So do men REALLY prefer Miss Average? (2024)

By ALLISON PEARSON

Updated: 09:21, 12 June 2009

Are you a 5ft 4in tall female with a 30in waist, 40in hips, who tries to avoid seeing your reflection in the mirror?

And are you frankly dreading the summer holidays because you won't be able to hide those uncooked chipolata arms under a cardigan, and counting every calorie in a Muller Lite toffee yogurt (98) and generally feeling trapped in a cycle of self-loathing and crash dieting?

Well, madam, hold it right there. Chuck away the pashmina and the Spanx pants. Give a wiggle of those generous hips. Congratulations you are officially the most desirable woman on the planet!

And there we were thinking it was poor little Cheryl Cole, or that painfully plain Uma Thurman, even skinny bones Sienna. Now, it turns out that what turns men on is a well-upholstered size 14.

According to this week's New Scientist, 100 men taking part in an Australian study were asked to rate the attractiveness of 200 drawings of female torsos of different sizes.

The researchers then compared the favourite torsos with the vital statistics of eight groups of women, ranging from Playboy centrefolds and models to normal women.

The results were thrilling. (Well, they certainly were for those of us who are in danger of holding on to our baby weight until the baby concerned starts university.)

What the Aussies discovered was that a normal woman most closely matched the men's ideal female shape, with the best fit being a British size 14. God bless the average bloke.

Every magazine cover and every movie sex scene might be bombarding his bemused male brain with images of the perfect Size Zero woman, complete with missile-silo breasts, but, given the choice, it seems a chap will still pick out bouncy Beth from next door.

How can we account for this dizzying gap between the idealised projection of feminine beauty in our society and what men actually seem to fancy?

Surely the whole point of the female chassis is to get a passing mate to slow down, wink his indicator, pull over and revv those engines till the spark plugs pop. That's what Mother Nature designed the female for.

However, if the study is correct, then millions of women are being encouraged to feel dumpy and unlovable when - what do you know - it's them, not their scrawny sisters, who men want to make babies with.

I smell a rat. Are we women the victims of some sick conspiracy by Green activists working in conjunction with gay fashion designers to keep the population down?

Why else would we be encouraged to aspire to the very body shape that is most likely to leave us childless?

In these pages on Monday, our very own Liz Jones wrote with her usual blazing candour about her doomed attempt to eat normally.

Liz says she is proud she is still a size eight, fashion's sample size. She regards as 'lazy' and fat the same women who came out as most attractive to blokes in this new study. And she is far from alone.

That's why women probably hate their bodies today more than at any time in history - because they are conditioned to do so by a society increasingly intolerant of a female shape that is actually normal.

I'm ready to bet my WeightWatchers chocolate wafer bar (79cals, not that I'm counting) that most of us are on a diet right at this minute, or are planning to get back on the wagon just as soon as we've had that glass of Chardonnay in the garden this evening.

To state it brutally: there are counties full of women, including a frightening number of teenage girls, who would rather be thin than fertile. And no wonder.

Just look how, within half a century, the ideal movie star body has morphed from Marilyn Monroe to Nicole Kidman.

Marilyn - a size 14 - had exactly the generous proportions those guinea pig males who took part in the survey all lusted after.

Widely agreed to be one of the sexiest women ever to draw breath, poor, plump Marilyn would only make it into a magazine these days as the Before photo in a 'Before and After' makeover.

Now, women live in a weirdly distorting hall of mirrors that reflects cover girls and actresses back to us as though they're a perfectly normal size. Well, they're not.

My other half found himself sitting along from Sarah Jessica Parker at a movie premiere. He reported that the Sex And The City star was the size of our daughter. At the time, Evie was 12 years old and skinny for her age.

Why should the smartest, funniest female stars of our time need to be smaller than our children to be deemed attractive?

According to a recent survey, only six per cent of women have never dieted. (Who the hell are they - the ones wearing burkas?)

A woman aged 31 has been on an average of 38 diets and nearly one in three began dieting before her 14th birthday.

Most depressing of all, yet another study found that 47 per cent of girls aged between five and seven want to be slimmer than they are. Madness.

Try typing Women Don't Like Their Bodies into Google and you come up with 14-and-a-half-million stories.

Type in Women Like Their Bodies and what would you get - Victoria Beckham?

I bet even Posh, the human wishbone, is fretting about some unsightly millimetre of adipose tissue between her tootsies.

I wonder if David Beckham would concur with these researchers and prefer a bit more flesh on Mrs B? Almost certainly.

But she's not going to listen to him, is she? He's just a man.

And I'm sorry to say this is where the joyful tidings of the scientists run up against something that defies rational explanation: that is, women's capacity to be harshly critical of our bodies, even when there isn't a damn thing wrong with them.

How many of us look back on our lovely 21-year-old selves and wonder why the hell we didn't walk down the street waving a poster saying "I have a 24in waist"?

The fact is those Aussie men probably looked at the toned, supermodel torsos and probably thought: 'Oh-oh. There goes Miss Neurotic, no-fun, picks at a salad instead of enjoying a good night out, probably holds her tummy in while having sex and worries about cellulite instead of admiring me.'

In general, men are a lazy lot who are much happier with Miss Low Maintenance.

A woman with a generous body and a nature to match, who won't cast too critical an eye on their own two bellies and ingrowing toe-nails.

Science has proved what Billy Joel told us already: they really do love us just the way we are.

The breakthrough will come when women learn to love ourselves just they way we are, too. Still starting that new diet in the morning, girls?

