Print

12 The Biology of Beauty cultures, the correlation of age and attractiveness was examined. Females, across all the cultures, were rated as more attractive if their predicted ages, based on the facial proportions, were less than their actual ages. Thus, ratings of attractiveness were directly rated to perceptions of age based on facial features. When the same kind of procedure was repeated for males, the same correlations were not found or were very weak. Thus, age is not as valued a predictor for male attractiveness as it is for females. Body Mass Index BMI is calculated based on an individual’s overall body weight in relation to his or her height. BMI has long been thought to be an important cue in assessing attractiveness and health. Based on decades of research, BMI seems to be a more important factor for female attractiveness and beauty than for male attractiveness. Women with higher BMI tend to be rated as less attrac- tive in research done in the United States and other industrialized countries than women with lower BMI. Furthermore, lower BMI tends to be correlated with models, supermodels, and actors and tends to be rated as more attrac- tive, at least in industrialized societies. However, the influence of BMI on ratings of attractiveness varies be- tween cultures. Industrialized societies correlate lower weight with health and reproductive potential and link it to attractiveness. Nonindustrialized societies, however, are more tolerant in their ratings of larger women. This cultural difference conflicts with the ideal of a universal idea of beauty, but the differences make logical sense when examined through an anthropolog- ical or social lens. In nonindustrialized societies, with limited or less stable food resources, larger women tend to be healthier, hardier, and more likely to survive during the reproductive process. Thus, in societies like Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, men predictably rate larger women as more attractive and more desirable. They also rate those women as having more potential as spouses and reproductive partners. Ultimately, less industrialized cultures, with less stable food resources, were more likely to rate larger women as more attractive than slimmer women. Alternatively, more industrialized cultures, with greater access to stable food resources, had ratings more similar to the low BMI preferences typical of individuals from the United States. In addition to the cross-cultural differences, preferences for ideal BMI vary within countries as well. Within the United States, for example, African Americans are more likely to rate larger, curvier, women as more attractive, whereas Caucasian Americans do not rate those women as highly. These differences seem to be a by-product of culture and of the media rather than of biology. As a side note, these differences in ratings by culture have direct