Is size/weight a big factor in attraction for you?

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i don't think it's surprising that someone would be looking at an overweight or larger dating choice as being someone lesser than another person, because we see it on the forum all the time. bigger people are characterised by some members as being less motivated and generally lower quality people overall. sometimes members will tack on some kind of evo-psych reasoning as to why the big people are lesser choices, but nonetheless it is often phrased as a biological imperative or universal taste, not just as a personal choice.

i recently posted one study that found that male "jurors" are more likely to find an obese woman guilty of a (cheque fraud) crime than a thin woman, a thin man, or an obese man. this bias was strongest with the group of thin men, but the obese men were also biased. the bias was not evident with the women in the study, but in other studies women are just as biased about obese people so i doubt there is a particular gender difference in general.

basically, a a cross section of the population feels like it's acceptable to attribute negative attributes by default to large people (and even to discriminate against them in various setting like employment), so why wouldn't they put you don't for dating someone like that?

EDIT: if anyone is interested to test their bias, check out this study (click the one that says "Weight":
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html

Last edited by hyperlexian on 08 Mar 2013, 5:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

No and no.

Last guy I dated was technically in the "obese" category according to BMI (now I am pretty sure that BMI was off at least a bit, because he was well built and had a fair bit of muscle too). Now you could see he was big, as in overweight - but he never looked obese, perhaps because he was very tall so it balanced out a bit more. That said his attitude was much more important than where he was at personally.

I don't judge others by the size of who they are dating. You don't know what's happening behind closed doors. They might not have much money, they may have a health condition, they may be on medication, they may be eating very healthy, they may be recovering from an eating disorder or BDD - you just don't know unless you're living with them. I fail to see why one physical characteristic matters so much - a human beings value isn't determined by their weight.

I do know we used to get judged a lot by others - it wasn't very pleasant. Guys who hit on me when he goes to the bar to get a drink will often put him down regarding his weight as a part of their pick up line. It shows what they are like as human beings if they're going to judge someone on one characteristic without knowing them and putting them down in order to make themselves look good.

People didn't realise that our attitudes weren't really that far apart - I have to stick to my medical treatment program like glue plus dance, and he just got back into lifting (which was a previous hobby of his a few years ago) and therefore had changed up his eating habits pretty radically to support that.

Sounds like they are douche bags if they were willing to use others insecurities against them and try to make themselves look better.

I don't really have the whole elitist fitness thing going on, I train very hard but I'm perfectly fine with people of all shapes and sizes. Everyone is at a different level when it comes to fitness and I have helped people from those that are obese to the physically disabled.

The reason I wouldn't or couldn't date someone obese isn't to do with an aesthetic reason, it's to do with the difference in lifestyles, diet, workout choices.

Not to mention, "larger" people often--I didn't say always-- have a different personality that is not attractive, even down to having a hideous smile in some cases. Also more likely to blame others for their problems. It really all goes to more than *just* size.

When I was obese, it was fascinating that my personality--diet, lifestyle-- changed to match what I and Wolfheart just described and then changed back when I knocked off 50 pounds. Weight DOES affect personality. It really does. So it's not quite shallow to not be attracted to obese people because it's much more than just about their appearance.

Last edited by Tyri0n on 08 Mar 2013, 10:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

Which was exactly what had just changed - lifestyle, attitude, eating habits and physical activity- the results just weren't showing yet since it does take some time for that. Or I should say - weren't showing fast enough for other people obviously.

there are many physically fit obese people, so if you are unwilling to date one of those obese yet physically active and healthy person, it has to be due to aesthetics because they are no different from a thinner person except in terms of physical size. on other threads i've already provided actual studies that show that people can be obese and fit. many of them work out just as much as thinner people, eat the same as thinner people, and maintain the same lifestyles, yet they have a different body.

therefore if you exclude these "fit yet fat people" from your dating dating pool, then it can only be due to aesthetics. there is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it is based on appearance.

uhhhh no. there is no correlation between personality and weight. just because you _think_ you've gained a better personality with your weight loss doesn't make it true. this post is surely not a good example of your new and improved self.

Depends on the definition of "personality."