Why the guys just can't resist my squishy bits

By ANNE SHOOTER

Women who are curvy all know about a very special cream. It keeps them looking young, feeling happy, and makes them irresistible to the opposite sex. Not only that, but it costs just a few pounds for a huge tub. It's name? Ice cream.

You see, the truth is that men like women who eat and have the curves to show it - and we curvy women know that men prefer us like that.

I am just about spot-on the vital statistics of the Miss Average who was identified in a new survey as being the dream woman for most men: 5ft 4in tall, a size 14 with a waist that hovers around 30in, rounded hips and a 36DD bust.

And you know what? I've never had any complaints from men about my looks. Far from it.

In fact, men have only ever commented positively about my eyes, smile, skin and breasts (obviously - they're only men, after all). But no man has ever called me fat.

In fact, when I have ever lamented my rather generous proportions, they have only ever given my bottom a good squeeze and told me not to be ridiculous.

The thing is, men can't help loving well-rounded women - those curves are a sign of fertility and they are genetically drawn to them because they signal that we will successfully conceive, carry and then nurture their offspring.

And quite frankly, who can blame them? I wouldn't want a load of elbows and ribs to cuddle in bed either. The squishy bits are way more fun.

The only people ever to have made unpleasant comments about my size are other women.

I've been told clothes are unflattering, asked whether I have considered trying the latest diet, and was recently asked if I have given up running while being looked up and down disparagingly.

And that's the nub of the matter. Thin women are skinny for other women - not for men.

They are skinny not to be sexy, but to be fashionable. They want to show other women they are controlled, cool, better in some way than the fatter, normal women around them.

I remember being in an Italian restaurant with a group of spectacularly skinny women once, and ordering a martini with olives to kick off proceedings.

As I went to pop the olives into my mouth, one of the skinny women said: 'Oh, are you not eating dinner?'

I was flabbergasted - but of course I ate the olives, and then went on to enjoy a delicious bowl of pasta while she picked miserably at a piece of grilled fish with steamed spinach.

By the end of the evening, her boyfriend was feeding me mouthfuls of his tiramisu.

Simply put, a man does not want to be with a woman who puts her hand over her wine glass when offered a top-up because she's had her calorie allowance for the day.

He wants to be with someone fun, someone he can have a great night out with - and then take home for some more fun.

The very last thing he wants is someone too controlled and self-obsessed. He wants her to lose control - and be obsessed with him, not herself.

I am not talking about totally letting it go and becoming overweight and unhealthy - just about being an attractively rounded woman.

We 'average' women really do have better skin, too (of all the people I have ever met, Dawn French has the most incredibly, smooth, line-free skin) and men often comment on my lack of wrinkles when they hear I am 38 (and no, I haven't had - and will never have - Botox).

When women are skinny they lose their natural, voluptuous lustre, and their skin and hair suffer for it.

My curves are proof that my body is healthy - they are the result of producing two gorgeous children.

And it's not as if I'm totally out of shape. Actually, my body is fairly firm from the odd gym session and jog round the block and - without meaning to sound arrogant - I am rather proud of it.

I think of my curves as a sign that I am a good cook and take care of my family. (There's nothing maternal or nurturing about a skinny woman.)

My figure shows I'm lucky enough to enjoy a wonderful life, that I'm unpretentious, easy going and, ultimately, happy with my lot.

And, if I ever do have a slightly paranoid moment about my wobbly tummy, I remind myself what one gorgeous man told me a long time ago: 'Darling, no man ever cares about the size of a woman's belly, as long as her breasts are bigger.'

THE MAN'S VIEW: Sorry, I'll take the bimbo

By TOM SYKES

A claim by Australian academics that men say the most attractive women in the world are 5ft 4in tall, with a 30in waist, 40in hips and wear a size 14 dress, has been seized on by a grateful female population as evidence that men prefer Miss Average to Miss World.

Well, I'm sorry to rain on your parade, but dream on, girls.

What it actually shows is that the 100 male students surveyed at the University of New South Wales are pathetic wimps, desperate for a quiet life and terrified of offending anyone.

Of course, a lot of students are like that, so pumped up with the ideals of political correctness that they'd rather keep up the 'right-on' pretence that they prefer short, fat women than admit the reason the Playboys of this world sell millions of copies a year: men dream of bedding a 6ft blonde bombshell with toned legs, boobs that interfere with her ability to drive a car, thighs that could crack walnuts and a belly taut enough to stop bullets.

Are women like this genetic freaks? Maybe. Do the magazines which feature their airbrushed forms promote unhealthy role models to impressionable teenagers?

Possibly - but a quick amble down our obesity-plagued high streets would suggest that this risk is wildly overstated.

Please let's drop this tedious insistence that men have to find 'real women' attractive or else they are being sexist. Why aren't we allowed our fantasies any more?

Why do we have to pretend we like saggy bottoms, stretch marks and drooping boobs?

That's what we get in real life anyway.

The truth is it takes courage to admit that what gets your imagination racing is the most two dimensional of blonde bimbos.

In my opinion, one of the bravest things Arthur Miller ever did was to marry Marilyn Monroe - he was simply exposing the reality of every man's true sexual psyche.

Of course, the Monroe-Miller marriage didn't last - they divorced after five years, which just goes to show that while a night of passion with a leggy blonde remains high up there on the secret wish-list of most men, it never really works out.

It might be fine if you're looking for a fantasy-fuelled night of passion, but it won't make a man happy in the long run.

And that's the good news, ladies.

What the men in this survey really meant is that they would like to be married to a cuddly Miss Average who would cook nice dinners and care for the children.

But in terms of sexual attraction, would we choose you over a lissom Barbie doll?

I don't think so.