Face and Body : (Somewhat) Independent Predictors of Women's Overall Attractiveness

Abstract

Women's faces and bodies advertise socially-relevant information. Although both face and body predict women's overall attractiveness, women's faces are a better predictor of overall attractiveness than their bodies are. One potential explanation is that the face offers more information, or more important pieces of information, about a woman than does her body, perhaps because it is a primary vehicle for communication and social expression. Another non-mutually exclusive possibility, as noted by Peters et al. (2007), is that cues displayed in women's bodies may be masked, highlighted, or deemphasized by women's choice of clothing. The purpose of this study was to extend previous work by comparing the relative importance of face versus body for predicting overall attractiveness under conditions that differ in the degree to which bodies are masked.