Abstract

Why are some humans considered more beautiful than others? Theory suggests that sexually reproducing organisms should choose mates displaying characters indicative of high genotypic or phenotypic quality¹. Attraction to beautiful individuals may therefore be an adaptation for choosing high-quality mates^{2, 3, 4, 5, 6}. Culturally invariant standards of beauty in humans have been taken as evidence favouring such an adaptationist explanation of attraction^{3, 4, 5, 6, 7}; however, if standards of beauty are instead no more than artefacts of culture, they should vary across cultures^{3, 4, 5, 6}. Here we show that male preference for women with a low waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is not culturally universal, as had previously been assumed.