Blanche Bailly: Here's Why Men Prefer Women With Big Buttocks

Here's why men prefer women with big buttocks

Blanche Bailly

This allowed our female ancestors to better support, predict and achieve multiple pregnancies, according to the research. "What is fascinating about this research is that there is yet another scientific illustration of a tight fit between the differentiated function of human morphology - in this case, lumbar curvature - is at an advanced level of the human body. 'Attractiveness,' said study co-author David Buss, of the University of Texas at Austin, professor of psychology. 

"This adds to a growing body of evidence that beauty is not quite arbitrary, or 'in the eyes of the viewer' as many people believe, but rather has a coherent logic of adaptation. 

The research was published online in Evolution and Human Behavior, and consisted of two studies. The first speaks of a vertebral wedge, a sub-adjacent vertebral feature that can affect the actual curve in the lower back of women. 

About 100 men assessing the attractiveness of several manipulated images with spine curves running across the natural spectrum. Men were more attracted to images of women with the hypothetical optimum of 45 degrees of lumbar curvature. "This vertebral structure would have allowed pregnant women to balance their weight on their hips," says Lewis.

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"These women would have been more effective at work during pregnancy and less likely to suffer from spinal cord injuries." 

In return, the men who preferred these women would have had partners who were able to better manage the fetus and offspring, and who would have been able to perform multiple pregnancies without injury. The second study addressed the question of "whether men prefer this angle, because it reflects big buttocks, or if it can really be attributed to the angle of the spine itself. About 200 men were presented with groups of images of women with different sizes of buttocks and vertebral wedges. 

The researchers found that men have always preferred women whose spinal curvature was closer to optimum regardless of the size of the buttocks. "This has allowed us to conclusively show that men prefer women who have specific angles of spinal curvature on the mass of the buttocks," says study co-author Eric Russell. This morphology and the psychological preference of men towards them have evolved over the years, and they will not disappear overnight.