Centerfolds becoming less shapely

| Thursday, December 19, 2002

Associated Press

LONDON — The curves of Playboy centerfold models have gradually flattened out over the last 50 years, giving way to a more androgynous look, European researchers suggest.


Analyzing every Playboy centerfold since the first one in 1953, they found the models' weight had not changed much over time, but busts and hips had diminished, while waists had become less tapered.


The study, published this week in the traditionally lighthearted Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal, does not offer much interpretation of the trend and experts warn against jumping to conclusions.


Does it mean the male idea of female attractiveness has changed over time — that men now prefer "heroin chic?"


Or were the evolutionary scientists who theorized that curves symbolized fertility and that the most reproductively successful females were those who were able to store surplus energy in their curves wrong?


"It's difficult to disentangle cause from effect," said the study's leader, Martin Voracek, a psychology researcher at the University of Vienna in Austria. "All I can say is that attractiveness is not that simple and is not constant over time."