A 2016 study titled The Body and the Beautiful: Health, Attractiveness and Body Composition in Men’s and Women’s Bodies, looked into the link between health and attractiveness.
They brought in both men and women, and they had them manipulate images to create the body composition that looked the most attractive to them. Separate from that, they also asked them to create the body composition that looked the healthiest. They found:
The male body-fat percentage that looked the healthiest also looked the most attractive. Women really were attracted to men who looked visibly healthy.
Women were able to accurately guess the ideal amount of body fat for health. That body-fat percentage that women thought looked the healthiest fell right within the ideal range for health (10–20%).
Women thought that men with a body-fat percentage of 16% looked the most attractive. Women found the men who were in the middle of the healthy body-fat percentage range looked the most attractive.
This suggests that, yes, it’s possible to be too lean, both in terms of general health and attractiveness. And that, yes, women are most attracted to men whose bodies look as healthy as possible.
However, this study used computer-generated images, and all of those images were of men wearing shirts. How well does this line up with what women prefer when looking at real photographs of guys with their shirts off?
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