You know how much I enjoy studies that tell us things we already know. The journal Sex Roles (I’m not kidding) has published a study that “confirms” that “men really do look at women’s bodies more than their faces.” I am not making this up. If you did not know this, you not old enough to reading the blogs of grown-ups.

This ground-breaking study was done with a mere 29 women and 36 men “who were fitted with an eye-tracking system.” Let me stop right here. If you were fitted with an eye-tracking system and let lose in the world, would you look at people’s faces? I would be embarrassed, and my eyes would probably be cast downward. But not to worry. The study got around this by showing our guinea pigs photos of women.

It turns out “[b]oth men and women focused on women’s chests and waists!!!! I am astounded it has taken the human race 5,000+ years to figure this out.

If you are scratching your head and don’t have dandruff, join the rest of us. What does this mean?

The “author of the study” believes the explanation may be evolutionary. Apparently, the results point to evidence that men are programmed to look for good breeders. And for the women? Our author thinks they are “checking out their competition.” I’m not sure how an unknown woman in a photograph could be competition, but ladies, if you are sitting next to a guy with an eye-tracking system on his head, you’ve got competition.

Finally, if you are wondering about the photo accompanying this blog, here is my somewhat reasonable explanation: Before I started writing, I went to my favorite site for free photos and typed “dating” into the search engine. The picture above came up. And being all fired up about this eye thing, I thought: “This picture had to be taken by a guy. Look at how he zeroed in on the fruit. Where are the graceful branches? Why aren’t we seeing the lovely brown trunk?