[Flint]

Right, right: the disclaimer that this is, of course, purely objective scientific observation. Don't anybody have a P.C. freak-out on me.

ZG, I get that a thinner female would be perceived as younger, therefore healthier (in terms of an ancient hunter-gatherer culture where age 30 must have been considered elderly), therefore this younger-looking female would be perceived as more likely to be capable of producing our offspring. And as you say, the physique filled out in the right places would indicate that she is ready for breeding, while the thinner build might indicate she is younger, thus less likely to be otherwise spoken for.

Unfortunately the implications of this would be that the biologically ideal woman for breeding is of an age that is not considered leagally or ethically appropriate in our modern culture. Luckily, as you mention, humans have enough gray matter in our frontal lobes to mitigate our primal instincts with the very useful and complex abstractions that make "society" possible.



All of this being said, it still doesn't speak to my original point: that there is a pervasive idea in our culture that a woman who has the physique of a 10 year-old boy is supposed to be the ideal of sexual attractiveness.

This doesn't make sense to me via evolutionary biology or any other means I can think of.