The mystery of female beauty
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TL;DR
It follows that the preference for a curvaceous body shape in women should be universal among men and not be culturally based, because natural selection presumably favours cues indicative of the most fertile body shape.
Abstract
Evolutionary psychology suggests that a woman's sexual attractiveness might be based on cues of reproductive potential. It has been proposed that a major determinant of physical attractiveness is the ratio between her waist and hip measurements (the waist-to-hip ratio, or WHR): for example, a woman with a curvaceous body and a WHR of 0.7 is considered to be optimally attractive1,2,3, presumably because this WHR is the result of a fat distribution that maximizes reproductive potential4. It follows that the preference for a curvaceous body shape in women should be universal among men and not be culturally based, because natural selection presumably favours cues indicative of the most fertile body shape.