Blog : Are Curvier Women Also Smarter?

Sometimes life just isn't fair. A new study of 16,000 women (which is a large study) has concluded that more voluptuous women score higher on cognitive tests. And get this -- so do their children.

The conclusion is that the curvier a woman is, the more likely she is to be brighter. The bigger the difference between her waist and her hips, the smarter she will be according to the study published in the magazine Evolution and Human Behaviour.

One of the theories as to why this is so has to be with fatty acids found around the hips. These acids (likely to be Omega-3) apparently improve mental abilities of the woman and her child during pregnancy.

Having said all this, I don't buy it. I'll tell you why ...

The hip to waist ratio link to intelligence is particularly irrational. What about dieting? That has nothing to do with evolutionary traits, so doesn't that throw off the "evidence" in this case. In other words, a woman who has a great hip to waist ratio because she has been dieting 24/7 doesn't have the body she "normally" would. Does this make her smarter, dumber? Come on, this seems silly.

And if it was the fatty acids that were leading to better cognitive results, than why would the waist size matter? Shouldn't it just be the women with the largest hips that are the smartest because they have the most Omega-3 in their bodies?

There are so many things that are fishy about this study that I am very, very skeptical. Overall, I am an enormous believer in evolution and its subtle effects on human behavior and traits. But this seems like pushing it. It's not that I object to the results (which if true, would be depressingly unfair), it's that the conclusions seem to be a reach. It seems like a lot of the facts are vague and the conclusions illogical.

But if this study were true, I guess this would make Kim Kardashian the smartest woman in America (you can see why here