Everyone Judges Women More Harshly Than Men When It Comes to BMI
Does your body size impact how attractive you are? Well, it depends on who’s asking. A new study from the University of Surrey finds that women are the harshest judges of weight, and consider both men and women with high BMIs less attractive. But women are also the most harshly judged, as men are not impacted by other men’s BMIs when judging attractiveness but do find women with high BMIs less attractive. And it could mean a lot for your next job interview.
This is the first study that considers attractiveness and weight from both genders’ perspectives. “This study was motivated by bridging the gap between research on attractiveness and its effects on one side, and research on anthropometric measures and their effects on the other,” leading researcher, Professor Sonia Oreffice, tells Yahoo Beauty. “Remarkably, here we had information on both attractiveness and body mass index, and also on the gender of the surveyor. Interestingly, we showed that while women are both the harshest judges of weight in relation to beauty, they are also judged negatively by both men and women for being overweight.” Dr. Oreffice thinks this judgment could have to do with the fact that BMI does not distinguish between fat and muscular mass, and there may be a significant number of muscular men with high BMIs.
This UK research could impact interviewer selections to create fairer hiring processes. “While we are not entirely surprised with the results that correlate BMI and attractiveness, what is remarkable is that [the] gender of the interviewer makes a difference and that body size matters for wages, not simply as proxy for beauty,” Oreffice told Science Daily. We hope the U.S. gets the memo.
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