Which matters more for attractiveness: a woman's face or body?

Photo: flickr/mislav-marohnicThe answer is "it depends on whether she's wearing a swimsuit." In this study, scientists had subjects independently rate the attractiveness of women's faces, clothed bodies, and bodies in bathing suits. They found that the ratings of faces and bodies in bathing suits agreed quite well, whereas the ratings of the clothed bodies were less predictive of full-body attractiveness. This supports the idea that the face contributes more to overall attractiveness when a woman is fully-clothed, but when skimpily-clad, both the face and the body matter equally. Be sure to check out the figure below for all the "data."Face and Body: Independent Predictors of Women’s Attractiveness "Women's faces and bodies are both thought to provide cues to women's age, health, fertility, and personality. To gain a stronger understanding of how these cues are utilized, we investigated the degree to which ratings of women's faces and bodies independently predicted ratings ...