Ever wonder why gay men drool over musclular Ken dolls while most women don't look twice? Or why the pouty stylings of Megan Fox (who's a pretty girl, sure) seem to have an unearthly pull on straight men? Attraction At First Eye Contact?
Us too, and now thanks to a Harvard study we find that male attraction to exaggerated masculine or feminine features (depending on the man's sexual orientation) is part of biology's big master plan. According to the study of 900 men and women, published online in the journal Archives of Sex.ual Behavior, both gay men and straight men are hard-wired to find faces that are "sex.ually dimorphic" the most appealing.
Sex.ual dimorphism is the accentuation of the preferred gender's most traditional features. Think a "broad jaw, broad forehead, and more pronounced brow ridge" in men and "tapered chin, larger lips, and a narrower forehead" in women. Facial Attraction: Choice Of Sex.ual Partner Shaped The Human Face
When faced with a cascade of face images that scientists tweaked to look either more masculine or feminine, men were pretty much in agreement about the objects of their affection. Gay men found more masculine-looking men to be attractive, yet straight women weren't quite as extreme. Women (but of course!) were much dicier and more complicated in what they found sexworthy. Women Are Confusing Flirts.
Our work showed that gay men found highly masculine male faces to be significantly more attractive than feminine male faces. Also, the types of male faces that gay men found attractive generally did not mirror the types of faces that straight women found most attractive, one of the researchers said.
While straight women as a whole found masculine faces more attractive then feminine ones, lesbians were more ennamored by butch ladies. And, as we've noted here before, women tend to be most attracted to slightly more feminine-looking guys once ovulation has passed. And then hop back onto the macho man ride when our bodies are aching to procreate.
