Abstract
This paper explores whether sexual orientation has a significant effect on men and women's perceptions of attractiveness of 36–41-year-old women, and tests the validity of inversion theories of homosexuality. Previous research has established that female age is more salient to men than to women when judging female attractiveness. A web-based survey was implemented, attracting 135 male and 150 female British and American participants. They rated the age and attractiveness of 13 female images. Separate MANCOVAs were performed to analyse the effect of participant sex and sexual orientation on the perception of attractiveness. Consistent with prior research, men's ratings of attractiveness were lower than those of female participants. Sexual orientation was not found to be a significant variable in men's perceptions of attractiveness. The attractiveness ratings given by homosexual and bisexual women were significantly lower than those of heterosexual women. Sexual orientation may therefore be relevant to the perception of female attractiveness by women. The results imply that inversion models may be limited in their explanation of sexual orientation.