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Preferred Female Body Proportions Among Child-Free Men

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Abstract

Based on conceptual extrapolations from sociobiological models concerning the significance of secondary sex characteristics as markers of a female’s capacity to produce and nurture offspring, we reasoned that men’s greater unwillingness to reproduce would be linked to preference for a female body type characterized by the relative absence of such markers. Heterosexual undergraduate men (N = 67) indicated their ideal (most arousing) female body type on-line by means of an adjustable female figure. As expected, the desire to remain childfree was linked to erotic preference for a combination of smaller breasts and larger waist-to-hip ratio. Additional research into individual factors that map onto variations in the preferred body proportions of erotic targets is thus encouraged.

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Notes

  1. A fifth item, “Undergoing a vasectomy as a permanent solution to ‘pregnancy scares,’” slightly diminished the scale’s reliability, perhaps because of the implied necessity of undergoing a medical procedure to achieve the desired outcome. It was, therefore, omitted from the RtoR scale.

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Correspondence to Christopher T. Burris.

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Burris, C.T., Munteanu, A.R. Preferred Female Body Proportions Among Child-Free Men. Arch Sex Behav 41, 1431–1437 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-012-9964-0

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