A: women

What challenges don’t kill a man may make him stronger but it will probably change his taste in women. Men under stress tend to prefer their women heavier than they would under less taxing times, say researchers. “Stress alters what men find attractive in a potential partner,” said study leader Martin Tovee. For the university study, a group of men were put under stress just before being asked to evaluate the attractiveness of several women in photographs. And the stressed men consistently preferred women with heftier bodies than the men who were not put under stress. “In addition, our work has shown that men prefer a heavy body in a partner in poorer environments where resources are scare,” says Tovee, of Newcastle University in England. “This suggests that our body size preferences are not innate but are flexible and can be changed by the environment and circumstances.”