Sunday, November 25, 2007

fat bottomed girls

It's true! As found in the Chicago Tribune, fat bottomed girls ARE smarter and they have smarter kids!

The brain/butt theory
November 18, 2007

We hope the Nobel Prize committee didn't miss this week's release of a groundbreaking study titled, "Waist-hip ratio and cognitive ability: Is gluteofemoral fat a privileged store of neurodevelopmental resources?"

Translation, for the benefit of you size zeroes out there: Are fat-bottomed girls smarter? Answer: Yes. They also have smarter kids, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Middle-age women reacted with glee -- "We're getting smarter every day!" -- and men with trepidation. (What's the right answer to the question, "Does this PhD make my butt look big?") Skeptics, most of whom likely tend toward the skinny side, seem to want to file the wider-is-wiser theory with that old baloney about men with bigger noses having bigger, um, noses. We've never seen any empirical evidence on that one.


The data on the brain/butt theory, though, is pretty convincing. In a study of more than 16,000 women, the curvy girls consistently outscored their slender counterparts on cognitive tests. Their kids outscored the skinny moms' kids too. But the researchers don't posit that bigger is automatically better. What matters is the size of the hips relative to the waist. That's because fat stored around the buttocks and thighs is high in omega-3 acids, which promote brain growth, while fat stored around the middle is loaded with omega-6 acids, which make your pants too tight.

Women with "pear" or "hourglass" shapes have greater reserves of omega-3, which nourishes their own brains and is essential to fetal brain development in the third trimester of pregnancy.

So grab a tape measure, girls, and see how your IQ stacks up. Just divide your waist size by your hip size. The smaller your answer, the better.

Now compare: Your typical runway model, with a 24-inch waist and 34-inch hips, has a waist-hip ratio of .71. Your average size 10, with a 28-inch waist and 39-inch hips, is a .72. Jennifer Lopez, at 26 and 39, is a .67.

And therein lies the scholarly merit of this study -- a scientific answer to what we thought was a rhetorical question: Why is J.Lo so hot? Because males have a biological imperative to produce intelligent offspring, that's why. "Men respond because it's reproductively important," explains Pitt's William Lassek, whose next study will no doubt attempt to identify the biological imperative associated with an eye for blonds. But let's not quibble.

The great thing about this study is, it lets everyone off the hook. Go ahead and gawk, guys. We know you're just searching for signs of a deep and genetically transferable intellect. And ladies, pass the nachos. Those size 4 jeans would just make you look dumb.

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