Cultures vary widely in regards to beauty standards for female body fat: while industrialized nations typically prefer thinness in women, ethnographic reports indicate that plumpness is valued in many small-scale societies. Here the authors evaluate several hypotheses that relate variation in female body fat preference to variation in socioecology such as food storage, climate, male social dominance, valuation and restriction of women's work, and female stress during adolescence.

This study focuses on cultural preferences for skin pigmentation. Findings indicate a general preference for lighter pigmentation in women. Cultural and biological theories are offered, and the authors suggest the skin-pigmentation preference is an instance of gene-culture coevolution. Areas for further research to explain the relationship of this finding with other features of society are suggested.

The effect of female status on women's mate preference in a sample of nonindustrial societies is examined.

This paper investigates love magic, proposing that it is a form of indirect communication in the development of male-female bonds. Findings support the hypothesis.

This article examines reasons for the variation in sexual foreplay practices cross-culturally. Results suggest that exclusive mother-child sleeping arrangements is significantly associated with the presence of foreplay.

Based on work by Rosenblatt (1966), this article tests a hypothesis relating sexual freedom to romantic love. Findings suggest a relationship between premarital and extramarital sexual permissiveness equality for women and men and romantic love.

Textor summarizes cross-cultural male initiation rites findings pertaining to cultural, environmental, psychological, and social phenomena.

Previous cross-cultural studies of romantic love have, in the authors' view, been plagued by vague definitions of the concept and a conflation of cultural, bio-psychological, and social factors. Thus, the authors distinguish between the social aspect of romantic love (which they argue is a universal human predisposition) and the variable cultural valuation of romance. In a large cross-cultural sample, the authors test the hypotheses that gender equality and family organization are important predictors of the cultural valuation of romantic love.

This article expands on Buss's (1989) study of the differences in male and female mate preferences in Western folktale characters by adding non-Western data. The new results show support for Buss's original findings.

This article examines differences in parental preference of potential in-laws across cultures. Results suggest that parents look for traits that will benefit themselves and their kin and that gender and subsistence type affects the traits that parents deem most important.