Is it a woman's weight or her figure that makes her body most attractive—or both? A plastic surgeon's patients have supplied evidence that waist proportions are more important. Devendra Singh, a psychologist at University of Texas at Austin, obtained before-and-after photographs of 15 women who had undergone micro-fat-grafting surgery, "in which surgeons harvest fat tissue from the waist region and implant it in the buttocks," he reports. The procedure does not affect weight, only redistributes fat. He asked men and women to rate images of the patients' bodies. Ten of the patients had gained weight in the three months following the surgery before the photos were taken; five had lost weight. In every case, the reduction in waist size improved each woman's ratings, regardless of weight. Estrogen inhibits abdominal fat, Singh says, so a relatively small waist signals youth and fertility.