Skinny, athletic, curvy—who defines the ideal body type? While fashion magazines come with their own mantra and tagline of “be comfortable in your own skin,” their constant spotlight for skinny models reflect their hypocrisy in belief and also makes one wonder as to what is this age-old term called an “ideal body type.”
While some women preach about how a petite, fat-free body is a must-have to flaunt the most awesome fashion collection, others believe curves are the real reflection of a woman’s femininity.
Well, to each their own, but a recent study has derived a conclusion that says a female’s ideal body type notion is completely dependent on a man’s opinion. So ladies—thin or voluptuous, here’s what the study conducted by the Florida State University and Southern Methodist University found out—
Women whose sexual orientations straight tend to visualize the concept of an “ideal body type” depending on what a man would consider being ideal.
The study basically conducted groups of women, divided into various sections, who were handed photographs of other women—some thin and some plus size. Some sections were told how other women thought about the body types of the women in the photographs while the other sections were told how some men thought about the body types of the women in the photographs, for instance, how some preferred the voluptuous ones over the extremely thin ones.
At the end when the data were analyzed, it came to fore that the women told by other women about their body types had no influence at all and rather seemed to be happy about their shapes, while the ones told about the preferences of men were either too satisfied (those who had curvy body types as told to them that those men preferred voluptuous females) or totally dissatisfied and wanted to serve the preferences of men’s opinions (in this case, the ones with skinny frames).
With such findings, it’s discouraging and also unusual to see that somehow the age-old saying of this being a man’s world still holds true!