A Narrow Compass! and yet there / Dwelt all that's good and all that's fair!

The above lines from Edmund Waller’s 17th century poem are truer even than he imagined. According to a new study published in the journal of Evolution and Human Behavior, women with curves are more intelligent than skinnier women. Not only that, but the women tended to produce smarter children. The researchers studied a sample size of 16,000 women and girls, giving them cognitive tests. The results showed that not only did women do better on the tests as the difference between their hips and waist increased, but the children of these women did better as well.

Researchers speculated on a mechanism that links the two, that the fatty acid deposits found on the hips and elsewhere could help maintain a higher reserve of Omega-3 acids, which have been shown to help developmental health, reduce deposits that clog arteries, and reduce the risk of cancer. It has also been intimated that the acids may be helpful in combating depression and anxiety.

The study also claimed that the combination of an attractive (i.e. fecund) figure was combined with the attraction of intelligence. This finding is a blow to conventional wisdom that women cannot be both smart and attractive (wisdom pithily pilloried in Dorothy Parker’s couplet: “Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses”), and calls attention to curvaceous and smart women, such as the voluptuous British cook, Nigella Lawson. Lawson has a degree in Medieval and Modern Languages from Oxford, and is the author of six books, including Feast, and the aptly titled How to Be a Domestic Goddess, probably referring to Hestia or Hera, not Venus, although that might also be appropriate.

Some researchers are not convinced. Noting that there are many complex and more proximate possible causes, researchers claim that a link between fatty hips and fatty acids in the bloodstream and the development of intelligence is tenuous at best. furthermore, these same researchers are unconvinced by the notion that the waist-to-hip ratio is all that significant a determiner of attractiveness. They claim it is relatively low on a man’s list of priorities when looking for a potential partner.

However, this second objection is based on survey data, and one of the essential principles of evolutionary psychology is that most of what goes on in our minds is hidden from us, making surveys dubious evidence. This principle has long been known by sex researchers as well, and is pithily summed up by cognitive researchers as “Men say one thing, and date another.”

Another curvaceous woman who felt the conflict between her looks and her intelligence is Catherine Zeta-Jones, who has said, “I used to go around looking as frumpy as possible because it was inconceivable you could be attractive as well as smart.”