here's an article about that weight study-depressing I'd say..
Women's weight found to affect job, income
Study indicates bias in marriage, career
By Raja Mishra, Globe Staff | May 28, 2005
Weight can have startling consequences for women's financial well-being, careers, and marriage prospects, according to research that found that women -- but not men -- suffer economic harm from being overweight.
The first-of-its-kind study found that the heavier the woman, the worse her financial situation will be 13 to 15 years in the future.
In fact, the effect of weight on women's fortunes was so strong, that women with high school diplomas will have the same future household income as women with a four-year college degree but who weigh twice as much, according to the study.
For men, extra weight had no impact on their earnings, careers, or marriage prospects.
Much of the economic effect of weight on women's fortunes, the study found, occurs not because of job discrimination but marriage discrimination: Heavier women are more likely to end up marrying lower-income men or to be single. In addition, the heavier the woman, the less prestigious her job is likely to be.
The data appear to underscore what social scientists and many women themselves have long asserted -- a double-standard when it comes to weight. The study for the first time gives the economic costs of this phenomenon, showing heavy women can pay a steep personal and financial price for their weight, in addition to the more widely publicized health effects.
''This is one of the core fundamental bases of gender inequality in the United States. Women are held to standards of objectified physical appearance that men are not," said New York University sociologist Dalton Conley, the study's lead author. He explained that weight worked against women as they competed to get married and secure their financial futures.
''The marriage market is where physical capital, if you want to call it that, gets converted into economic capital," said Conley. ''Marriage is an exchange relationship where men provide income, and women, in addition to child rearing, provide sexual status."
The life of Caryn McCormack, 37, of Bridgewater illustrates Conley's findings.
She battled weight from an early age, topping 200 pounds by the time she graduated from high school. She never dated and was acutely self-conscious. After high school, she obtained an associate's degree in nursing and started work at Milton Hospital. She temporarily lost weight, but then ballooned to 385 pounds and developed rheumatoid arthritis, forcing her to quit her job.
McCormack, who is 5-foot-5 wore XXXXXL-sized pants and shirts and lived on a monthly disability payment she received from the state. Teenagers would snicker as she walked by. Strangers would give her unsolicited advice to diet. A few times, people on the street made oinking noises as she passed, she recalled in an interview.
''I wished people would take the time to see that I was a decent person," she said. ''I really am a nice person."
In 1996, she married a heavy-set man, who worked in a low-paying warehouse job and later in data entry. She has since filed for divorce. And in the last two years, a dramatic change: she has lost more than 250 pounds.
The new study finds that women in McCormack's situation face grimmer prospects than their thinner counterparts over the long run.
Conley and a graduate student, Rebecca Glauber, crunched data that tracked about 1,300 women and 1,100 men for up to 15 years. It is the first study to look at the socio-economic effects of body mass index, a ratio of weight to height that is the standard measure of obesity, over such duration. They looked at subjects' BMI in 1986, and then how those people fared as of 1999 and 2001.
They were able to compute that each 1 percent increase in women's BMI means a .6 percent decrease in future family income. So, a 60-pound weight difference between two 5-foot-4 women would account for a 30 percent difference in their future family incomes, such as $100,000 annually compared with $70,000. Much of this income difference occurs because the heavier women are, the poorer their spouses are likely to be, the research found. Also at work is the fact that heavier women are less likely to marry: For each 1 percent BMI increase, the prospects of matrimony decrease .35 percent. Single women tend to have lower incomes.
Likewise, for every 1 percent increase in BMI, they found a .4 percent decrease in future job prestige, with prestige measured by public surveys long used by sociologists. So, a 100 percent difference in BMI -- a 5-foot-4 woman weighing 120 pounds versus one weighing 240 -- meant the difference between becoming a lawyer, a high prestige job, and an insurance agent, a medium prestige job or between a medium-prestige secretary and a low-prestige housekeeper.
The paper has not been published yet, though it has been presented at academic conferences and circulated to economists by the Cambridge-based National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit clearinghouse for some of the nation's most influential economics research. Conley and Glauber analyzed data collected by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a long-running survey of families run by the University of Michigan that includes data on BMI, income, careers, and marital status.
The researchers said they could not rule out that women's socio-economic status at the start of the study affected their weight, though they said their analysis indicated that was highly unlikely.
Social scientists said the results were strong evidence of a double standard in this country.
''In general, appearance is used more as a way of evaluating women than men. Men are more often evaluated by their achievements, while women are judged more on their appearance," said Marlene B. Schwartz, codirector of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders.
Steven Gortmaker, a Harvard School of Public Health professor who has studied obesity, said pop culture imagery perpetuates this double standard.
''There are large-size males who play sports who are honored for that. Large-sized males aren't viewed negatively. For females that's not the case at all. The norms for female beauty are much leaner," he said.
That, said Janie Victoria Ward, who studies female psychological development at Simmons College, leads to prejudicial attitudes toward heavier women.
''We assume they have failed in some way, that they're damaged," she said.
Dr. Caroline Apovian, director of nutrition and weight management at Boston Medical Center, said she sees the result in her clinic every day: 80 percent of the patients are female, despite the fact that federal statistics indicate that a higher percentage of men are overweight or obese than women.
''Men are obese, too. But women are suffering more psychological pain," she said. From talking to patients about their lives, Apovian said she long ago concluded what Conley's study found: ''Obese women are discriminated against in marriage."
One of the women who walked into Apovian's clinic two years ago was McCormack.
The BMC team helped her shed 119 pounds in one year through diet and exercise. But with a history of heart disease in the family, McCormack wanted to protect her health, so she opted for gastric bypass surgery, or stomach stapling. The procedure, done a year ago, dramatically diminished her appetite. She lost another 135 pounds.
Family and friends congratulated her, the taunts and insults abruptly ended, and men began to take notice. But shedding the overweight mentality was not so easy.
''I think my brain hasn't caught up with my body. I'm still trying to get my mind around the fact I'm not fat," said McCormack. She now weighs about 130 pounds, and wears a size 8. She is thinking of getting a job. And she is ready to make her first true foray into the singles scene.
If it's not Friday yet it should be.
