I have read and heard countless times that guys prefer women with curves and more meat on their bones but I’m starting to wonder about that. I have some super skinny friends who are considered really hot and always get hit on and then there are celebs who are super skinny, like Olivia Wilde and Megan Fox (she supposedly has a 23 inch waist!), that are considered these huge sex symbols and are number 1 on every ‘hot list.’
Anyway, I would love to hear a guy’s take to find out what guys REALLY think about super skinny girls.
Oh boy… touchy subject.
I knew that sooner or later this question would come up and I would have to answer it. And, like everything else, I will answer it honestly without sugar-coating.
To start things off, I can tell you that one of the things that guys will talk about is who we think is a hot chick. I can also tell you that men have a wide range of what they consider to be an ideal weight and their “type” of woman. Some guys like skinny girls with no boobs and some guys don’t mind a little “thickness” as long as the girl is curvy with a big set protruding the front of her.
However, women are constantly dieting and exercising to make their bodies look ideal for men (and to be healthy too, of course). The good news for women out there is that the supposed ideal weight you’re aiming for might be significantly lower than what a man would consider ideal.
There was a study I read in college about body weight and attractiveness in women. They had hundreds of men look at pictures of women’s bodies and rate them according to which they found the most attractive. Then, hundreds of women looked at these same pictures and rated how they believed men would rate the picture.
What they found was that men prefer a woman that is 10-15 pounds heavier than what the women believed to be the ideal weight that men want. So it’s really important to realize that whatever a particular man prefers, he probably wants you to have a little more meat on your bones than you think he ideally wants. (This study and others can be found in The Evolution of Desire by David M Buss)
Now I am not saying go cancel your gym membership and eat a tub of ice cream on the couch. Weight means your entire body weight – muscle, organs, fat, water, etc. So weight-loss shouldn’t necessarily be anyone’s goal. Fat-loss should.
Being fit is sexy. Fit means that you have a low body fat percentage (for women, having a body fat percentage in the lower 20s is good). The problem is that a lot of women will go all-out on cardio and never do any weight lifting because they don’t want to get big muscles.
Believe me, you have to work to put on a lot of muscle. You would need to have the intention to put on muscle to put on enough muscle to appear abnormally muscle-y. So don’t fear putting on muscle – a little bit of muscle actually looks good on women.
Despite lower body fat % and the fact that some muscle on a woman is ideal, most women avoid it because muscle weighs more than fat (by volume). In other words, a woman who is the same size as another woman but has a higher amount of muscle than the other woman will actually weigh more than the less muscular woman. So even though the woman looks better, she steps on the scale, sees a number she doesn’t like and then gets discouraged.
It’s unfortunate that our culture is so weight-obsessed when the problem isn’t really weight itself, it’s fat.
And then there’s runway models. For most men, runway models are way too skinny to be considered an ideal body type. Yes, clothes look good on runway models, but aspiring to look like one is not only extreme, it’s also unnecessary.
(This is an added note: To the women who are naturally skinny like a runway model, there’s nothing wrong with that. My only point here is to women whose bodies don’t look like a runway model’s and feel they need to in order to get the best guy.)
While I’m on the subject, most of the female celebrities that pop up on tabloids for getting super skinny also look horrifying to me… looking like a starving creature doesn’t exactly turn most guys on. In terms of Megan Fox and her supposed 23 inch waist: I don’t know if that’s true, but you have to keep in mind waist size is only attractive in proportion with everything else.
For example if you took two girls with the same waist size, but one was 5″0 and one was 5″11, the tall girl would appear much “skinnier” because of the ratio of her waist-size to her height. Waist size is meaningless unless you take all of the other measurements into consideration (height, hips, shoulders, etc.)
It’s not about weight or waist size, it’s about ratios.
(Again, that’s not a slam against women who are naturally very skinny. I’m talking here about unhealthy, eating-disorder induced weight loss – that gives women a sickly appearance that natural skinniness doesn’t have.)
I should also mention… (continued – Click to keep reading Ask a Guy: What Do Guys Really Think About Super Skinny Girls?)
Written by Eric Charles
