New Scientist: hormone levels predict attractiveness of women

UK researchers took daily photos of 59 women over a course of six weeks, measuring and recording their estrogen levels each day. They then created two composite photos, one composed of 10 pictures of the women on the days of highest estrogen levels, and the other on the days of the lowest levels. Can you guess which picture is which?

So should 13-year-old girls be given doses of oestrogen in the hope that they will grow into more beautiful women? “Absolutely not,” Law Smith says. “It certainly may make them more attractive, but who knows what other effects the hormone may have?"

Of course there may be an easier way - faking it. A further study by Law Smith's group found that when women wore make-up the correlation between perceived attraction and oestrogen levels was completely masked, because make-up improved appearance.

Link (Thanks Elias!)

Reader comment: Auna says: "In the post about hormone levels on boingboing, you say 'They then created two composite photos, one composed of 10 pictures of the women on the days of highest estrogen levels, and the other on the days of the lowest levels.' In the article at NewScientist, it says 'One composite was an amalgamation of the 10 women with the lowest peak-oestrogen levels, while the other image was a combination of the 10 women with the highest levels.'"

"I don't mean to sound nitpicky, but it isn't actually the same 10 women at different points in their menstral cycle. It is 20 different women, 10 with high estrogen levels and 10 with low estrogen levels. I only bring it up because I was amazed that there could be such a noticable difference in the appearance of the *same* women when their levels of estrogen fluctuated, but when I read the article I saw that this isn't in fact the case. To me this makes the results of the experiment much more obvious: women with naturally high estrogen levels are perceived as 'more attractive.'"