Possible causes of the thin standard of bodily attractiveness for women

Abstract

Based upon studies that have demonstrated that curvaceous women are rated as less competent and less intelligent than noncurvaceous women, it was hypothesized that during periods when the intelligence and professional competence of women are stressed, the standard of bodily attractiveness for women becomes noncurvaceous, and that women who are concerned about how intelligent they appear to be to others will adhere to a slim standard of bodily attractiveness for themselves. Using measures of variation in the standard of bodily attractiveness across time and across individuals, it was found that over the course of the twentieth century, when the proportion of American women working as professionals or graduating from college has increased, the standard of bodily attractiveness for women has become less curvaceous and that college women who report that their fathers did not believe them to be very intelligent tend to want to be slim.

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