Why women find men with beards attractive?

They say the ladies love gangsters. Though those who are bearded can’t be considered to be gangsters, for long, people have been baffled as to why women were attracted to men with beards as opposed to the stereotype your mother loves – clean-shaven dudes. A new study in the Royal Society Open Science journal says that very masculine faces and those with beards were rated more attractive than feminine-looking male faces or clean-shaven faces, as per a CNN Health report. The study thereby attempts a correlation between beards and masculinity.

A past study by CNN Health says that women found men with a heavy stubble most attractive, whereas those with long beards, light stubble or clean-shaven found themselves much lower on the attraction scale. This was regardless of the fact as to whether the woman was in a short-term relationship or in it for the long haul.

However, the study also found that a certain section of women did find disgust toward parasites and other pathogens and was more likely to find a man's beard to be unattractive for these reasons.