DRESS SIZE DOESN’T MATTER BUT THE HIPS DO

The human mating game is a competitive market similar to the stock market – but rather than our worth being expressed in rands, it’s expressed in mate value.

Evolution wants women to be able to get pregnant and be healthy enough to live to raise the child. For men, it’s all about their ability to protect, provide and commit to their family. Remember, when this system evolved, women were either pregnant or breastfeeding constantly so they were vulnerable.

To be able to make this calculation, your brain uses your senses to take in key indicators. A woman’s waistto-hip ratio, for example, is one of the most robust indicators of health and fertility. Cross-cultural studies of female body shape have repeatedly shown the most attractive waistto-hip ratio is 0,7 – the classic hourglass. You can be a size 8 or a size 18 – it’s the 0,7 that’s important (see box on the next page on how to work out your ratio).

Indeed, we’ve observed its importance not just in the lab but in real life. In a 2015 eye-tracking experiment, scientists in Texas showed that men, and interestingly women, focused first and spent the longest time looking at an unknown woman’s midriff before moving on to her face, suggesting that when deciding who to approach as a potential mate – or checking out the competition – the waist-to-hip ratio is one of the first pieces of information processed by our brain. Men are meanwhile assessed on their shoulder-to-waist ratio – a 1,4 is the goal, although that’s rarely displayed nowadays by anyone other than an Olympic athlete or gym junkie. In a fling rather than committed relationship, women are more apt to go for good looks in the form of a symmetrical face. For both sexes, symmetry is a sign of good genes and if he’s not in it for the long haul, his genes are the only thing she’ll be getting from him. Overall, however, the sexiest organ in the human body is the brain. The use of creative language, artistic expression and humour are indicators of our cognitive flexibility, which we’d all like our offspring to inherit because it’s linked to intelligence. It’s for this reason, in part, that famous rock stars or even politicians – think Mick Jagger with eight children or Boris Johnson with seven – seem to have above-average reproductive success. Women seem to find them irresistible despite the fact they don’t stick with one mate.