Some Men Are Totally Hot for Women with Big Feet

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Typically, we associate having small feet with being cuter and girly-er. Which kinda sucks for a woman like me who's relatively short but, for some reason, wears a size eight. (My mom is my same height and wears a six. Ugh.)

But while women in various cultures have gone to extremes to stunt their foot growth (i.e. Chinese foot binding), an anthropologist's report shows that, in one village in the northern part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, big feet are totally hot.

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After showing male members of the Karo Batak, who live in that region, images of women with different sized feet, the men said they totally pitched a tent for the women with bigger feet.

Why? Well, big feet are signs of strength and productivity to the people there. One anthropologist working on the project overheard a Karo Batak man scoff, "Why would anyone like a woman with small feet? How would she work in the rice field?" True. Dat.

And while smaller feet are still more desirable in most places, like the United States, Brazil, and India, according to a previous study, places like Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, and Tanzania prefer ladies who wear bigger shoes.

These findings are important because they show that physical preferences might not be ingrained in an evolutionary sense but are likely be influenced through cultural values instead (like being able to work more productively for the good of the village). So, as cultures become more accepting of deviations from the supposed "norm," their concepts of beauty may shift, too.

Now, if only they could change to include broader definitions of beauty, rather than one quality over another. Because that would be rad.


Photo: Thinkstockphoto

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