Women Make Snap Judgements Against One Another Based on Weight With Negative Implications

That women judge each other by appearance is nothing new- they have done it since the dawn of time, but according to a new survey, the depth and negativity of those snap, appearance based judgement calls might be a surprise. That survey, conducted by a PhD from the Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity showed how negatively women view other women who are either very thin or very overweight.

Rebecca Puhl asked 1800 women, ages eighteen to forty a number of questions as they pertain to their attitude about women who were either above or below their healthy weight.The women were asked to imagine complete strangers at either status and then asked to choose from a set of words used to describe the woman in question. A third option, "neither" could also be selected, but Puhl reported that less than half of those surveyed did so.

In reference to the overweight women, the women in the poll were six times more likely to rate her as slow, and even more likely to call her undisciplined, almost ten times to call her "sloppy" and more than eleven times more likely to consider her to be lazy. Those determinations were the same whether the woman making them was thin or overweight. For the thin women, the terms bitchy, mean and controlling were two times more likely to be used in reference to them, again, regardless of the weight of the women making the determination. The thin women were also considered to be vain or self centered nearly four times more often. Women were eight times more likely to consider the women to be conceited or superficial when they were thin.

Critics of the study called it unscientific at best and deemed it to be frivolous, psuedoscience bought and paid for by Glamor magazine just to boost the headlines and readership. But, the findings have been echoed in a number of additional studies that have shown that women treat each other negatively based solely on appearance, typically focusing on their rivals weight.

Society has long held weight as a clue to the personality, affluence or health status of people. In the past, women who were overweight were considered to be members of the upper class because they had enough food to gain the weight. Some tribes still consider that to be the case, overfeeding their young women before it is time to marry them off, hoping to get the most affluent suitors for her because of her girth.

Article Source: http://www.streetarticles.com/womens-interests/women-make-snap-judgements-against-one-another-based-on-weight-with-negative-implications
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