Which do people fixate on most when assessing women’s physical attractiveness — the stomach or the hips?

As I discuss in BLONDES, weight, as estimated by body mass index (BMI), and curves, as measured by waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), are two major factors when assessing women’s bodily attractiveness. Which matters more is a point of contention between various experts.

A new study led by University of York psychologist Piers Cornelissen tries to settle the argument. Implementing a novel way of tracking eye movements, Cornelissen asked male and female volunteers to rate nearly 50 photos of women. The longer their gaze rested on a particular body region, the more that region counted.

There’s a strong argument that curves should matter more than weight when evaluating attractiveness. A low WHR — a relatively thin waist to hip ratio — suggests something about a woman’s hormonal status. Estrogen increases the deposition of body fat on the hips thighs, and bust. Higher estrogen is linked with higher fertility.

But those aren’t the body regions that people fixate on when they look at you, according to Cornellisen’s experiment. The stomach apparently has the most impact. When judging attractiveness, both sexes appear to settle their gaze on the central torso, an area that reveals much about a person’s overall body mass, and not the pelvic and hip areas. This outcome, according to the psychologists, suggests that body mass index is more important in assessing physical attractiveness than curviness.

The study is not conclusive. It’s possible that WHR is assessed more quickly than body mass, which could be why people fixate longer on the torso. Or perhaps the study participants, aware that their eye movements are tracked, are abashed to linger on the pelvic region of the models. The central torso is also quite close to the bust.

Still, it’s another study that falls definitively in the body mass-over-curves camp. And perhaps it helps explain the new rage in stomach-cinchers.