Love Makes You Fat
Remember the good old days when Newsweek reported that single women over 40 had a better chance of being in a terrorist attack than getting married, setting off a panic that lasted for 20 years until they retracted the story in 2006? Now the New York Times reports on an Australian study showing that women who live with their partners gain weight. Oh, what the hell is a girl to do? Stay single and and hope the terrorists miss you? Move in with Mr. Right and risk becoming a fat mess?
Gaining weight while in a relationship is not news. You can ask any woman in the midst of domestic bliss and she’ll tell you that she’s gained some weight. A few of those reasons might be that having a serious relationship changes your lifestyle–you eat out a bit more and you adjust your eating habits to your partner’s. If he subsists on a diet of red meat and Guinness, chances are you’re having a bit of that too. And you can’t deny the lovely power of being with someone who loves you beyond your body. Knowing that you don’t have to look perfect all the time is a huge relief.
But my problem with the article is how it’s framed as a dire warning to women despite the fact that most of the article suggests this weight gain is not a big deal. The story starts with the headline, “Study Says Women With Mate Get Heavier” and ends with a quote from lead researcher Dr. Annette J. Dobson, who says:
“From a prevention point of view, one can look at these as particular times when women have to be especially careful.”
I was hard pressed to find anything in the article showing how the sample of women in the study gaining an average of 15 pounds over 10 years faced serious health problems. Gaining weight over the course of a decade seems natural to me.
So am I being overly sensitive and interpreting this as another news article with the potential to make women freak out about their bodies?
The Beautiful and the Shamed
A bit of schadenfreude for those of us still reeling from our awkward teenage years: CNN reports that the looks-obsessed dating site BeautifulPeople.com banished 5,000 of their users for gaining too much weight over the holidays. BeautifulPeople bills itself as an elite(ist) dating site for people who believe that looks matter when selecting mates, who want to guarantee that they will always have attractive dates, and who don’t want to waste time filtering through all the Quasimodos on Match.com and eHarmony. As if the rest of us (ugly people) don’t want to be attracted to the people we date.
There is hope for the site’s shamed fatties. They can return if they lose weight and meet the standards of BeautifulPeople’s voters. Hey BeautifulPeople, you’re only ugly on the inside.
