Groping Mannequins in Vans Shows Men Prefer Slim Waists

Just what we need: another brave venture on the part of science to define female beauty for women and remind them that nope, these preferences for thinness aren't a cultural thing at all, just pure biology at work. (Maybe next time, science will set out to prove the biological necessity of baking a pie for one's husband on a weekly basis, too?) This time with the novel method of ... groping mannequins in a van!

Sadly, this isn't made up, although it does look something out of The Onion. In a new study in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, scientists come to the neat conclusion that men prefer slim-waisted women by asking 38 men to "feel and touch" the waists of two female mannequins in a van (um, sorry, "mobile laboratory").

Oh, it gets better. The scientists chose 19 blind men who felt the mannequins first. One mannequin had a waist that was 70% as wide as her hips, and the other had a waist 84% as wide as her hips. Both were wearing "tight-fitting dresses." (Anybody else starting to get a picture of the scene here? A van full of men fondling female mannequins? Sounds like science!)  The blind men rated each mannequin on a scale of 1-10, 10 being most desirable.

Then -- this is my favorite part -- the scientists found 19 sighted men via the time-tested method of wandering around a shopping mall parking lot asking for volunteers. I wonder how long it took them to find men who said, "What, you want me to climb into that van and caress female mannequins' waists? Sure!"

Here's where the revelation comes in. The blind men gave the slimmer-waisted mannequins an average of 7 out of 10, whereas the wider-hipped mannequins came in at an average of 6. The sighted men, however, gave the slimmer-waisted mannequin an average of 8 and the wider-hipped one an average of 6.5.  What does this prove, other than the fact that you or I might just as easily rent a van, drive it to shopping mall parking lot, and start drawing conclusions about ideal female waist ratios? Obviously, it proves that men prefer slimmer-waisted women and, more significantly, it "casts doubt" on the "hypothesis" that visual culture impacts men's preferences for slim waists.

I find it charming that science still lives in an era of such "objective" innocence, in which scientists can live in a society dominated by one ubiquitous, singular type of female beauty (intense thinness), endorsed and on display in every societal space, and still calmly declare the impact of visual culture hypothetical.

But I suppose once you've asked 19 blind men to hold two mannequins' waists, you've debunked that whole visual culture thing. You have to acknowledge, unfortunately, that the sighted men's preferences for the slimmer-waisted mannequin were much higher, and that visual imput "might" play a role in this increased preference. But overall, sure, you've mostly proven, as USA Today's article declares, "Sighted, blind men both wowed by women's tiny waists."

The sloppy assumptions here are almost beyond comprehension. First of all, is there no way that blind men could be at all influenced by a culture which is continuously lambasting people through any and every medium to lose weight, get thinner, and diet? Do they have to see to be impacted by visual culture? Is this a question anyone considered or, um, did the rigorous scientific method just conclude that since they're blind they live in a vacuum untouched by pervasive cultural phenomena?

Secondly, do the supposed preferences of 38 men feeling 2 mannequins in a van in a shopping mall parking lot really constitute scientific evidence for the beauty preferences of the human male? I mean, really? And finally, could any study reinforce the objectification of women more than one that asks men to grope and rate mannequin's waists, and then draws conclusions about the ideal women's body?

I'm going to take the optimistic long view on this one, and hope that instead of validating existing cultural standards in favor of the tiny waist, this study will confirm for people the dubiousness of so much scientific "research" which claims to prove whatever culture has tried to tell us a million times.

Photo credit: Corset Laced Mann...