Move over Kim Kardashian – the ideal female body shape is leggy, tall and thin like Taylor Swift, not short and busty with a big bottom like the US reality TV star, claim scientists.
A major study involving almost 60,000 volunteers rating almost 1,000 variations of the female figure discovered tall and slender is more attractive than curvy and hourglass-shaped.
It is a result which contradicts the views of millions attracted over the decades to the more voluptuous pin ups from Marilyn Monroe to Page Three Girls.
A complex series of visual tests were conducted by researchers from the University of New South Wales in Sydney for the specialist journal Evolution and Human Behaviour.
They created computerised images of different female body shapes based on 24 basic factors from bust and bottom size to length of legs and waist circumference.
A first ‘generation’ of 120 of these were rated by volunteers from all over the world responding to a social media campaign asking for help.
The 60 body shapes with the lowest ratings were eliminated. Each of the remaining 60 were then taken and a slight variation of each was added to create another 120 shapes.
Taylor Swift is known for showing off her long limbs in short dresses whilst performing on stage
Again, they were rated by volunteers and the bottom 60 eliminated and the process was repeated for eight ‘generations’ – a total of 960 different shapes and sizes of female body.
What the researchers found was that in every generation, the 60 lowest rated body shapes were generally the fattest, shortest and roundest of the computerised figures.
By the end of the eighth generation, the highest rated female form was tall with a small waist and long, slender legs, a smaller bottom and smaller bust said the researchers.
Overall, nearly 60,000 volunteers took part in the ratings of whom 80 per cent were men and from all over the world.
The report admitted that an ideal female body shape was still very much a matter of opinion – athletic men like athletic women, for instance, and different cultures had different tastes.
HOW THE SURVEY WORKED…
The researchers identified 24 female ‘body traits’ most commonly found on a sample of 273 women from government census-style data.
This included the obvious like bust size and shape and even ‘volume’, length of legs, waist size but also the slope of the shoulders, circumference of lower legs and girth of biceps.
It also looked at ‘seat prominence’ – in others words, a big bottom – and overall height and shape of torso.
They created 20 composite female figures incorporating different traits so they all looked very different from each other.
But each of these 20 then had five ‘daughters’ – that is, five versions of each but with very subtle changes to some of the body traits, so a total of 120 figures were created.
Volunteers were shown side and front on profiles of these women but the faces were pixilated in order for them to be rated purely on body shape and physical features.
The top 60 for ratings were taken to the next stage and each of these had two different versions, one slightly bigger different from the other creating another 120 figures.
Again, the top 60 went on, made into two version of each female shape and the 120 rated by another set of volunteers and so on for eight ‘generations’ each one eliminating the most unpopular figures.
As each generation progressed, the favoured shape evolved into a taller, slimmer female figure with long, slender legs and a thin waist.
These were then rated by volunteers from all over the world who answered a social media and other adverts to take part. Overall, 59,268 took part of whom 80 per cent were male.
Walking through LA Kim showed off her curvier figure, the new research claims to provide some of the most extensive research on female body shapes
But overall it suggests tall and thin is preferred to short and curvy. It said: ‘No study of a subject as complex as body shape attractiveness can provide all the answers.’
But it said the study ‘provides the most comprehensive and detailed insight yet into which traits constitute the actual targets of selection.
‘The predominant evolutionary trend, reflecting a likely major dimension of social selection operating on human female bodies, is toward greater slenderness and, particularly, narrower waists.’
The selection process in the research ‘removed those physiques that appeared most overweight, and throughout the experiment we found evidence for strong directional selection on the waist, which was accompanied by lengthening of the legs and a reduction in seat girth, resulting in taller and more slender physiques.’
