Study Finds That Men Are Not Really Attracted To Skinny Fashion Models As Some Women Might Believe.
We all have flipped through a fashion magazine and paused at every page to admire and low-key envy the models possessing perfectly lean body. The reason is that we have been made to believe that that is the ideal body shape a woman should have. This might seem a minute of disappointment and harmless thought but it is seriously problematic and leads to negative body image issue in many women. Think about how a little girl finding pictures of women of similar body size would automatically believe that she needs to be skinny in order to be on the glossy pages of a magazine. This is exactly why there has been constant criticism on how the fashion industries stick to the models of standardised body size and why there is a need for inclusivity and diversity in fashion.
Most fashion models we see on the billboards, runways and magazines are skinny because of the age-old belief that men desire thin women. Well, we really don’t care what men think but probably that’s what casting people in fashion think who hire skinny models to attract male gaze. But how true it is? Turn out, it isn’t. There have been several studies in the past that suggest that men, in fact don’t find the idolised model body that attractive. Women who have been under the impression that men desire skinny women are highly mistaken and in reality, they prefer curvier women.
According to a new study titled ‘Gender Discrepancies in Perceptions of the Bodies of Female Fashion Models’ published in Sex Roles, “For over 30 years, researchers and journalists have made the claim that men do not prefer the level of thinness typically embodied by female fashion models, along with the secondary claim that women overestimate the extent to which men find these ultra-thin bodies attractive.” Authors Sarah N. Johnson and Renee Engeln wanted to bust the gender-based misconceptions that fuel negative body image issues in women who think they need to look a certain way to attract the opposite sex.
Women overestimate men’s attraction to thin female fashion models, study finds https://t.co/TIhhpHjDbh
— PsyPost.org (@PsyPost) December 18, 2020
Also Read: Versace Had Plus Size Models Walk Its Runway For The First Time In History At The Milan Fashion Week. Fashion Runways Are Finally Getting Size Inclusive
The study roped in 548 college students including almost even number of males and females, and asked them to rate models with 13 different body sizes on a scale of 7 ranging from “way too thin” to “way too fat” and then on the basis of attractiveness ranging from “extremely unattractive” to 7 “extremely attractive. In the second phase of the test, they were asked to rate the models on the basis of how they think the opposite sex would find them attractive. While both genders rated the models the same way, the women thought men would find skinnier women attractive whereas they gravitated towards the curvier spectrum of the scale. This indicated that there is “parallel misconception” among men and women where they overestimate the level of attractiveness for fashion models.
The fact that men and society at large see super thin women as perfect and desirable has been messing up with women’s head for too long and this isn’t even true. The fashion industry promoting one size as the ideal body size is seriously problematic and needs to change, regardless of what men find attractive to encourage healthy body image among women. I mean, it’s equally offensive to the skinny women and fashion models to say men don’t find them attractive. So, can we seriously stop using a man’s preferences and degree of attraction as the benchmark for ideal beauty for women and make fashion more inclusive? Plus, who cares if men find skinnier women more attractive or those on the heavier side. The right one will desire you regardless of your body shape and size, and that’s what matters.
