Skinny Women Seen As Younger And Rated More Attractive By Men And Women, Says New Study

If you want to look younger and more attractive, cut your body fat. At least those are the findings reported by the Daily Mail, citing a study from the University of Aberdeen that says both men and woman rated thinner women as more attractive. That’s because BMI rates between 17 and 20 were viewed as belonging to younger, more fertile women. They were also, for some reason, seen as having a lesser chance of contracting diseases, all due to a lower weight.

As such, folks are no doubt running to BMI calculators to determine how they stand up against women like Taylor Swift, Angelina Jolie, and Gisele Bundchen — all women whose tall and slender builds represent what the study participants deemed was a more attractive BMI range than those, say, of a Kim Kardashian.

Kardashian’s BMI prior to getting pregnant was most likely between 24 and 25, the approximate range that was predicted in the study would be perceived as the most attractive in women. However, once those predictions were tested on greater than 1,300 men and women from 10 countries, both men and women rated the levels of physical attractiveness similarly. And that attractiveness fell towards the women with BMIs of about 19, which were the skinniest photos.

As body fat went up, the less attractive ratings occurred for the 21 photos of women who varied in levels of thinness and fatness. That’s because those with higher body fat percentages and higher BMI rankings were rated by the study participants as older. And age is a big factor in evolutionary fitness levels. When the study participants were asked to rank the women in terms of physical attractiveness, both men and women in the study ranked those who were thinner and with less body fat as more attractive.

The study results should not be taken as a reason to engage in risky behavior, such as seen in the dangerous Instagram trend revealed by hashtags such as “skinny” and others.

As reported by Ask Men, the new study revealed that both men and women can find thinness as being more attractive. The study itself used a variety of races — such as Asians, African Americans, Caucasians, and others — and all of them went for the BMI near 19, which was the lowest BMI examined, as most attractive.

It’s been noted that the most recent results of this latest study stands in contrast of those assumptions that stated folks find body types with higher body fat percentages as more attractive because it means they’d likely survive a starvation-inducing famine.

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