Hey sexy!

Lately, I’ve been wondering about what makes something sexy.

Often with colleagues I talk about web technologies and cool consulting engagements, particularly ones in the Web 2.0 space, and we say how ’sexy’ these things are. That’s obviously not the same type of sexy, for example, as McDreamy or McSteamy from Grey’s Anatomy (at least not as far as some of my female friends are concerned … even the ones who are IAs like myself).

Dictionary.com gives three definitions for sexy:

1. concerned predominantly or excessively with sex: a sexy novel
2. sexually interesting or exciting; radiating sexuality: the sexiest professor on campus
3. excitingly appealing; glamorous: a sexy new car

It’s a nice start, but it still doesn’t tell me what makes something sexy.

Oddly enough, I actually know a fair bit about this sort of thing. I studied the Kinsey reports, Western ideas of attractiveness, and even participated in a study that examined factors of sex appeal by looking at naked bodies and rating how attractive they were. “Sex and society” was obviously one of my fav social psychology lectures. Then, there was my favourite post-grad seminar series: “psychopathology and culture”. I presented on love and pan-cultural human emotion. The only conclusion I could come to was that while love was probably culturally universal (and that’s probably a who blog entry in itself), the expression of love, and considerations of attractiveness, were very much culturally dependent.

If we equate sexy with aspects of attractiveness there’s at least a number of scientific studies that can help to give us a definition for ’sexy’.

One factor that continues to be highlighted in what women find attractive in men is height [1]. Some studies [2] even support the notion of the perfect ratio of 1.618-to-1 as a comparison of size between men and women, based on observations of biological systems and the Golden Ratio.

Height is a factor

In my “sex and society” lecture, the factors that correlated to attractiveness were slim, slightly muscular, and lack of body hair (no hairy legs or bear-like backs!). We also found that the ideal male body image for men was slightly larger than the women’s preference. Findings that are generally supported in the literature [3] (Jackson & McGill, 2005; and others). The ideal female body image for women was thinner than the men’s preference. What does that mean? Well, women actually like their men thinner than men might think. And men like women who are not as skinny as women might think. Singh (1993) suggests that this ideal body ratio, measured as hips-to-waist, is 0.7 [4].

Skinnier men and not-so-skinny women is a factor

So that covers some physical factors. What about brains? Urbaniak and Kilmann (2003) studied the ‘nice-guy’ paradox. While the race for survival-of-the-fittest perpetuates the belief that “nice guys finish last”, Urbaniak and Kilmann found that women highly value ‘niceness’ in choosing a dating partner, unless, of course, she’s looking for a one-night stand [5]. Just don’t be too nice, though, Urbaniak and Kilmann suggest, because sometimes nice is just too boring.

Bad is good, but good is better

So I guess that brings us back to McDreamy and McSteamy. Who is sexier? McSteamy might be the bad boy. He might be tall, have the rugged looks, and the pumped body, but he’s not nice. McDreamy on the other hand has the nice factor - he’s caring and thoughtful.

Who is sexier?

I think McDreamy probably wins the sexy factor by a nose. The message is that sexy has lots of factors. It probably depends on who you are and what you’re after in a partner. In general, though, for all us geeks who are tall, slim and nice, and who think Web 2.0 is sexy, the girls will probably find us sexy as well.

M

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[1] Pawlowski B, Dunbar RI, Lipowicz A. 2000. Evolutionary fitness: tall men have more reproductive success. Nature,13 Jan 2000, n. 403 (6766), 156.

[2] Gould, J.L. and Gould, C.G. 1989. Sexual selection. New York: Scientific American Library

[3] Jackson, L.A. and McGill, O. D. 1996. Body type preferences and body characteristics associated with attractive and unattractive bodies by african Americans and Anglo Americans. Behavioural Science, 35, 5-6, September.

[4] Singh, D. 1993. Adaptive significance of female physical attractiveness : role of waist-to-hip ratio. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 293 - 307.

[5] Geoffrey C. Urbaniak, Peter R. Kilmann. 2003. Physical attractiveness and the “nice guy paradox”: do nice guys really finish last? Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, Nov, 2003.