Why Women Don't Fall for Hairy Guys Remains a Scientific Mystery

Don't look at me like that. I'm just providing the same headline as a Live Science article that examines efforts to find an evolutionary reason why women prefer men that don't look like freshly vomited hairballs. One hypothesis: chicks dig dudes who aren't covered with lice:

One common theory for our relative hairlessness suggests that women long ago adopted a preference for less hairy guys as a way to avoid lice and other nasty bloodsuckers that might call a pelt home. [...]

"According to evolutionary view, hairless men should be preferred, particularly in areas (or cultures) with high parasite threat, which means close to the equator, where parasite richness is highest," study researcher Pavol Prokop, a professor of biology at Trnava University in Slovakia, wrote in an email to LiveScience.

Researchers tested this hypothesis by showing photos of men's chests to women in Turkey and Slovakia. Since Turkey has a greater incidence of diseases transmitted through parasites, researchers thought that Turkish women would prefer the appearance of more thoroughly manscaped chests. But researchers saw no correlation:

Instead, the researchers found that very few women in either country prefer a hairy chest. Only about 20 percent of women rated the more hirsute versions of the men as more attractive.

Link -via VA Viper | Photo: rileyroxx


I love men with facial hair, hairy chests, and hairy arms. To me it is so masculine, and attractive. I don't like an unkempt look, there is a certain amount of grooming(not batman!) and hygine that is a must, but I love a good gruff beard. Very sexy.
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I wonder if the results were correlated with where the women were in their menstrual cycles. I have read about previous studies where hormones act upon a woman's preference in the type of man (i.e. more rugged vs more pretty boy). It appears that the closer a woman is to ovulating the more attracted she is to a more rugged type man. Thus if we looked at the results again in this way would we still see this preference for less hairy men?
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