Beautiful women more likely to pick gay male best friends, study finds
A study by the University of Texas in Arlington has revealed why hot women choose to spend their time with gay best friends, rather than straight ones.
It’s all to do with mating rituals and fear of sexual exploitation, apparently.
The two-part study found that prettier women gravitated towards gay men because they felt less likely to be sexually exploited or deceived by them.
Physically less attractive women felt threatened by gay male friends for fear they might ‘steal their boyfriends’ The Mail Online reports.
The most attractive females in the study were also found to be unpopular with other women.
TV shows such as Sex and the City and Will and Grace have rendered the ‘GBF’ a popular trope, but it’s a stereotype that has come under fire recently from the LGBT community for portraying gay men as accessories and defining someone’s friendship on the basis of sexuality.
Now it seems there is some proof to suggest attractive women are drawn to gay male friends because of a mistrust of straight ones.
In order to come to its conclusions, the study first photographed 68 ladies in tight clothing and asked a group of 103 heterosexual men and women to rate the pictures based on their attractiveness.
The male group were then asked to rate the women on the probability of ‘mating reactions’, such as seducing each individual and persuading her to have sex with him.
The females in the study were asked to rate the pictures on how likely they were to compete with the women in the photos for a partner and how threatened they felt by them.
The second part of the study asked the 68 photographed women, at this point all rated for their attractiveness and their perceived threat/openness to seduction, to assess a group of people for their ideal friendship circle. The group consisted of straight and gay males and females.
The women were then asked to place ‘friend dollars’ beside their chosen companions.
Researchers noticed that the highly-rated attractive women were cashing in their dollars on gay male friends.
The researchers, led by Professor Eric Russell, said this showed a ‘perception that gay men would value them beyond sex’.
In conclusion, the authors say that their findings show ‘attractive women are more likely to be sexually exploited and competitively deceived by straight men and other straight women’ and ‘straight women’s physical attractiveness is systematically linked to their desire for gay male friendships.’
‘Taken together these findings provide converging support for the idea that the women’s own level of physical attractiveness play an important role in their willingness to form friendships with gay men’.
