An issue inadequately skirted
Back in the days when David Letterman was actually funny, he took pains to distinguish between mere supermodels and leggy supermodels, who, he said, were something of a breed apart.
Despite the perceptions of fashion magazines, researchers have found that most people do not find leggy women all that attractive.
After being shown pictures of women with the same body shape but varying leg-to-body length, most people found women in the middle leg ranges most attractive.
It’s not clear whether this preference is gender-based:
[W]hen researchers chose eight images and asked 705 women and 235 men to rate the attractiveness of each shape, five of the six focus groups rated women with longer legs less attractive.
They also did not prefer women with short legs, a body shape often associated with poor health.
This latter seems a bit unfair, since a woman 5’1″ or so might be perceived as having short legs whether or not they’re actually in proportion to the rest of her.
Then again:
This is the towering presence of Kylie Minogue, five feet zilch, and she looks just fine. In an earlier survey, the respondents expressed a preference for gams five percent longer than “normal” — but not much beyond that.
For more than forty years, when asked what I was looking for in the way of purely superficial characteristics, I have always said, “Give me a sweet smile and a decent pair of legs, and everything else is negotiable.” By the time I’m dead and gone, though, expressing preferences of this sort will surely be forbidden by the Federal Bureau of Copulation.
Jeff Brokaw »
23 December 2009 · 9:39 am
Super-long-legged models are too tall and skinny for my tastes. I mean, who really likes that look, other than clothing designers? It just isn’t very feminine, more like an overgrown nine-year-old girl.
Plus, they don’t look like fun. They just look hungry, and intense. But they make ugly clothes look awesome, whatever value we want to assign to that virtue.
YMMV.
Kay Dennison »
23 December 2009 · 2:08 pm
As a tall, thin, long-legged woman, I think I’m qualified to make a statement here and I was going to but I think it’s better that I don’t. We are all products of the genetics of our family and can’t do a damn thing about them.
Lindsay’s No Mystery (and neither is inflation) »
27 December 2009 · 10:34 am
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