Want to be more attractive? Change how you walk

Posted Mar 20th 2007 at 11:23AM by Anne Metz (Subscribe to Anne Metz's posts)

Filed under: CELEBRITY STYLE, Celebrity, News

A team of researchers at New York University recently conducted a study examining the perceived attractiveness of individuals based on movement. What they found out may (or may not) surprise you.

Women who were perceived as the most attractive tended to sway their hips when they walked. The most attractive men, on the other hand, tended to move their shoulders from side to side in a masculine swagger.

Aside from telling us that attractiveness is closely associated with typically feminine and masculine movement, the study somewhat complicated the long held notion that sex appeal for women was based on a waist-to-hip ratio. While figure plays into the equation, the study concluded that hourglass-shaped women like Jennifer Lopez or Marilyn Monroe rely more on their feminine walk than on their revered hip-to-waist ratio.

Good to know that university researchers are tackling the most pressing problems of the day, no?

[via bbc.co.uk]

Source

Tags: men, movement, research, women

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

joe 3-26-2007 @ 11:11PM

First!

Hamzah 3-26-2007 @ 11:38PM

This is a very back-to-basics subject. It probably had a lot to do with the beginnings of masculine/male and feminine/female stereotypes. While this may not be the most important thing to be researching, subjects such as these are at the very base of means to be human, which is usually something we take for granted.

L.K. 3-27-2007 @ 12:01AM

Gee, I thought the most important things were to stand up straight, and make eye contact. I need to practice these new ideas on how to be a human.

brenda lushbaugh 3-27-2007 @ 12:27AM

walking, talking, being anorexic, and shaking your hips, what kind of messages are we sending to our girls? my mom taught me that a girl who shakes her hips was a lose girl.

LB 3-27-2007 @ 6:25AM

no this is totally true, I'm thin but have wide-set hips, and can't help but sway them when I walk. i never noticed this until i was in college out one night walking down the street and some guys yelled "shake it!" try it: just jut out your hips FIRST as if you are being led by each hip bone. no matter what size you are it works like crazy!

beckeraudio 3-27-2007 @ 7:05AM

Gee...does this mean I should stop drooling and dragging my knuckles on the ground? ...... and I thought I was the image of mascline !!
ok...ok....I'll at least shave a little every other week ! oh..and I will take a shower once a month !! What?! me.... a slob?!......nnaaaahhhh.....not me! Hey.....Janice looks kida cute.....until she opens her mouth........and that voice! sounds like a bad motor on my wifes washing machine !!
Filled with trash and does not stop when it should !!

kim 3-27-2007 @ 7:08AM

I just got back from a cruise where I was an inveterate people watcher and was watched myself. There were two Bambi/Barbie types, sisters on the cruise, and they had the walk down to perfection It was great fun to watch the men watch them. Then my sister and I did our best to emulate the walk and to our surprise, we did it. It is a sway sway strut with your chin up, neck back, shoulders back and proud, lift your cheeks as though you are about to smile. eyes focused straight ahead, arms relaxed with a smooth swing.

Soon2bWed 3-27-2007 @ 9:22AM

I always thought men were concerned with the chest to butt ratio. The walk...works great. It's kinda like when a group of girls walks past a man. What do men do?? Suck in their gut and puff out their chest. When women notice a man checking her out, we break out the strut. My friend and I will be walking around town (normal), if we see some hot guys, it just happens. I think some of us girls even do the gut suck and chest puff thing too. Then we add the sexy swagger cuz we KNOW you're checking out the booty.

trukmek1966 3-27-2007 @ 10:55AM

Do they have step-by-step guides on exactly how to do this walk? I know someone who wants to have a sex change and "her" walk gives "her" away as a guy. "She" needs all the help "she" can get!

Susan 3-27-2007 @ 11:38AM

Watch the movie Down With Love. Some of the walk has to do with the shoes and yes it is exaggerated. But it is FUN! I blame the demise of the feminine walk on earth shoes and the like. It's harder to do it in flats, but it IS fun and men appreciate it. No, I'm not being sexist or anything. I like men very much (married 26 yrs) and I'm not pandering, but I see nothing wrong with a feminine walk. Hey! I'm a woman. Deal with it and if you feel the need to denigrate or criticize the way I walk...tough. I'm okay with it. I'm okay with being a woman. I like it! (well, most of the time)

Jennifer Estep 3-27-2007 @ 12:31PM

They did A study to come to this conclusion? They could have saved themselves some time and asked a member of the transgenderd community!! It is fairly common knowledge among the TG community that a persons walk is usally what defines how that person is perceived..

