“She’s Got Legs: Longer Legs in Female Comic Book Characters Correspond to Global Preferences”, 2022-12-19 ():
This work furthers the study of popular culture products and how they reflect the evolutionary preferences of their target audiences. In this case, comic book women are drawn with elongated legs and in heels and on tiptoe to further lengthen their legs, which men prefer. This creates exaggerated and hypersexualized depictions of women that can influence both male and female perceptions of normal body types.
Previous studies have shown that comic book bodies are super normal stimuli, exaggerated in dimensions that are attractive to primarily male comic book consumers. Following the same methodologies as previous experiments, this study examined height and leg length measurements of comic book characters in both Marvel and DC comics.
In accordance with the literature on leg length and attractiveness, we predicted that comic book women would have longer legs than comic book men and would have longer than average legs, matching preferences shown in cross-cultural studies. We also hypothesized that comic book women would be depicted as wearing heels or walking on tiptoe more often, as this further elongates the legs.
Results: showed that female comic character leg length matched the most common preferred leg length in cross-cultural studies and 86%–88% of female characters were drawn as either wearing high heels or walking or standing on tiptoe.
[Keywords: leg length, comic books, DC, Marvel, high heels, female bodies]