Women have it figured all wrong, a study on body image shows. When asked to choose the female body size most attractive to males, women opted for a far skinnier model than men did.

Psychologists at University College Cork emulated an American study from 1954 as they weighed and measured 120 subjects and asked them to rate their body’s attractiveness. Some 60 women overestimated the degree of thinness that men consider attractive, selecting a smaller figure than men did.

Modern women also aspired to having androgynous bodies. In the 1950s, women admired curvy stars such as Sophia Loren, and deemed the bust, waist and hip dimensions of 34/24/35 as ideal, giving a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.69, close to the 0.7 considered most aesthetically pleasing and best for female fertility. However, modern women opted for 34/26/30, giving a ratio of 0.86, close to the 0.9 ratio deemed ideal for men.

Veronica Byrne, of UCC, said: “We read all the time that men prefer curvier women but it doesn’t seem to get through to women.”

Suzanne Horgan, founder of Eating Disorder Resource Centre of Ireland, blamed rail-thin role models such as Cheryl Cole and Gwyneth Paltrow: “We are bombarded with images of stick-thin women so in some cases we assume that’s what men want.”

Victoria Lukats, a psychiatrist and agony aunt, said: “Men say they prefer a female form, which would naturally be curvy.”

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