The Waist-to-Hip ratio is an easy thing to calculate: it is the circumference of the narrowest part of the waist divided by the circumference of the fullest part of the hip. As other physical attributes (like variances in body weight, and breast size) have passed in and out of favor over the past 100 years, the waist-to-hip ratio has remained the same: the preferred ratio on the male physique has held stable at 0.90, and for women, it remains fairly constant at around 0.70.
The preferred waist-to-hip ratio for women is 0.70. Research has shown that even with the downward trend in bodyweight over the past 100 years, Waist-to-Hip ratio remains constant.
Armed with this knowledge (thanks again to the Universal Principles of Design), I was shocked to see the recent defense of a W Magazine cover, featuring Demi Moore. Demi—who as lovely as she is, is already thin—seems to be missing a chunk of her hip…
Demi's now infamous disappearing hip
All of this leads me to ask…why are art directors throwing out the scientifically proven insight of the Waist-to-Hip ratio? Or are they only using it when the presentation of attractive women is aimed at men, and not when the advertisement is being marketed to women? The seminal research for Waist-to-Hip specifically studies and measures female attractiveness as determined by males. Are there other scientific studies about what women find attractive in other females? Or are we being spoonfed a bunch of BS, ladies?
I am convinced that design decisions like this are devised to make people feel bad about themselves, and to perpetuate the myth that we are all inadequate and therefore need to buy stuff (in this case, the creams, clothes and treatments advertised in W) to solve all of our problems. This “design-as-manipulation” is User-Experience gone wrong (did I mention that 68% of women participating in a study at Stanford University reported feeling worse about themselves after looking through women’s magazines?), and we all need to do better at calling it out when we see it and not fall prey by closing our pocketbooks.
By understanding the Waist-to-Hip principle, this example drives home the fact that marketers are clueless to the seminal scientific research of sociological and psychological preferences. To me this is clearly an indication that today’s marketers and art directors really just aren’t that intellectually curious. We are unfortunately still living in the age that if you can push pixels (or manage someone who does) you can get a job sending psychologically damaging messages that fly in the face of scientific data to unsuspecting people everywhere.
(The “Waist-to-Hip Ratio” is the 15th of 125 universal principles of design that I will cover this year.)
References
1. Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, Jill Butler, Rockport Publishers, 2010, p. 258-259.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I really appreciate you tackling this topic from a design point of view, and agree wholeheartedly that the use of such unrealistically thin models is to make consumers feel inadequate. I can’t believe that someone went so far as defend Demi’s W cover; it just goes to show how deeply the belief that thinness is next to godliness has embedded itself in our collective psyche. I wish that more art directors and designers would take a stance against making such dramatic alterations to an already beautiful woman. For some pushing pixels may just be part of the job, but those pixels may push impressionable young women into developing a very warped sense of beauty.
Well said, Ellen. It is terrible to see decisions like this assaulting mainstream audiences, especially when you know that over 100 years of scientific evidence proves the opposite. It is destructive, irrational, and uneducated. All this, and nonetheless their subscriptions continue to rise…
Any link to another disturbing trend?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1109722/Men-dont-curvy-women-attractive-father-children-autism.html