Curvy Hips and Thighs Shown to Up Brain Power

The status of those ultra-thin runway models, so prominently pictured in today’s fashion magazines, took a hit recently when researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California at Santa Barbara teamed up to answer questions about why women carry more fat, and in different places, than men; and attempted to answer the age old question of why men have an apparent affinity for “curvy” women.

Using data from a federally-collected database, researchers William Lassek and Steven Gaulin compared women’s waist-to-hip ratios to their scores on cognitive tests. “Curvy women,” that is women whose waists were significantly smaller than their hips, scored highest on the tests. Curvy women’s children also scored higher.

The explanation for this phenomenon, researchers deduced, may have to do with the rich deposits of omega-3 fatty acids, so crucial for brain development, that curvy women carry on their hips and thighs; as opposed to the skinny women whose deposits of omega-3 fatty acids were lower, or the less “curvy” women who carried higher concentrations of omega-6 fatty acids around their waists. It’s the size of the hips relative to the waist that matters.

The study indicates that the omega-3 fatty acids nourish the curvy women’s brains and provided nourishment essential to fetal brain development; thus, ingestion of more omega-3 fatty acids during pregnancy can result in better brain development, and children who will score higher on standardized cognitive tests.

“The effect is not huge, but the effect is statistically significant,” said researcher Steven Gaulin. After variables such as age, education, and income were factored out, curvy women scored 1 to 1.5 percent higher on intelligence tests remarked Richard Carlson, Penn State psychology professor.

And why do men prefer “curvy” women? Gaulin explains, it is statistically significant that, “Over the big sweep of human evolution, there was no education; there were no differences in family income. All of those other extraneous pressures would not have mattered when men’s mating preferences were being shaped.” Lassek adds, “Men respond because it’s reproductively important.”

Reactions to the study were mixed. Irina Aristarkhova, professor of women’s studies, hopes that some starving females will see the study in a positive light. David Puts, professor of anthropology at Penn State, feels that although the findings were interesting, other factors could explain why the curvy women scored higher on the cognitive tests. He wants to see more research. And the director for the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, Peggy Howell, just saw the study as “a joke.”

Nonetheless the researchers remain enthusiastic about their findings.

“One thing that’s in the back of my mind when I do this work – a lot of the fashion magazines downplay curviness and make women feel bad for being curvy,” Gaulin said. “All I wanted to do was to tell women that there’s a reason for being curvy…If they care about their children, they should love their hips.”

Aubrey Whelan described the study in her article titled, Study: Curves may lead to greater Intelligence, which appeared in the Penn State Daily Collegian, The Llama Ledger on December 5, 2007.