What is Sexy?

Originally done in 2015.  Updated December 13, 2025.

There have been several report on how our society has been changing it's ideal of attractive / sexy over the years.  More than one lady I have know, have been concerned that they were "Fat" or not sexy because they didn't look like the models.  Back in 2009 Wired Magazine did an article titled Infoporn: Today's Playmates Are More Like Anime Figures Than Real Humans (sorry the link is dead) that looked at how Playboy Playmate's Body Mass Index (BMI) had changed over the years.  They showed a steady decrease in the Playmate's BMI.  

So I took the data and updated using the data from WeKinglyPigs, Boobpedia.com (yes that really is  a webpage), and various Wikipedia pages.  Note Playboy stopped having Playmates in February 2016 (too much completion from online porn).  There were 694 Playmates that information could be found to calculate BMI.  Spreadsheet of data is below.  Note, the CDC defines a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is healthy.  25 and over is overweight and under 18.5 is underweight.

Here is what I found:

Bad News

• 52% of the playmates were underweight!  BMI <18.5

• 0.9% (6 of the 694) were severely underweight with a BMI under 16.  Ms. Sept 2013, who was 5'3" and weighted 85 pounds, had a BMI of 15.1

• Only 1 playmate was "overweight" with a BMI of 25.4.  Ms. January 2015 who was five foot tall and 130 pounds.

• The median BMI dropped below 18.5, aka underweight, in 1968 and stayed there until 2003.

• For the years of 1982 to 1989 at least 75% were underweight and in 1986 and 1989 all but one were underweight.

• There was a decreasing trend from 1960 - 1987 at a rate of 0.068 BMI per year or about 0.4 lbs per year (Theil-Sen slope).  See graph below.  Note at that rate our "Playmate" that was 5' 5" and 116 lbs in 1960 would be 105 lbs.  So she would need to lose 11 lbs aka 10% of her weight.

• Only 2010 had over 75% of the BMIs in the healthy range.  Before that you have to go back to 1970.

Good News

• The trend started to go upward around 1987 but very slowly at a rate of 0.02 BMI per year (it decreased at  a rate over twice that before).

• Some of the ladies that have been considered sex symbols were in the healthy range.  Here are some examples: