Seven tenths incorrect: Heterogeneity and change in the waist-to-hip ratios of Playboy centerfold models and Miss America pageant winners:

We seek to correct what appears to be an emerging “academic urban legend” (Tooby & Cosmides, 2000) regarding the stability and precision of what heterosexual males find sexually attractive. The academic urban legend in question is that there has been a remarkable consistency in the waist-to-hip ratios (WHR) of both Playboy centerfolds and winners of the Miss America pageant. Because these women are taken as representative icons of venerated beauty standards, this supposed consistency has been taken by some authors as prima facie evidence of an evolved basis for this very specific preference, although that claim would seem to be refuted by studies that have failed to find the preference in societies whose conditions resemble those of our Pleistocene ancestors far more closely than our own. There is also dispute about the validity of the arguments that have been made for why such a preference would have been adaptive in the environments of our evolutionary past. We do not pursue these points here; what we dispute are the empirical assertions that have been made about the WHR of these supposed twin pillars of American beauty: Playboy Playmates and Miss Americas. The data presented below demonstrates both that the WHR has been more variable than others have suggested and that the average WHR has in fact changed in what seems to us to be a consistent fashion over time. Journal of Sex Research