Women With Bigger Butts Are More Fertile, According To Research
Here's how the curve of your spine will help you land a husband.
BLACKDAY | Shutterstock You already know that some men love a big butt, but it looks like science is breaking down the infatuation that might have more to do with the curve of a woman's spine.
A study at Bilkent University showed 300 women different silhouettes of women with different degrees of curvature in their spines. They then rated which they found most attractive.
Women with bigger butts are more fertile, says research.
In the end, the majority of men were attracted to a woman who had a spine with a curve of 45.5 degrees. You may think this is a weird thing for men to notice — and it is, more on that later — but the attraction is actually tied to a woman's fertility: women with curvier spines are more fertile.
The reason for such an angle would have given a woman an advantage while pregnant in early hunter-gatherer societies and so it has evolved as an attractive trait that men seek in their mates around the world, according to the researchers.
"Ancestral women who possessed this degree of lumbar curvature would have been able to forage longer into pregnancy and would have been able to carry out multiple pregnancies with a reduced risk of spinal injury," explained Dr. David Lewis, a psychologist at Bilkent University to Daily Mail.
If a woman didn't have such a curve, then the pressure on her hips during pregnancy would increase by nearly 800 percent, rendering her largely immobile and increasing the risk of health problems.
So does the attraction of the curve of her backside have anything to do with the size of her butt? Possibly.
The psychologists showed 300 men silhouettes of women with different angles of curvature. The men were then asked to rate the images according to how attractive they found the silhouette. Most of the men were significantly more attracted to those with a spine curve of 45.5 degrees, the researchers found. Analysis of the results also found that the preference for this level of spine curve was 'unequivocally not a by-product of a preference for buttock mass', they added.
Men who think they like big bottoms may actually be more into spines, Dr. Lewis said.
He said: 'Men may be directing their attention to the butt and obtaining information about women's spines, even if they are unaware that that is what their minds are doing. Alternatively, men may have preferences for both lumbar curvature and buttock size."
So, the men who talk a lot about loving "big butts" might actually be more into the curve of a woman's spine, but are misdirecting their compliment.
Nicole Weaver is a senior writer for Showbiz Cheat Sheet whose work has been featured in New York Magazine, Teen Vogue, and more.