The surprising bad habit that women are doing just as much as men — but for different reasons

The male gaze isn’t just for men.

Heterosexual women enjoy ogling attractive female faces as much as their male counterparts, but for aesthetic rather than sexual reasons, per a peepy study in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

“It is a reminder that men and women may be, quite literally, looking at the concept of attractiveness differently,” said lead author Tom Roth, from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, the Daily Mail reported.

The researchers had set out to examine perceptions of physical attractiveness, a trait that’s often associated “with health and fertility, making it a key factor in mate desirability,” per the study.

“Consistent with this, previous research has demonstrated a robust attentional bias towards attractive faces,” they wrote. “However, how this bias varies across the sexes and whether it depends on the sexual preference and/or relationship status of the perceiver is still poorly understood.”

To determine whether people can find others attractive irrespective of physical desire, the team recruited 102 participants and had them view various pairs of faces side by side.

The samples included both men and women of varying degrees of conventional attractiveness.

Using eye-tracking technology, the researchers managed to pinpoint where the participants looked and for how long.

While the looky-loos’ initial glances didn’t reveal any bias, a clear gender divide emerged once they had the chance to give the samples a proper look-see.

By and large, men spent more time peeping faces that corresponded to their sexual preference. They also spent no extra time gazing upon the faces of the gender they weren’t attracted to.

The scientists noted that relationship status didn’t seem to influence their peeping patterns.

By contrast, their female counterparts spent equal time eyeing the attractive male and female visages irrespective of their sexual orientation, suggesting that they didn’t have a gender preference when it came to gawking.

In light of the findings, the team concluded that women appreciate a smoldering female face as much as anyone — but for different reasons.

“It seems that for women, an attractive face is simply pleasant to look at, regardless of gender, while for men, it is really only their sexual preference that holds their eye,” said Roth.

However, the evolutionary mechanism for this female-on-female fixation remains unclear.

Coincidentally, they “found no clear effect of relationship status on attractiveness bias towards preferred faces.”

In the future, researchers hope to have participants examine a larger sample of faces — including ones of different ages — to glean a better idea of this perceptual gender divide.