Judgment at Paris 1825-6

What, to begin with, are some of the outer, physical features that may make a member of the opposite sex eye-catching? One of the most famous studies of sexual attraction involves the waist-to-hip ratio. Healthy premenopausal women will have a ratio of .67 to .80 -- hardly an hourglass, but possibly a Coke bottle; this body shape is regarded as “feminine” and attractive by men. Women know this, and the history of fashion therefore includes methods to accentuate it with corsets and bustles. Devendra Singh, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devendra_Singh who originally studied the effect on this ratio using simple line drawings, noted that (outside of extreme of obesity or skeletal thinness) iut was the ratio that men preferred, rather than any absolute weight or size. There is good statistical evidence for this preference being adaptive, as women who display a waste-to-hip ratio in the .7 or .8 range are significantly more fertile than women closer to the healthy male ratio of around .9. In fact, .9 is close to both prepubescent girls and postmenopausal women. Sing noted the extreme ratio found in the depictions of Hindu Goddesses (near to .3), whose supernormal waist-to-hip ratios match their supernormal fertility and sexuality, and of course the ration also occurs in sexy women in art from Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ to Modigliani nudes. (Excerpt from " Art Instinct" Author: Dennis Dutton)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ON SEX

Nature (i.e., here, the evolutionary process) is mad about reproduction, and makes the individual a tool and moment in the continuance of the species. She cares little about anything but eating and begetting; all our literature, art, and music mean nothing to her except as stimulation or ornament ot sex and continuity. In this perspective even eating is subordinate, however primary; it comes first, and without it life could not be; but it, too, is servant to sex; the unconscious purpose of our eating is to preserve and develop us for biological maturity -- i.e., the ability to reproduce. When we have fulfilled that function we eat in order to survive as caretakers for our progeny. When we have completed both of these functions nature has no further use or regard for us; normally we would soon thereafter die; if we go on living it is as dispensable bystanders in the procession of life. ` Page 87