Jan 14, 2019
Topic - Does This Make Me Look Fat?
Doctors have a definition of obesity based on age, height, weight and gender, but in the real world, our guidelines are different. We see each other in terms of obesity based on race, gender and the generation we grew up in. A twenty year study revealed some of the changes we’ve made in our attitudes toward weight. For white men, having an average body mass index predicts success. Guys who are too fat or thin are scrutinized. At the beginning and the end of the study, white women associated being thin with being married and wealthy. For black women, at the beginning of the study, they valued being thin, but at the end, they accepted larger bodies and no longer felt that weight and marriage prospects were related. An unexpected finding for researchers was that white women are financially penalized for their looks. Have your attitudes about weight changed?