压力让男性更钟爱胖妹妹

胖妹妹们不用再自卑咯，瘦女孩们也不要再一直瞧不起胖女孩们咯。因为有新的研究表明，压力让男性更钟爱胖妹妹！到底是怎么一回事呢？

Most men prefer leggy and lean women, Gisele Bündchen lookalikes, right? Not necessarily.
大部分男性的梦中情人应该向名模吉赛尔•邦辰一样高挑纤细。但也有例外。

In fact, the body type that a man finds attractive can change depending on his environment and circumstances, a new study finds: when under stress, for instance, men prefer heavier women.
有新的研究结果发现，当男性的环境和心境改变时，他们评判体形性感的标准也会随之变化。例如，在身处压力下，男性更偏爱丰腴的女性。

The study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, reports that when men were placed in stressful situations, then asked to rate the attractiveness of women of varying body sizes, they tended to prefer beefier frames, compared with unstressed men whose tastes skewed thinner.
这项研究发表在PLos ONE上。研究人员让被测试男性给各异的体形打分，身处压力的测试者偏向喜欢饱满的身材，而心情轻松的测试者偏爱苗条的体形。

“This suggests that our body size preferences are not innate, but are flexible, ” said study co-author Martin Tovée of Newcastle University in the U.K., in an email, noting that they may be influenced by our particular environment and resources.
文章的作者之一，英国纽卡索大学的Martin Tovée提到，这个结果说明我们对体形的喜恶不是天生的，而是会改变的，可能是受到当下外部环境和物质条件(resources)的影响。

The findings fall in line with evolutionary theories that suggest when resources are scarce or unpredictable, a woman’s thin physique may signal illness, frailty and the inability to reproduce. Indeed, Tovée and colleague Viren Swami of the University of Westminster in London have previously found that men under trying conditions — like extreme hunger — tend to rate heavier women as more attractive. The researchers suggest also that underlying biological mechanisms, such as blood sugar and hormone levels, are major players in how we perceive our surroundings.
这项发现有对应的进化论理论支持。进化论认为，当缺乏食物或来源不稳定的情况下，体形纤瘦的女性容易虚弱疲乏，失去生育能力。Tovée和伦敦维斯敏斯特大学的Viren Swami之前发现，当男性感到难受，例如极度饥饿，他们会更偏爱丰腴的女性，觉得他们更性感。他们认为这是本能的生物机制，环境支配着体内的血糖和荷尔蒙。

“Our work in parts of Malaysia and Africa has shown that in poorer environments where resources are scarce, people prefer a heavy body in a potential partner, ” said Tovée. “If you live in an environment where food is scarce, being heavier means you have fat stored up as a buffer against a potential food reduction in the future, and that you must be higher social status to afford the food in the first place. Both of these are attractive qualities in a partner in those circumstances.”
Tovée说到，“马来西亚和非洲的研究显示了，贫穷社会中，资源匮乏，人们期待未来的伴侣体重更重。当缺乏食物，胖意味着你有脂肪储存来度过之后一段食物紧缺的日子，首先你要有高的社会地位才买得起食物。在这类社会环境下，这两点是优秀伴侣人选应具备的。

Moving from a low-resource environment to a richer one, like the U.K. or the U.S., can cause a shift in these preferences, says Tovée, and to test the theory further, the researchers recruited some male volunteers and manipulated their stress levels — a key problem for people living in poor environments.
而在富裕社会，例如英国或美国，人们的偏好却不是这样的。为了进一步证明这个理论，研究人员招募了一些男性试验者，并控制他们的精神压力。而压力是贫穷社会中重要问题之一。

The study examined 81 heterosexual men, about half of whom underwent the Trier Social Stress Test. In the test, the men participated in an impromptu job interview in front of four interviewers. They were asked them to “sell” themselves for five minutes, and then calculate answers to simple math problems under time pressure.
Afterward, all the study participants were shown images of 10 women with body types ranging from emaciated to obese and were asked to rank them based on their attractiveness.
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