The Time Trend of Beauties: Detection of Cross-Cultural Invariance in Playboy Centerfolds.

This research is the first to investigate the time trend of ideal female bodies across different nations. In order to identify how female standards of beauty have changed in recent decades, we examined height, weight, bust, waist and hip sizes of 360 German and 375 American Playboy centerfolds from 1980 to 2011, as well as the following: waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), waist-to-bust ratio (WBR), bust-to-hip ratio (BHR) and the body mass index. A factor analysis detected three principal components: slimness, androgyny and bust factor. A reversed moderated regression revealed that there are significant different time trends in androgyny and bust factor between the two nations, although these trends are going in the same direction. These findings are not fully consistent with the general assumption of a cross-cultural ideal of beauty, and only partially support our assumption of a growing influence of US media exposure on German body ideals.