Men See Women as Walking Hormones

It’s not the chest, the legs or the behind of a woman that turn men’s heads on the street, but the hormones, the St. Andrews University researchers say.

They’ve discovered that women with higher levels of the female sex hormone, estrogen, look more attractive.

The new study, led by psychologist Miriam Law Smith, could explain the underlying reason why men prefer women with feminine faces.

It is the first study to demonstrate that women’s facial appearance is linked to their underlying health because estrogen is the hormone which impacts on women’s reproductive health and fertility.

Law Smith and a team of psychologists at the University’s Perception Lab photographed 59 young women’s faces aged between 18 and 25 and analyzed their sex hormone levels.

Women with higher levels of estrogen were rated as more attractive, healthy and feminine looking than those with lower levels.

"Women are effectively advertising their general fertility with their faces. Our findings could explain why men universally seem to prefer feminine women’s faces. In evolutionary terms, it makes sense for men to favor feminine fertile women, those that did would have had more babies", Law Smith said.