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Healthy Body Equals Beautiful Body? Changing Perceptions of Health and Attractiveness with Shifting Socioeconomic Status

  • Chapter
The Body Beautiful

Abstract

There has been considerable debate over the utility of the possible visual cues used to judge human physical attractiveness and their evolutionary origins. In theory, of course, the human body can (and should) be considered as more than just the sum of its various components (see Johnson & Tassinary, Chapter 9), but for reasons of brevity and simplicity, academic debate has tended to centre on one particular body measurement, the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). This almost exclusive focus on the WHR can be traced back to a series of papers published in the early 1990s by Devendra Singh, in which he argued that the WHR was the key component to understanding a woman’s physical attractiveness.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Experimental Psychology Department, Cambridge University, UK

    Martin J. Tovée

  2. University College London, UK

    Adrian Furnham (Professor of Psychology)

  3. University of Liverpool, UK

    Viren Swami (Research Associate)

Authors
  1. Martin J. Tovée
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  2. Adrian Furnham
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  3. Viren Swami
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Liverpool, UK

    Viren Swami (Research Associate) (Research Associate)

  2. University College London, UK

    Adrian Furnham (Professor of Psychology) (Professor of Psychology)

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© 2007 Martin J. Tovée, Adrian Furnham, and Viren Swami

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Tovée, M.J., Furnham, A., Swami, V. (2007). Healthy Body Equals Beautiful Body? Changing Perceptions of Health and Attractiveness with Shifting Socioeconomic Status. In: Swami, V., Furnham, A. (eds) The Body Beautiful. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230596887_7

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