Female waist-to-hip ratio,body mass index and sexual attractiveness in China

摘要

Men and women at Northwest University (n=751), Xi'an, China were asked to judge the attractiveness of photographsof female patients who had undergone micrograft surgery to reduce their waist-to-hip ratios (WHR). Micrograft surgeryinvolves harvesting adipose tissue from the waist and reshaping the buttocks to produce a low WHR and an 'hourglass' femalefigure. This gynoid distribution of female body fat has been shown to correlate with measures of fertility and health. Significantlylarger numbers of subjects, of both sexes, chose post-operative photographs, with lower WHRs, as more attractive thanpre-operative photographs of the same women. Some patients had gained, and some had lost weight, post-operatively, with resultantchanges in body mass index (BMI). However, these changes in BMI were not related to judgments of attractiveness. Theseresults show that the hourglass female figure is rated as attractive in China, and that WHR, rather than BMI, plays a crucial role insuch attractiveness