London, Apr 11 (IANS): Assessing the relationship between gender, BMI and notion of 'attractiveness', a new study finds that weight is intrinsically linked to attractiveness and women are the harshest judges and most harshly judged.

The findings showed that females perceive men and women with higher body mass index (BMI) as less attractive and judge other women harshly about weight in relation to beauty.

Conversely, men do not judge another man with a higher weight negatively, but still see overweight women as less attractive.

"This is the first study that looks at the relationship between BMI and attractiveness, from both gender's perspective" explained Sonia Oreffice, professor of University of Surrey in Britain.

Further, the anthropometric attributes -- physical measures of a person's size, form, and functional capacities, play a significant role in wage regressions in addition to attractiveness, showing that body size cannot be dismissed as a simple component of beauty.

The study, published in the journal Economics and Human Biology, provides insight into the relationship between body size and beauty and the wage inequality associated with it.

Body size -- height for both men and women and BMI only for men -- explains wages above and beyond beauty.

This contributes to bridge the gap between studies on the economics of anthropometric measures (including height and BMI), on one hand, and the economics of beauty, on the other, estimating the relevance of body size and beauty, the researchers concluded.