Men's skin tone makes them look sexy

Men's skin tone makes them look sexy

Like women, men are also judged as sexy and attractive based on their skin tone, with a new study saying that those with evenness skin are seen as more youthful.

The research by a team from the University of Gottingen in Germany found that evenly pigmented skin is seen as more youthful, while a smooth rosy hue from hemoglobin -- the component that makes blood red -- is taken as evidence of health and attractiveness

The findings, published in the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, echoed past research in women, whose skin is also judged more attractive when it is evenly pigmented.

"Age, health and attractiveness are key characteristics in human social perception, and they play a major role in the evaluation of an individual's 'quality' as potential partner (at least at first sight)," study author Bernhard Fink said.

"Having studied the impact of female skin on perception of age, health and attractiveness of faces for some years now, we believe that skin is a key feature that gives a rather strong signal of age, health and attractiveness," Fink was quoted as saying by LiveScience.

To find out if male skin is judged by the same standards as female skin, Fink and his colleagues collected photographs of the faces of 160 freshly shaven British Caucasian men, ages 10 to 70. They cropped out a small square of cheek skin and showed that photograph to 152 men and 156 women.

Each of the volunteers rated 60 digital images of cheek skin for their best guess as to age, as well as attractiveness and health on a scale of one to seven.

To tease out what skin pigments mattered in people's judgements, the researchers analysed the colours of each cheek sample with a method called "chromophore mapping" that allows to determine how much melanin, a dark pigment, and hemoglobin contributed to the skin colour seen.

The results revealed that people prefer evenness in men's skin, just as they do in women's. Evenly distributed melanin was associated with youth, the researchers said.

According to the researchers, melanin is the pigment that darkens the skin after a tan; it's also the pigment produced in response to UV damage, causing age spots.

Thus, Fink said, it makes sense that people would judge a face free of age spots or freckling as younger.

Likewise, men whose skin had a more-even distribution of hemoglobin were judged as younger and more attractive. Both ageing and health issues can affect the "blotchiness" of the skin, so this result was also expected, Fink said.

But does the study suggest that men, like women, should be breaking out the foundation and the blush brush?

Fink is sceptical. "Taking care of one's skin is certainly beneficial to men," he said. Past studies have found that women prefer men masculine and makeup might send the opposite message, he said.

Nonetheless, the researchers said men can try to preserve their looks with daily sunscreen and tender care.

For example, men might try to keep their skin smooth and avoid blotchiness, said Paul Matts, a scientists at Procter & Gamble who collaborated with Fink on the study.