Visual perception of Chinese female physical attractiveness

Decoration is one of the most fundamental motives of wearing clothing which is not for utility reasons but more importantly for attractiveness. Three cues to female attractiveness are body mass index (BMI), volume height index (VHI) and body shape as measured by the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). In previous studies, Caucasian female as subjects were rated for attractiveness by raters from various countries. However, the perception was affected by raters. demographic details, such as age, gender, race, weight, height, and socioeconomic situation. This study examined Chinese female.s physical attractiveness and investigated the relationship between BMI, VHI or WHR and attractiveness rating and the influence of demographic details to attractiveness. 35 male and 45 female undergraduates were asked to rate a set of 50 three dimensional Wire-frame movie clips of real women.s for attractiveness. Using multiple polynomial regression analysis, results showed that BMI and VHI are the primary determinants of female attractiveness, whereas WHR failed to emerge as a significant predictor. Results also showed there are significant differences in preference for physical attractiveness, with Chinese raters preferring clips of women with lower BMI and VHI than the raters with high socioeconomic situation. Finally, results showed female raters gave higher attractiveness ratings than male raters but the attractiveness ratings rated by over weight female were lower than that of other raters.