Hot People Are Healthier, Study Says 1 More Reason For Fatty to Hate Barbie

As if hot people didn’t have enough advantages, now there’s this. A new study says that conventionally attractive folk are healthier than the plain Janes and Joes of the world.

The research, which was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, involved 159 subjects (79 women and 80 men). These people were weighed, measured for height, had blood work taken, provided medical histories, and were photographed bare-faced. Then, 492 other people (259 women and 233 men) looked at those photographs and rated each person on overall attractiveness on a scale of one to seven.

After crunching the numbers, researchers concluded was that “a relationship between facial attractiveness and immune function is likely to exist.” Even more interesting was that this seemed to be truer for men, which might be due to women’s estrogen levels or poorer function of natural killer cells (which sounds pretty badass, we have to say).

These findings don’t come as a complete surprise, as past studies have shown that people with clear skin, prominent cheekbones, bright eyes, and full, red lips (all markers of conventional attractiveness) tend to have fewer colds, healthier hearts, and longer lives.

But this study went one step further.

“Beyond suggesting that we find those with high functioning immune systems to be attractive, I found a few relationships that also suggest the possibility that we may find people who can efficiently manage bacterial threats to be attractive,” Summer Mengelkoch, a graduate researcher with a very unfortunate name at Texas Christian University, told Mel Magazine.

In other words, not only do hot people get sick less often, those who have hearty immune systems are also perceived as more attractive by potential mates.

Next time you sign up for a dating app, make sure to brag about how strong your immune system is. Maybe something like: “Healthy as a horse…and hung like one, too!”

Cover Photo: BraunS (Getty Images)