Sex-typical Body Shape serves as a Visual Cue of Quality

Sex-typical body shape (a man's muscular physique and a woman's hourglass figure) is an outcome of evolutionary adaptation in reproductive fitness because it conveys information about health, gene quality and fertility, which are important elements for mate selection. If sex-typical body shape serves as a visual cue of quality and reproductive success, it should be related to other physical traits indicating genetic and phenotypic quality. However, there is little empirical evidence concerning the relationship of objective measures of sex-typical body shape and quality indicators, although there is substantial information in several independent studies. This book, therefore, provides comprehensive information about sex-typical body shape and physical traits that are thought to signal health, gene quality, and hormonal profile and their role in potential reproductive fitness. In this book, I represent data that bear on body components (combined factor scores of both upper and lower body shapes) in addition to waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) and shoulder-to-hip ratio (SHR) that are predominantly used in the literature.