評論
打印
Science and technology
科學技術
Male attractiveness
男性魅力
Abs-olutely fabulous
腹肌，絕對是極好的！
Women's expectations of the opposite sex are at least as unrealistic as men's
男女對異性抱有的期望都不切實際，但女性更甚。
MEN have long wondered what exactly it is that women want.
女人到底看重男性身材的哪一點，男人們一直在苦苦尋求答案。
Some pore over men's magazines, with their promises of washboard abs, for guidance.
有些人研讀教男人如何獲得搓衣板般腹肌的男性雜志，想從中找到答案。
The more scientifically minded look for experimental data.
而更具科學精神的人則會希望從實驗數據中尋找答案。
The latest evidence comes from a group of researchers led by Brian Mautz, then of Australian National University.
由布萊恩·莫茨帶領的研究小組發現了最新證據。
They gathered 105 heterosexual Australian women and showed them a series of digitally generated pictures of men in which three bodily characteristics were varied—height, shoulder-to-waist ratio and flaccid penis size.
他們選取了105名國內異性戀女性，給她們展示了三種能展現男性魅力的組圖，
The women were asked to rate the men as sexual partners.
并讓她們以性伴侶的角度去評價這些男性。
In an article just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr Mautz and his team describe their results.
莫茨及其小組在《美國國家科學院院刊》剛發表了一篇文章描述了他們的研究結果。
Happily for the insecure, although the women did indeed find a larger penis alluring, it was not the most important factor.
結果讓那些對自己陰莖沒自信的男性感到慶幸：盡管女性的確會認為陰莖更大更有吸引力，但這并不是最重要的因素。
That honour went to the combination of broad shoulders and a narrow waist, which accounted for around three-quarters of the variation in attractiveness all by itself.
最重要的是要同時擁有寬肩和窄腰，單單這點就能解釋所有男性魅力方差的四分之三。
Height was also only a weak predictor of appeal.
結果還得出，男性魅力也與身高關系不大。
That is odd, says Dr Mautz, because other studies have linked height with all sorts of benefits, from higher salaries to longer lives.
莫茨博士說，但有點很奇怪，因為其他研究經常拿身高和好的方面聯系起來，比如高薪和長壽。
The bigger-is-better effect was also subject to diminishing returns: each extra centimetre, whether of height, shoulder width or penis size, was less significant than the previous one.
越大越好的效應也遵循收益遞減定律：無論身多高，肩多寬，陰莖多大，每多一厘米，那這一厘米的重要性都會遞減。
Nonetheless, even the tallest, broadest-shouldered and best-endowed digital hunks that the researchers generated fell short of perfection.
然而，即便在研究者所合成的數字照片中，擁有最高身高，最寬肩膀和最大陰莖的健壯男性也算不上完美。
The optimum values appear to lie outside the tested range, they note, adding that the maxima are more than two standard deviations from the population mean for each trait.
研究者說，最優值似乎在測試范圍外，每項特征的極大值都在總體均值的兩個標準差之外，
That means that, for each trait, fewer than 2.5% of the men whom women encounter in the real world will be as generously proportioned as they might hope.
這也就是說，在女性現實世界遇到的所有男性中，就該特征而言，尺寸能符合所愿的少于2.5%。
Men with perfect scores in all three traits will be rarer than hen's teeth.
這三方面都很完美的男性算是鳳毛麟角。
The study is not perfect.
該研究并非精確無誤。
There was no danger of the women mistaking the digital men for the real thing.
參加測試的女性并不會把虛擬男性看作是真人。
Other factors—such as social status, for instance—may, in the real world, override the physical preferences that the researchers were measuring.
現實世界中，其他因素可能比研究者一直在測量的身材偏好這個因素更為重要，比如社會地位。
And it is hard, when all the subjects come from a single country, to disentangle the effects of nurture from those of nature.
而且如果參與測驗的女性僅來自一個國家，那她們就很難將后天形成因素和先天自帶特點區分開來。
It is commonly pointed out, for instance, that men's apparent preference for slim women seems to be a relatively modern construction.
比如，普遍觀點指出：男性對窈窕女子有明顯偏好，似乎是現代西方文化做出的解釋。
Erotica from the turn of the 19th century tend to feature much curvier women than their modern equivalent.
相比現代的色情書籍，十九世紀初的則更著重描述擁有曲線美的女性。
Women's preferences may be just as influenced by the culture in which they grow up.
女性喜歡什么樣的男性，也許正會因她們成長中所經歷的文化的不同而不同。相比現代情色書刊中出現的女性，19世紀初情色書刊會將女性描述得更為妖嬈。她們成長所處的文化背景些許會影響女性對男性的偏好吧。
On the other hand, it is a rule of thumb in biology that females are much pickier than males.
而且從生物學的角度來看，有這么一條常理，雌性都比雄性更挑剔。
There are good evolutionary reasons why that is so.
進化論就很好地解釋了這一點。
Even in humans, who share the burden of child-rearing more equally than many animals, having children requires far more of an investment of resources from a female than it does from a male—after all, it is the woman who must endure nine months of pregnancy and then breast-feed the baby.
即便在分擔子女撫養責任方面，人類在所有動物中算是做得比較公平的了，但是就生小孩而言，還是需要女性從自己身上投入更多。
Women therefore face stronger incentives to spend their relatively limited reproductive resources on only the most attractive men, whose children will be most likely to breed in turn.
畢竟，女性需要懷胎十月，小孩生下后還需母乳喂養。因此就能強烈誘發女性將自己十分有限的生殖資源獻給更具吸引力的男性身上，他們的孩子才最有可能接著生養自己的孩子。
Back to the sit-ups, boys.
所以，小伙子，還是仰臥起坐走起吧！
