We know that physical attractiveness is important in heterosexual mate selection. It provides reliable external cues to produce offspring.
For men, physical attractiveness in women is generally associated with a particular waist-hip ratio, overall body size, and body mass.
Men spend longer viewing women's chest, waist, and hip areas compared with other body parts, due to these areas giving more information regarding attractiveness cues.
Besides size and body shape, clothing color has also been important in attractiveness ratings, with several studies suggesting that red clothing makes women appear more attractive to men due to its association with love and passion.
Color has a big influence on various other psychological factors, including mood and decision making.
For example, bright colors tend to be connected to positive emotions, and dark colors with negative emotions, which may also account for how color can influence our perception of bodily attractiveness and body size.
We understand men assess attractiveness in women, but women also tend to rate the attractiveness of other women and compare this with their own self-perceived attractiveness.
First, to assess their chances of mate selection, and second, to check out attractive competitors who might be a threat to their relationship.
In one study researchers had women assess the attractiveness of other women and found that black and red clothing produced the highest ratings of body attractiveness and slimmer body size judgments.
While grey and green clothes produced the lowest body attractiveness and highest body size assessments.
These judgments were further affected by skin color, with darker skin colors wearing white, blue, and green being rated higher than lighter skin colors .
The ’red-effect’ theory, which says that men rate women who wear red as more attractive due to an association with passion and sexual availability, was also found to apply to women’s judgments of other women.
As mentioned earlier, this is possibly because women may be comparing other women’s attractiveness to assess their chances in the mate selection or to observe attractive competitors who might be a threat.
While these findings may be influenced by social comparison to others, overall body satisfaction, and culture, it informs us how clothing color contrasts with the tone of skin and how this is important when women judge the attractiveness and size of other women.
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