deliver babies without suffering spinal injuries.

David Buss, professor at U-T University and co-author of the study said that "What's fascinating about this research is that it is yet another scientific illustration of a close fit between a sex-differentiated feature of human morphology -in this case lumbar curvature -and an evolved standard of attractiveness", reported in The University of Texas, Austin press release.

UT Austin alumnus and Bilkent University psychologist David Lewis conducted two different studies relating to men's preference in curvature of women. In the first study about 100 men were displayed with mutilated images of women with minimum and maximum angle of curvature. Of which men were attracted to images of women with an optimal angle of 45 degree curvature from back to buttocks, reported the Washington Post.

The optimal angle of curvature of 45 degrees would have helped women to balance the weight over their hips during pregnancy, said Lewis. Since these women are less likely to be injured during delivery, capable of multiple pregnancies and being able to handle fetus and offspring effectively they would have been much preferred by men, added Lewis.

Buss said that "This adds to a growing body of evidence that beauty is not entirely arbitrary, or 'in the eyes of the beholder' as many in mainstream social science believed, but rather has a coherent adaptive logic", according to the press release.

Another study involved 200 men who were displayed with images of women with 45.5 degree curvature with varying buttock size and vertebral wedging. Even with such variations men were attracted to women with optimal spinal curvature regardless of their buttocks size.

"This enabled us to conclusively show that men prefer women who exhibit specific angles of spinal curvature over buttock mass," said Eric Russell the co-author of the study, a visiting researcher from UT Arlington, reported the press release.