A good proxy for all of this is the appearance of a person's smile. Obese people--including me as an obese person--have kind of a forced, awkward smile that looks "tentative" (hard to even describe it). I think it's at least partially confidence issue. The body knows subconsciously that obesity is not healthy, so it reacts in ways that manifest as personality characteristics, including the tentative smile. I think another symptom is impaired ability to engage with other people, dulled sense of humor, and a greater tendency to complain and blame others for one's own problems. The Korean movie "200 Pound Beauty" is, I think, a great illustration of how weight affects a person's personality. A woman went from obese to thin and beautiful, and her personality completely changed as well.

Things like unconfident body language and complaining do affect other people's perceptions of you, as does weight itself, which ends up affecting your personality through the constant receipt of negative feedback from other people.

Even if you won't agree with me that weight itself directly causes personality characteristics, you have to at least agree that it affects people's treatment of you, and the feedback you receive from other people DOES affect your personality in many ways.

Last edited by Tyri0n on 08 Mar 2013, 11:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

What you are referring to is attitude, not personality.

you are incorrect - there are a certain percentage of people who are obese yet perfectly healthy. this phenomenon is referred to as "the obesity paradox". so according to your (patently made-up) theory those people's bodies would not be telling them that they are unhealthy at all. and i suppose that people who are thin yet unhealthy would have bodies that are telling them that they are unhealthy and that would be reflected in THEIR personality. but in fact, there is no correlation whatsoever. thin people vs obese people... one and all can be equally miserable in their personality.

what you should really do is reflect on why you seem to have a need to make up a theory to explain why you should be entitled to dislike people of a certain body type. it would be much more interesting to know why you would go so far as to create such a silly hypothesis just to feel better about your own bias.

I agree with hyperlexion on this. I sometimes straddle the line between obese and slightly overweight (based on professional standards) however I wouldn't look it. I have a large "barrel chest build" and a bit of muscle so I can have a bit of a gut but hide it fairly well. I can still run and workout without much issue (although I need to do it more.) It's true there are plenty of fat people with horrible personailities but I'm sure porportionally there are just as many horrible thin people.

Changes in personaility could almost entirely be attributed to confidence changes and social biases.

Hyperlexian is correct. Weight may impact health or how people treat a person, which may contribute to someone's mood or attitude but that doesn't determine personality traits.

Once again, hyperlexian, it seems you have a very of definition of fitness. mostly our due to lack of discipline, correct diet and training intensity. A person eating a ton of calories and doing only twenty to thirty minutes of low to mid intensity cardio isn't going to see fast results.

Let's say, could they go on a diet with no caffeine, no sugar, no processed good, no alcohol and no smoking? Could they do 90 to 130 minutes in the gym?

Not particularly. I'm somewhat overweight myself so to really have it be make or break would be rather hypocritical of me. But even outside of that, as long as she isn't obese to the extent of dramatic unhealthiness or to the extent of rock bottom self-esteem, I don't factor it in. Personality, intelligence and drive are a lot more important to me.

But holding those factors ceterus parabus, I would prefer middle weight (curvy) and then someone fit, but I would definitely aesthetically prefer a BBW over an anorexic "model" stick figure. But since those factors are rarely if ever possible to standardize, I rarely if ever would have to make this judgment.

There is nothing wrong with wanting a partner who takes as much care of themselves as yourself.

yes, they could. all you are doing right now is making it painfully clear that you didn't bother to read the articles i linked you to last time. fit yet obese people can run marathons, can work out everyday, can eat properly, etc. interestingly, many obese OR thin people could be equally unable or uninterested in keeping up a fitness regime like that. thin people aren't automatically interested in exercise, nor are obese people automatically disinterested.

you cannot look at their body as a measure of their lifestyle. some people who have exercise regularly and have a good diet are also thin, but not every person is like that - some will still be overweight or obese even with such a lifestyle. once again, here is a bit of the data:


http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2009/11/03/th ... y-and-fit/

so, in this random sample, one-third of obese people are taking care of themselves. they fit the medically accepted criteria for health and fitness. it seems that you think that fitness should include some form of aesthetic results in order to count, but it doesn't. people don't have to look a certain way in order to be fit.