Science confirms what we already know: It's all in the hips

To find out what people think of lady dancing, you don't need to head to the club. Instead, researchers in the UK outfitted female dancers with motion capture rigs, much like the ones that bring digital movie characters like Gollum or Jar Jar Binks to life. According to science, then, women who swing their hips while moving their legs and thighs independently are rated high on attractiveness. In this study, published Thursday, the authors showed the digitized dance avatars to a group of heterosexual men and women. The basic mannequin-like animations allowed the researchers to control for any secondary variables that might denote hotness like clothing or hairstyle.