Fertile women dress to impress, US study finds.
Women dress to impress when they are at their most fertile, US researchers said during there study which showed that sings of human ovulation may not be as mysterious as some scientist believe.A study of young college women showed they frequently wore more fashionable or flashier clothing and jewellery when they where ovulating, as assessed by a panel of men and women looking at their photographs.“They tent to put on skirts instead of pants, show more skin and generally dress more fashionably,” said Martie Haselton, a communication studies and psychology expert at the University of California, Los Angeles who led the study.Writing in the journal Hormones and Behavior, Haselton and colleagues said their finding disproved the conventional wisdom that women are unique among animals in concealing, even from themselves, when they are most fertile.Some animals release powerful scents when ready to mate, while others display skin color changes, but human ovulation is notoriously difficult to detect.Haselton team asked 30 university students to come for a test, without letting them know the nature of the experiment. The women came back several times over the course of the month and where photographed twice-once in their fertile phase. The faces in the photograph where blackened out. They used urine test to check fertility.The researchers asked 42 men and women, some older than the volunteers, to assess these photographs by asking, “In what photo is the person trying to look more attractive?” The judges chose the photographs taking during the women’s fertile phase 60 percent of the time, Haselton said.