Preference of Female College Students in Judging the Body Silhouette of Young Women

• Published in: Journal of Home Economics of Japan Vol. 52; no. 5; pp. 421 - 427
• Main Authors: SUGITA, Hiroko, TANAKA, Michi, YAMADA, Hiroshi, TAKAHASHI, Yuko, SATO, Yukiko
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: The Japan Society of Home Economics 2001; 一般社団法人 日本家政学会
• Subjects: body silhouette; female college student; method of pair-wised comparisons; multidimensional scaling; preference; silhouetter photographs; シルエッター写真; 一対比較法; 多次元尺度構成法; 女子大生; 好ましさ; 身体シルエット
• ISSN: 0913-5227; 1882-0352
• DOI: 10.11428/jhej1987.52.421

In our experiment we asked, .201 female college/junior-college students as subjects to judge body silhouettes that consisted of all possible pairs of ten female junior-college students' photographs. We analyzed the data of the pair-wised comparisons in terms of multidimensional scaling and found that the preference of body silhouettes had two dimensions. A multiple regression analysis was also applied to examine the relationship between the somatometric measures of body silhouettes and the two dimensions of preference. As a result, it was found that female college/junior-college students had a tendency to attach importance to the side of the body when they judged silhouettes and they were likely to prefer a body silhouette having a narrow-angled thinner abdomen, and a thicker bust and hips.