How Much Skin Should Women Show?

How Much Skin Should Women Show?
Study says '40 percent'

Updated: Tuesday, 17 Nov 2009, 6:12 PM PST
Published : Tuesday, 17 Nov 2009, 4:55 PM PST

By LILY FU

(MYFOX NATIONAL) - Ladies, if you're looking to attract the right kind of attention from men, flash 40 percent of your skin.

How do you figure that? For the purposes of their study, British scientists defined each arm as 10 percent, each leg as 15 percent and the torso for 50 percent, according to the Daily Mail. The study involved observing females at a popular nightclub in Leeds, UK, and how often they were asked to dance by men. What the study revealed was that that women who showed 40 percent of their skin were approached by twice as many men as those who were more covered up.

An outfit that would qualify as showing off 40 percent would be a sleeveless top and a skirt that's just above the knees.

"Any more than 40 percent and the signal changes from 'allure' to one indicating general availability and future infidelity," said researcher Dr. Colin Hendrie of the University of Leeds. "Show some leg, show some arm, but not any more than that."

Those most popular were women who combined the 40-percent rule with tight clothing and sexy dancing.

Some mocked the findings of the research. "Clearly this is a ridiculous survey with about as much subtlety as one of Simon Cowell's putdowns," wrote Carola Long on the New Zealand Herald . "For a start, the observation that sexy dancing and tight clothing also help attract men is hardly revelatory. It's one nightclub in one city, and the way women dress and men's responses to them varies hugely between cultural tribes and postcodes, while the assumption that women are passive creatures waiting to be approached is highly patronising. But it's hardly an isolated nugget of research."

Added Daily Mail reader Frank LeMoyne , "Sending 'researchers' into nightclubs seems to be all the rage among (pseudo)scientists these days. What a load of rubbish. Here's the real deal: Every woman is different. And that didn't cost you anything,"