A paper published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior by researchers from the University of Wellington showed that less than 20% of men look at a woman’s face first when judging her attractiveness.

The study used eye-tracking software to evaluate where men were looking during a five-second period that they looked at and evaluate the attractiveness of a frontal picture of a woman. The initial visual fixations of the men, fixations that occurred within the first two tenths of a second, were on either the breasts or the waist in 80% of cases. In 47% of cases, the men were looking first at the breasts, and 33% of men looked first at the waist. The other 20% looked first at the face, legs, or pubic region.

The study used six images of the same woman, digitally altered to change her waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) from 0.7 to 0.9 and the size of her breasts between small, medium, and large. The study found that men’s eyes returned more to the breasts than any other feature of a woman’s appearance. However, it also showed that the men’s attractiveness rating of the image was not correlated with breast size, but was correlated with WHR.

The study has several limitations. One of the limitations is that the study utilized a picture of a woman and therefore may not be accurate in evaluating how men look at and judge actual women. Furthermore, by showing only frontal photographs, the study was not able to directly compare men’s gaze on breasts compared to buttocks or how the glance structure changed with respect to profile. Nonetheless, it does show that the popularity of procedures such as breast augmentation and body contouring procedures like liposuction are so highly-sought by women.

If you are interested in breast augmentation, body contouring, or other procedures, please call or email Dallas plastic surgeon Dr. Vasdev Rai today to learn more.