Disco clothing, female sexual motivation, and relationship status: is she dressed to impress?

Journal of Sex Research, Feb, 2004 by Karl Grammer, LeeAnn Renninger, Bettina Fischer

For the motivation "hang around" across groups, partner present-pill females scored highest while partner absent-no pill females scored lowest (Kruskal-Wallis test, [chi square] = 12.9, p = .02). For the motivation "meet new people," all single females scored higher than females with partners (Kruskal-Wallis test, [chi square] = 33.2, p < .001). The same holds for the motivation "flirt" (Kruskal-Wallis test, [chi square] = 61.6, p < .001). No significant differences for the motivation "sex" were found among groups (Kruskal-Wallis test, [chi square] = 8.3, p = .14).

Self-Description of Dress

Hormonal contraceptives and relationship status did not affect self-description of clothing (Kruskal-Wallis test, ns). Across groups, no particular group described their clothing as significantly more sexy (Kruskal-Wallis test, [chi square] = 4.48, p = .48), bold (Kruskal-Wallis test, [chi square] = 4.79, p = .44), modest (Kruskal-Wallis test, [chi square] = 1.89, p = .87), or natural (Kruskal-Wallis test, [chi square] = 6.37, p = .27; see Table 3).

Within groups, all groups most often described their clothing as significantly more natural, followed by sexy, modest, and bold. This was the case for females in the groups partner present-pill (Friedman test, n = 40, [chi square] = 15.1, p = .001), partner absent-pill (Friedman test, n = 69, [chi square] = 24.7, p < .001), partner absent-no pill (Friedman test, n = 48, [chi square] = 19.8, p < .001), single-pill (Friedman test, n = 57, [chi square] = 7.9, p < .05), and single-no pill (Friedman test, n = 113, [chi square] = 52.7, p < .001). This pattern also occurred but was not significant for the partner present-no pill group (Friedman test, n = 24, [chi square] = 6.9, p = .07).

Motivation and Self-Description of Dress

Using Spearman's rho analysis of reported motivation and self-description of clothing, we found a correlation between clothing description and courtship motivation (see Table 4). Females who reported a high motivation to "hang around" rated their clothing significantly more modest and significantly less sexy. Females who rated high on the motivation "meet new people" and "flirt" rated their clothing significantly more sexy and bold. Likewise, females who reported a high motivation for sex rated their clothing high on both sexy and bold, but low on natural.

Digital Analysis of Clothing: Skin Display, Clothing Sheerness, and Tightness

There were no significant group differences in the clothing digital analysis measurements (Kruskal-Wallis test, all ns). All groups displayed skin at an average of 23% to 30% of their body surface. When females wore skirts, they showed skin at an average of 7% to 12% of the lower body surface. Sheer clothing was rare, with an average of 1% of clothing in the study being sheer. Tightness ranged between 10 to 13 rating points (on a scale of 0-28, with 28 being the tightest). The measurements correlated with each other. Skin display positively correlated with tightness (n = 351, rho = .30, p < 0.001) and shorter skirt length (n = 351, rho = .83, p < 0.001). Sheerness also correlated with tightness (rho =. 113, p < 0.45), but not with shorter skirt length (rho = -.06, ns). Overall, we found no significant differences across gloups for relationship status, hormonal contraceptives, and clothing choice dimensions. Results are shown in Table 5.