Cross-cultural differences in the evaluation of male and female body shapes

Comparable groups of British and Ugandan students rated 24 drawings of male and female figures on 12 bipolar scales. The drawings represented figures ranging from extremely obese to extremely anorexic. Multivariate and univariate analyses showed that the major cultural differences occurred with the more extreme figures. Ugandans rated the more obese female and the more anorexic male figures as more attractive than the British subjects. There were surprisingly few sex of subject or sex x culture of subject interactions. The results are discussed in terms of the burgeoning literature on cross-cultural differences in the determinants of body image, stereotypic attractiveness, and eating disorders.