I Will Look Like That… Eventually.
Editor’s Note: I asked Stormy Riot from GeekGirlStrong to offer up some of her thoughts on body shapes and image this week… and she definitely delivered!
I think it is fairly common for most kids to think that eventually, they will look like the adults they see most often.
For a kid today, the adults they see the most often are the ones they do not even know personally. Even once we grow up it seems that we are forever aiming to look like those we see before us.
Whether that is Scarlett Johansson, Lara Croft or maybe Ororo Monroe, we believe that there must be something we can do to achieve a look we thought we would grow into.
Society (I’m painting with a really big brush here) expects for us to look something like an hourglass or a pear for women, and an inverted triangle or carrot for men.
So much so that we have found all kinds of shapes and objects to describe different body types/shapes. It is said that there are evolutionary reasons behind this, women with wider hips (think waist to hip ratio) appear better able to carry offspring to term and give birth. Men with broad shoulders (the waist to shoulder ratio) seem strong and capable of protecting and providing.
Current studies and articles in academic journals support this. It is not that we would rather be in a long-term relationship with this person, but the evolutionary attraction is definitely there.
For some more insight, check out these links:
http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/4/716.full
http://www.unm.edu/~abryan/articles/femalehipratio.pdf
http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(09)00109-3/abstract
