Cue-based estimates of reproductive value explain women's body attractiveness

Women's body attractiveness is influenced by specific anthropometric cues, including body mass index (BMI), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), waist-to-stature ratio (WSR), and shoulder-to-waist ratio (SWR). Despite the existence of multiple functional hypotheses to explain these preferences, it remains unclear which cue-based inferences are most influential in regulating evaluations of women's body attractiveness. We argue that (i) the common link to the morphological cues that influence women's body attractiveness is that they all reliably indicate high reproductive value (as defined by youth and low parity); and (ii) ancestrally, selection pressures related to tracking between-women differences in reproductive value would have been among the strongest acting on adaptations for body evaluation. An empirical study then tested the resulting prediction that cue-based estimates of reproductive value function as powerful regulators of women's body attractiveness judgments. Subjects viewed standardized photos of women in swimsuits (with heads obscured), and were assigned to either estimate components of their reproductive value (age or number of offspring) or rate their attractiveness. Structural equation modeling revealed that a latent variable capturing estimated reproductive value was almost perfectly correlated with a latent variable capturing body attractiveness. Moreover, unique associations of women's BMI, WHR, and WSR with their body attractiveness were entirely mediated via estimated reproductive value. These findings provide strong support for the longstanding hypothesis that women's body attractiveness is primarily explained by cue-based estimates of reproductive value - expected future utility as a vehicle of offspring production.