Science News

Evidence from all over the world suggests that men strongly prefer women who have a lot of body fat (roughly 30 percent of their body weight) and whose body fat is distributed in a particular way, with very little in the waist but much more in the hips, buttocks and thighs, producing a small waist-hip ratio. Why have men evolved to prefer such high levels of fat--more than bears settling down to hibernate or whales swimming in frigid waters? And even if it could be explained how more fat makes a better mom, why would it matter where she stored it; what is the message contained in a low waist-hip ratio? So this male preference actually consists of two nested psychological puzzles.

Hormones shape our bodies, make us fertile, excite our most basic urges, and as scientists have known for years, they govern the behaviors that separate men from women. But how?

A low-pitched voice in a man is associated with a litany of masculine traits: dominance, strength, greater physical size, more attractiveness to women, and so on. But new research strikes one trait off that list: virility.

Women, make some room at the makeup counter: A new study finds that, like women, men are judged as youthful and attractive based on skin tone.

In the game of love and sex, beautiful skin may draw the line between winners and losers: Women find men with a healthy skin color more appealing than those with a masculine face, new research shows.

It’s the soul of a same bed, different dreams relationship: The most entangled intimacies accommodate the most elementally opposite meanings. Differences in the husband’s and wife’s perceptions aren’t always about the partners being oblivious, in denial, deceitful, treacherous, or naïve. Sometimes, the spouses are just living with two different meanings of the same word and the same life.