The scientists, from the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Pittsburgh, concluded that women with lower waist-to-hip ratios (WHR) produced children with better intellectual abilities.
They found that a woman's hips and thighs contained omega-3 fatty acids, which help nurture both mother and baby's brains during pregnancy. Fat around the waist, however, contains higher levels of omega-6 fatty acids, which does not help brain growth.
"Shapely hips and thighs hold essential nutrients that nurse brains and could produce smart kids, too," said one researcher, Steven Gaulin, of the University of California at Santa Barbara.
His colleague, William Lassek, from the University of Pittsburgh, said: "Men respond because it's reproductively important."
Scientific studies have consistently demonstrated that men through the ages have found women with hourglass figures more attractive.
A study published this year found that as far back as the ancient Egyptians men have sought out curvaceous women.
However, the reason for the attraction has never been conclusively proven. Many scientists believed that a shapely figure suggested to a man that a woman would be good at be aring children and have a longer life expectancy.
The researchers tested 16,000 women and girls and found that women with a greater difference between their waist and hip measurements scored significantly higher in the tests, as did their children.
The research suggests that children born to teenagers do worse in cognitive tests because their mothers did not have enough of the omega-3 acids stored in their hips.
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2007
RE-vised 2008
Relationship between female body shape & brain function
Steven Gaulin, Ph.D.
Professor of Anthropology
UC Santa Barbara
gaulin@anth.ucsb.edu
Our research questions: My collaborator, Will Lassek, and I began by trying to understand three things:
Q. 1. Why are women’s bodies much fattier than men’s? Among normal, healthy individuals, men’s bodies are about 10-12% fat and women’s are 25-30% fat, as a percentage of body weight.
Q. 2. Why do men and women distribute their body fat differently? Men distribute their fat abdominally whereas women deposit theirs below the waist (in hips and thighs) and to a more variable degree, above the waist in their breasts. The result of this sex difference in fat distribution is that women have lower waist/hip ratios than men. (The waist/hip ratio is simply the circumference of the waist measured at the narrowest part divided by the circumference of the hips measured at the widest part.)
Q. 3. Why do men pay attention to female fat distribution in evaluating female attractiveness? Most people will not doubt this claim but, just in case, there is a substantial scientific literature documenting that men find women with low waist/hip ratios more attractive.
