Human sexual selection is a complex process determined by numerous factors such as competition between mates and individual mating preferences. As this selection is multifactorial, scientists have hypothesised that the actual morphological characteristics of an individual's mate should not greatly correspond to an individual's preferred characteristics. To test this hypothesis, the authors recruited 96 heterosexual French couples and measured the height, weight, and BMI of all subjects. They then created a computer software that shows human-shaped figures for which height and body mass can be independently modulated. Each subject was thus presented with a randomly created figure of the opposite sex, and was then tasked to modify said figure so that it represented their ideal partner. The actual and preferred characteristics were then compared. The right and left plots concern female and male subjects respectively. Dashed straight lines represent perpendicular bisectors (y=x). Dotted lines represent mean values. Significance is indicated by p