Ladies Love Rock-Climbers, Hate Golfers

Climbers rejoice — a survey found that women deemed their sport the sexiest among a list of options. Golfers, however, are out of luck.

Quirkology surveyed 6,000 heterosexual men and women about which forms of exercise made members of the opposite sex more attractive. Fifty-seven percent of women listed climbing, while fifty-six listed extreme sports and fifty-two soccer (note that respondents were allowed to select multiple sports). Bringing up the rear were aerobics (9%) and golf (13%). Seventy percent of men, meanwhile, like lady aerobics fiends. They also like women who participate in yoga (65%) and “going to the gym” (64%). Dudes are not, however, into female bodybuilders (5%), or golfers (18%). Golf really made a poor showing in this survey, which makes sense because it is lame.

Says Quirkology by way of analysis,

Women’s choices appear to reflect the type of psychological qualities that they find attractive –- such as bravery and a willingness to take on challenges — whilst men are more shallow, looking for a woman who is physically fit but not challenging their ego by being overly strong.

Put another way, the men and women surveyed seemed to vote for the activities considered most traditionally feminine and masculine, respectively. There were some limits — for instance, women weren’t actually all that into bodybuilders, despite men’s predictions that they would be. The survey also has some blind spots — many sports, such as swimming and tennis, appear to have been excluded. And Quirkology didn’t look at the preferences of gay people — it would be interesting to see whether these broke down along such conventional lines. It’s also worth noting that the respondents were presumably thinking of hypothetical scenarios, not actual people doing the sports in question, which may have made them rely especially heavily on stereotype. Whatever the case, whether some dudes think a sport is hot is probably not the best criterion for playing it.