G 3-27-2007 @ 12:35PM

Attractiveness doesn't come from the hips...I'm sure it never did anything for the cow.

Winkky 3-27-2007 @ 4:19PM

I do agree Heels make all the difference in the world in the way woman walk. We tend to sway more in heels.
I also thought that straight confident walk was sexy head held high, shoulders back, and that sway of the hips. That confidence making the woman sexy......but what do I know I am just a woman, with a walk that shows that strong confident sway.

As far as what we are telling our young girls that is the mothers job to teach the difference from trash and a strong confident woman.....Thats is one problem some are too busy to spend time to teach their kids reality from fantasy, right from wrong....yes I have a daughter

Kimberly 3-27-2007 @ 7:07PM

I believe this, I never knew it but have been told by many people that I sashay when I walk, it's not on purpose, but seems to get attention. You know the Tina Turner video, "Whats love got to do with it"? She sashays when she is walking down the sidewalk in the beginning...Try it sometime....LOL

Yall R egnorunt 3-27-2007 @ 1:59PM

Wow. It's bad enough the staff writers at AOL didn't sit down with the web designers to figure out how to fit a headline into a small space, and it's even worse that the news AOL puts out is more filtered and biased than a politically correct dictionary writing party. What makes it detestable is evidently they know nothing about grammar, spelling, punctuation, or syntax and would rather opt for grammatic awkwardness that fits than news that actually makes sense. The blogs always have one slant or another no matter which author creates the story, and one can tell which company sponsored a particular story by how many times a name is dropped. Blogs are supposed to be quasi-editorials and evidently AOL is, itself, a gigantic blog (or tumor). My other comments have been deleted or filtered. Hopefully this one is as well so I can post the story on my website.

Ashley 3-27-2007 @ 2:41PM

I had to laugh when I read this because when I was in high school my best friend and I would go to the mall and sit and people watch for hours. After about thirty minutes I started noticing that when the people realized we were watching them they would change the way they were walking. Everyone from 16 year old boys and girls to 80 year old men and women. It's all about the image. For some reason mankind can't be satisfied with what it has, if we were all meant to strut we would have had the long pretty tail feathers instead of the peacock. I guess since we don't we might as well work with what we have. I for one am not shaking my hips for no one in a pair of heels, I might as well dig my own grave cause I can guarantee I'd end up face first in the middle of a street or trampled under a crowds feet.

Jupiter 3-27-2007 @ 5:49PM

Dear Brenda (comment # 4): there is nothing wrong with walking femininely, and usually the ones who do it best are not anorexic (who generally don't have the energy to apply such a walk effectively) but strong, fit, healthy women. Being feminine does not equal being too skinny for health, any more having curves automatically implies being overweight. Also, this has nothing to do with “shaking” hips. Dancers shake their hips ~ you couldn't walk that way. Prostitutes "switch" their hips when they walk, and there is nothing feminine about that ~ that is just graceless, classless, and potentially damaging to the back and joints as well! Feminine women have a gentle front-to-back sway of the hips that is more implied than applied, excellent posture, and a smooth, flowing walk, with just a bit of extra movement for fun. A sharp swing (or, as you say, "shake") to the hips, or indeed a bouncy walk (silly on anyone older than 8 who is not a cheerleader) or stomping (too domineering and jolt-y), not only look preposterous and decidedly unfeminine, they could do your hips, knees and feet some serious damage.

There's nothing wrong with a woman wanting to be feminine. We are female. There’s no denying that, and why should we? We do not have to style ourselves after that dreary, man-bashing frump Germaine Greer to prove we're feminists ~ nor need Ms. Greer doll herself up and brush her hair to prove she’s a woman. We do not need to waddle around like bulldogs to prove we're not wimpy little pushovers, nor need we talk like cartoon characters on helium to prove we’re not going to bite anyone’s head off without cause or warning. We certainly need not be resistant to our essential, and occasionally artless, femininity to prove we have brains. I am a woman; I have breasts, a womb, curves, AND a brain, and I see no point in hiding or denying ANY of that just because some other woman can't see the point.

So, Brenda, how about we just live our own lives in our own way, and resist tearing into others just to make ourselves feel stronger or more important. Perhaps you can’t see the point, and that’s fine ~ but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a valid point to be seen. You do more damage to womanhood with your negativity and wholesale criticism of anything not "you" than I do with my swaying, high-heeled, slightly affected walk.