What is it with the butt?
Most guys can’t help but drop their jaws when an incredibly shaped rear end comes bouncing on by. The big butt has become so attractive that actual products have surfaced on the market in which women can insert an added butt shape cushion over your underpants to make your rear end really pop!
With all this ogling and grabbing of the rear end, there certainly must be something behind this sexual attraction, right? Well, actually there is. Bilkent University in Turkey had psychology researchers present 300 men with varying degrees of silhouetted spine curvatures. The men were asked to identify the most and least attractive.
It turns out a 45.5 degree spine curvature was the gold standard for turn-on purposes. This seemed to be the point where the woman’s butt would look bigger.
To control this experiment, the poor male research subjects were presented photos of women’s butts. The three pictures portrayed a butt which was big because of body fat increase, a butt that was big because of muscle increase, and finally a butt which was big due to spine curvature.
The curved spine proved to be the most desirable, concluding that it is not size alone but more the angle of the spine which has the most effect on making those male jaws drop. Dr. David Lewis remarked that the guys who think they love big butts, actually like curved spines.
“Men may be directing their attention to the butt and obtaining information about women’s spines, even if they are unaware that that is what their minds are doing,” said Lewis.
Apparently this has to do with a centuries old attraction to 45 degree spines due to the superior nature it gave for a woman’s ability to find food and make children. Food searching could extend far later into pregnancy, and back injury lessened which allowed women to have more kids. Women absent of this curvature, would be immobile during pregnancy as the hips would be under much more pressure.
So this natural, evolution attraction, then became ingrained into the minds of men, to the point where one of the most popular and memorable songs is one celebrating the big booty. Sir Mix A Lot’s “Baby Got Back” is a song that everyone knows the meaning behind. But it looks like the more accurate title should have been, “Baby Got 45 degree Curved Spine.”
The journal Evolution and Human Behavior originally published this study, which revealed how guys love the big butt because subconsciously they are thinking of extended procreation and more mobility during the period of pregnancy.
