Men prefer curves, women chocolaty looks

Melbourne, Sept 25: When it comes to men, women don’t actually want them to have bulging biceps or a washboard stomach, reveals a new Australian research.

The study, which has been presented at a psychology conference in Hobart, found that young men believe the opposite sex want a leaner, more muscled build than women actually do.

Researchers in Victoria showed body outlines to 160 university students to find out what they considered to be the ideal body shape for their sex and the opposite sex.

They found both sexes judged leanness and muscle as "very important".

"But it was fascinating because both girls and guys appear to be getting it wrong," News.com.au quoted Dr Ross King, from the school of psychology at Deakin University, as saying.

"Girls imagined that men preferred the ultra thin, model-type silhouette when what men were actually picking for their ideal was more curvy.

"And even more interesting was that guys picked ideal male silhouettes with far more muscle than the female ideal for a man,” the expert added.

Dr King said it appeared people were being heavily influenced by the super-skinny, super-muscled images in advertising, films and other media.

"But we''ve shown these images are divorced from the reality of what people actually want," he said.

"The opposite sex is much more realistic about thinness and muscle, so we can all relax and stop being so hard on ourselves.

"The ideal is actually far closer to the reality than we thought,” he added.

The study of 70 men and 90 women aged in their 20s was presented at the Australian Psychological Society conference in Tasmania.