Turkish university explains why men like big butts

ISTANBUL

Kim Kardashian's infamous pose was mocked on Turkish social media, as elsewhere.

A Turkish university has conducted research to explain why men like big butts in women, concluding that a 45-degree curve in the spine is the key, not the derrier itself.

Researchers in the Psychology Department of Bilkent University in Ankara presented pictures of women’s silhouettes with different degrees of spine curvature to 300 men, who were asked to pick which of the women they found most and least attractive. Most men preferred the women with to a spine curvature of 45.5 degrees, which makes the woman’s butt look bigger.

In the second part of the experiment, researchers showed the men three pictures of women with butts that were equally large but for different reasons. The men picked the woman with the curved spine over the others who also have big butts due to excess fat or excess muscle.

“Men who think they like big bottoms may actually be more into spines,” the Daily Mail quoted Dr. David Lewis, an assistant professor of psychology at Bilkent, as saying about the research.

Curved spines would have allowed women to forage longer into pregnancy.
 
“Men may be directing their attention to the butt and obtaining information about women’s spines, even if they are unaware that is what their minds are doing,” Lewis added.

The study was originally published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.