Pretend that you’re a journalist for the BBC. You’ve just seen the results of a scientific study on a group of women that shows a correlation between a large hip-to-waist ratio and high scores on cognitive tests. (Ignore, for a moment, the absurdity of doing such a study in the first place.) Now you’re going to report on that study. Which of these angles are you most likely to take?

• Fat deposits aren’t that bad for you: in fact, they may be linked to higher intelligence.
• Diet, which is linked to social class, affects performance on cognitive tests.
• Hey men! Curvy women are smarter. If you have sex with them, they’ll bear you smarter kids, which is apparently the primary purpose of women. Anyway, the main thing is that you don’t need to hide your fetish for chubby chicks anymore. Go get yourself one!

Click for the answer.

The other headlines on that page are also quite telling:

Sexy walks ‘keep men off scent’
Gaze ‘key to facial attraction’
‘Hormonal’ women most attractive
Attraction ‘determined by walk’
Slim waist holds sway in history
Hourglass figure fertility link

No one has anything more important to research or report on? Really?

Hat tip: Jenlight.


8 Responses to “Yet another creepy research study”  

  1. 1 General of the fembot army

    Nice. Keeping women in their place as babymakers, and yet telling them that they’re smarter if they’ve got bigger hips. As opposed to what? Matchstick thin thighs like the models?

  2. 2 Kyso Kisaen

    Ask me what I’m going to do with all this junk, all this junk, all this junk, in my trunk.

    I’m gonna gonna solve this differential equation then get you drunk, get you drunk, get you drunk.

    And yeah, it was nice of that headline to completely ignore the last two paragraphs of the article, you know, the ones that quote that expert:

    “On the fatty deposits being related to intelligence front, it’s very hard to detangle that from other factors, such as social class, for instance, or diet,” said Martin Tovee of Newcastle University.

    “And much as we logically like the idea that men are interested in the waist to hip ratio, it actually features relatively low down the list of feature males look for in a potential partner.”

  3. 3 Thene

    That’s a nice final sentence, but who is this ‘we’ and what is he calling ‘logical’?

  4. 4 JasonC

    where do these researchers come from, by the way? and how do they get money for this shit?

  5. 5 Kyso Kisaen

    That’s a nice final sentence, but who is this ‘we’ and what is he calling ‘logical’?

    I would imagine ‘we’ are other researchers who are into the waist-to-hip ratio thing. There’s actually a bunch done on that, especially about how men ‘prefer’ a 0.8 ratio because this is so optimal for childbearing, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen someone say that really, it’s just not that important.

  6. 6 apperception

    I believe this theory itself is actually and expression of institutionalized violence toward women.

  7. 7 Andrew

    In a way, I like how the BBC links to earlier similar stories. At least the contradictions let you know how little there is to them. In other BBC news I read today, house prices are up, down, recovering, booming and stagnating.

  8. 8 Ginger

    Hey, I’ve grown a cup size in the last decade, and I HAVE gotten smarter!!

    Of course, that could just be life experience. Aging usually brings wisdom. And a few extra pounds.

    What a dumbass study.

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