The Science Of Beautiful

By Hayley Birch

I can’t say I’d complain about looking like a supermodel. And despite the current backlash about celebrity skinnies, I would put money on most women opting for sylphlike over stout.

But there’s good news and bad news for us mere mortals today. And because everyone likes a happy ending, let’s start with the bad: Naomi Campbell has a near perfect figure.

That’s right. To be scientifically super-attractive you need to be 5’9’’ with a waist that’s 30% smaller than your hips. The catwalk diva came close to perfect in a study of vital statistics.

Leszek Pokrywka, who led the study at the University of Gdansk, explained how the findings could help us understand our evolution. "Attractiveness of a woman's body is one of the most important factors in mate selection, and the question what are the physical cues for the assessment of attractiveness is fundamental to evolutionary psychology". So it looks like at 5’1½” (yes, the half is important) I’m evolutionarily screwed.

Oddly, scientists also claim that the super-attractive have exactly 15mm of fat on their calves. Now hang on, that sounds to me like some shifty scientist has been spending an inordinate amount of time crawling between the legs of beautiful women with a pair of calipers.

But on to the good news: if you can pull the right moves, you don’t need to be tall, or thin, to be attractive – hoorah! That’s from researchers at New York University, who, along with some (no doubt keen) volunteers, spent hundreds of hours sitting through video footage of hip wiggling.

So there is now scientific proof that women who sway their hips are sexier. Psychology expert, Dr George Fieldman, said, “It’s the movement which attracts, and not just the waist-hip ratio per se”.

So there you have it. There’s no need to eat like you’re headed for the catwalk, just walk like it.

They say the best things come in small packages - read Hayley's other articles to see just how true that is.