Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 35, No. 3, June 2006, pp. 297–304 ( C  2006) DOI: 10.1007/s10508-006-9021-y Success Is All in the Measures: Androgenousness, Curvaceousness, and Starring Frequencies in Adult Media Actresses Martin Voracek, D.Sc., Ph.D. 1 and Maryanne L. Fisher, Ph.D. 2,3 Received June 7, 2004; revision received September 2, 2005; accepted September 10, 2005 Published online: 24 June 2006 The debate of whether body-mass index (BMI) or waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is the primary visual cue to female physical attractiveness (FPA) has generated considerable interest. However, experiments addressing this question typically have limited ecological validity and do not capture the ultimate goal of FPA, which is to elicit male sexual arousal. Hence, using an unobtrusive measures design, we retrieved movie and magazine starring frequencies of 125 adult media actresses from a company’s database, operationalized starring frequencies as FPA measures, and tested their relationship to actresses’ anthropometric data. Low BMI was related to frequent movie starring, while WHR, waist- to-bust ratio (WBR), and bust size were not. Conversely, low WHR, low WBR, and larger bust size were related to frequent magazine starring, while BMI was not. Visual cues to FPA might be domain-specific, with androgenousness cues salient for attractiveness evaluation of moving bodies and curvaceousness cues salient for posing bodies. KEY WORDS: female attractiveness; waist-to-hip ratio; body-mass index; pornography. INTRODUCTION Visual cues to human female physical attractiveness (FPA), and their evolutionary underpinnings, are a topic of current debate. In an influential study by Singh (1993), evidence was provided to suggest that waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is a primary visual cue for FPA. Singh found that the WHR maximally sexually attractive to males (i.e., 0.70 or slightly lower) was strongly correlated to health-related optimums in regard to fertility and endocrinological sta- tus, as well as a lower risk for various life-threatening and chronic diseases and an increase in longevity. It was also shown that the preferred WHR was cross-culturally stable and thus a human universal. Further, it is secularly stable and preference is not subject to drift or sudden change. 1 Department of Basic Psychological Research, School of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. 2 Department of Psychology, St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. 3 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Psychology, St. Mary’s University, 923 Robie Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 3C3, Canada; e-mail: mlfisher@smu.ca. Several researchers have questioned the value range (Tassinary & Hansen, 1998), the cross-cultural stability (Furnham & Nordling, 1998), the limited considera- tion for local environments (Sugiyama, 2004), and the secular stability (Freese & Meland, 2002; Voracek & Fisher, 2002) of the optimally attractive female WHR. Particularly, one research group (Tov´ ee & Cornelissen, 2001; Tov´ ee, Maisey, Emery, & Cornelissen, 1999; Tov´ ee, Reinhardt, Emery, & Cornelissen, 1998; Tov´ ee, Tasker, & Benson, 2000) has gone further, marshaling evidence to suggest that body-mass index (BMI), or weight scaled for height (kg/m 2 ), is a more salient determinant of FPA than WHR. They argued that previous findings on WHR were artifactual because the stimuli used to examine WHR variation were confounded with BMI variation. It is of note that, similar to WHR, BMI tends to increase with age and temporally changes during pregnancy. More generally, like WHR, BMI is regarded as a honest visual signal that advertises health status, nutritional condition, physical prowess, and the underlying endocrine configuration (Fink, Neave, & Manning, 2003). It has also been argued that, in general, research on FPA continually relies on weak methodologies (Henss, 297 0004-0002/06/0600-0297/0 C  2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.