Evolution has shaped women’s ovulatory cycles to be characterised by complex recurring physiological processes of changing hormones and organ tissue. However, these changes often bring about unwanted aspects – be it premenstrual symptoms such as mood swings, feeling bloated or anxious, menstrual pain, or – still way too often – menstrual shame. In the face of these often stressful sides to the ovulatory cycle – it is time for some good news!

While it is difficult to tackle negative side effects of women’s ovulatory cycles, we found that there are also positive effects for women related to their ovulation – or more specifically, women’s fertile window – namely how attractive they perceive themselves. The fertile window is a specific time across women’s cycles that usually spans about 5 days before and including the day of ovulation. It is only during this time that sexual intercourse can result in pregnancy (sperm can survive up to 5 days in the uterus so they can still fertilise an egg that is released during ovulation days later). While often neglected in the past, research on how the concurrent hormonal changes affect women’s mating psychology has been growing over the past two decades and brought about many intriguing insights (e.g. on ovulatory increases in women’s sexual motivation). One of these findings is that men rate women as more attractive during women’s fertile windows, regarding, for example, women’s faces, voices, or body scents (although recent replications yield mixed findings so far). Yet, while several studies investigated external ratings of women’s attractiveness, very little research has focused on how women perceive their own attractiveness and related outcomes during their fertile windows.

Hence, we aimed to find out how women’s self-perceptions of attractiveness might change across their cycles. Therefore, we conducted an online diary study where we collected over 38,000 daily self-reports of women on how attractive and sexually desirable they felt and how much self-esteem, positive mood and grooming behaviour they displayed. We estimated women’s fertile window on the basis of their reported menstrual onset dates. We further compared 580 naturally cycling women to 292 women who took hormonal contraceptives (and consequently had menstrual-like bleedings but no ovulation) to infer an ovulatory nature of any effects. Coming to the good news, we found that women reported increases in how attractive and sexually desirable they felt, and these effects were robust across different analytical methods. Surprising, albeit less robust, were the findings that women endorsed higher self-esteem and enjoyed a better mood during their fertile windows. They did not, however, show statistically significant increases in grooming behaviour such as putting more effort into their looks. Since we controlled for premenstrual and menstrual phases, these increases are not only an absence of peri-menstrual effects. Instead, these increases in women’s positive feelings towards their own attractiveness were distinct, mid-cycle changes.

While more research is needed to shed light on how these changes in self-perceived attractiveness might be related to ovulatory increases in sexual motivation and how these might play a biologically relevant role (e.g. regarding women’s mating decisions and reproductive success), we are happy to show that women’s ovulatory cycles can also increase women’s positive feelings. As is likely always the case – change has both good and bad sides to it.

Lara Schleifenbaum is a third-year PhD student at the Department of Biological Personality Psychology under supervision of Prof. Lars Penke. She is interested in how evolution may have shaped human’s thoughts and feelings and studies the effects of women’s ovulatory cycles on female and male mating psychology.

Original publication:

Lara Schleifenbaum

Women feel more attractive before ovulation: evidence from a large-scale online diary study

Evolutionary Human Sciences [01 September 2021, DOI: 10.1017/ehs.2021.44]