Abstract:

Women seek beautification through ornamentation. Compared to men, women spend considerably more time and money on a very particular class of products, namely clothes, jewelry, and other fashion accessories, to enhance their physical appearance. Augmenting one’s attractiveness through ornamentation may provide general advantages for women in social activities. However, several recent studies have related these ornamental behaviors to their biological, presumably reproductive, roots. For example, evidence has shown that women’s ornamental behavior is dependent on the interaction of menstrual phase and mating motive. Specifically, the ornamental bias was observed on the high fertile day when the subjects were primed of intrasexual competition motivation and was observed on the low fertile day when they were primed of intersexual courtship motivation. In conclusion, the present article made a review on these researches. In the first part, the ornamental bias of women near ovulation was introduced. Next, the motivation for the ornamental bias was explained and the future research direction was suggested.

Key words: ornamental behavior, menstral cycle, ovulatory phase, luteal phase, hormone