Defining Ideal External Female Genital Anatomy via Crowdsourcing Analysis

Area of Science:

• Female sexual health and anatomy
• Aesthetic preferences in human anatomy
• Crowdsourcing methodologies in research

Background:

• Existing anthropometric data on female external genitalia lacks defined aesthetic standards.
• Understanding aesthetic preferences is crucial for various medical and social contexts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate preferred anatomic characteristics of external female genitalia using crowdsourcing.
• To establish aesthetic benchmarks for labia majora width, labia minora width, and clitoral hood length.

Main Methods:

• Digitally created images of female genitalia with altered proportions were presented in pairs to 5000 raters via Amazon Mechanical Turk.
• Three experiments utilized pairwise comparisons to assess preferences for labia minora width, labia majora width, and clitoral hood length.
• The Bradley-Terry-Luce model and chi-squared tests were applied to analyze preferences and determine statistical significance.

Main Results:

• A significant preference for larger labia majora width and mid-range labia minora width was observed (P=0.007).
• Wider labia majora were preferred (P<0.001), with no significant preference for clitoral hood length (P=0.54).
• Mid-range labia minora widths were significantly preferred (P<0.001), while clitoral hood length showed no significant preference (P=0.78).

Conclusions:

• The study identified a preferred labia majora to labia minora width ratio of approximately 3:1.
• Minimal aesthetic preference was found regarding clitoral hood length among the study participants.