What is sexy?
What do Angelina Jolie and George Clooney have in common?
Symmetry.
According to some researchers, symmetry is super sexy.
Hey guys Julia here for DNews
Pair-bonding is a trademark of the human animal.
We flirt, we fall in love, we marry.
But what is it that attracts us to someone else?
Is it their eyes?
Their lips?
Their smell?
Well researchers keep looking for answers.
While some say it’s all in the scent, that humans responded largely to pheromones, or
chemicals released to signal things like fertility.
We’ve covered that in an earlier episode, check out the link to that video here.
Or if you’re on mobile there’s a link in the description.
But what about looks?
Well according to Tina Fey in her book bossypants, a modern attractive women has to have so many
different attractive body parts, like a cut and paste doll out of a magazine.
But do all those individual pieces add up to a sexy whole?
Maybe not so.
Recent research from Queen’s University says humans’ attractiveness is based on
consistency of the whole, rather than attractive individual parts.
Basically the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
The researchers said that older studies tend to focus on individual features like face
shape or lip color.
Things like that.
So they wanted to try something a little different.
In their study they focused on movement and body shape.
Yeah how sexy someone sashayed.
The researchers showed participants dots based on someone’s movement and shape and were
asked to rate their attractiveness.
Then the researchers blended those movements to create a hybrid “person”.
The strange thing was that participants found the hybrids to be less sexy.
The researchers think that internal consistency -- whether the movement and the shape match
each other or not, matters a whole lot.
And that we can detect if anything seems…
well off.
They say “Our visual system is a sensitive lie detector that perceives even the slightest
inconsistencies and responds negatively to them."
So what is sexy?
Well depends really on who you ask and even their culture.
But there is one consistent trait that most cultures find sexy.
Most studies repeatedly show that people find symmetry attractive.
Over 20 years ago, researchers from the University of Albuquerque suspected that symmetry had
a lot to with sex appeal.
They asked students to rank how attractive faces were and found that those with higher
symmetry were at the top of the list.
So why is symmetry sexy?
Well the idea is that symmetry somehow signals genetic fitness or how likely you are to toss
your genes into the future.
or it’s a sign of health, and they might be on to something.
The same researchers continued studying symmetry and sex appeal, and a more recent study in
the journal Animal Behaviour found a link between symmetry and oxidative stress.
Oxidative stress can be caused by free radicals, molecules produced as cells use oxygen.
Sometimes these molecules can cause cell damage.
If a person is exposed to oxidative stress in the womb, it might mean a less symmetrical
face.
And the researchers found results which suggested just that.
They found that men with low levels of oxidative stress were more symmetrical and ranked as
highly attractive by women.
Yet it might mean more than just good genes.
One study published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review found that those with symmetrical
faces tended to be more extroverted and friendly, character traits a lot of us like in our potential
mate.
As for other physical traits like big lips, round hips, or jaw size?
Well those really depend on culture.
Women in wealthier nations prefer weaker jaws and less masculine looking men for example.
While these kinds of traits seem to be rated as “sexy”, there’s some debate as to
whether that’s the result of our culture or our biology.
So what do you think is sexy?
Tell us about it down in the comments below.