Beard Study Confirms Most Attractive Beard; What Do Women Like?

A new study has found that women are attracted to men with facial hair.

Researchers asked 350 women and 177 heretosexual men to rate ten men on their masculinity, parenting skills, health, and overall attractiveness by presenting four images: clean-shaven, five-day light beard, ten-day heavy stubble beard, and a full beard.

The study, published in The Evolution of Human Behavior, has found that women perceive men to be the most attractive with their ten-day stubble, in comparison to being clean-shaven or fully bearded. What's more, researchers at the University of New South Wales found that fully bearded men were perceived to be the best parents and men with light stubble had the lowest rankings.

"Our findings confirm that beardedness affects judgments of male socio-sexual attributes and suggest that an intermediate level of beardedness is most attractive while full-bearded men may be perceived as better fathers who could protect and invest in offspring," the researchers write in the abstract of their study.

The authors theorize that the stubble gives off a vibe of maturity and manliness, while the full beard is associated with macho aggressiveness. They also hypothesize that the light stubble loses out because it is too patchy or not evenly distributed.

"Men, judging other men, might be sensitive to the overall level of masculine threat and aggression signaled through full beards," the researchers wrote, according to Australia's edition of Men's Health. "Women, by contrast, may balance...a competitive masculine partner against the costs of mating with a too-masculine partner."