Fashion magazines and designers may beg to differ, but the androgynous look is ''out''. At least that's what the 40,000 or so people who took part in an online project trying to find the ''perfect'' body believe.

Sydney researchers are trying to discover what is appealing about different body shapes by asking people to go to an especially designed website to rate bodies. After at least 1000 have rated them, the attractive bodies get to electronically ''breed'' - elements of their figure are incorporated into new bodies - and the unattractive shapes are weeded out.

Out... some catwalk looks were not popular.

Rob Brooks, the co-creator of the project and the director of the evolution and ecology research centre at the University of NSW, said the research showed a kind of evolution in fast-forward.

''It's a great illustration of how natural selection works,'' Professor Brooks said. ''By simply just taking the best half of the population and breeding from them, generation to generation you can actually make big changes.''