Despite media images of skinny actresses and
skeletal models, American women are apparently rejecting pressure to meet the media ideal in favor of chunking out and resembling
their peers, according to a Florida State University
study.
Due to the gradual yet alarming rise in the
rate of national obesity, the perception of a normal body size has actually changed, Florida State
University Assistant Professor of Economics Frank Heiland and Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Economist Mary Burke argue (“Fat
is the New Normal,” Science Daily, August 7, 2007).
"This is a social force that we are trying to document because the rise in obesity has occurred so rapidly
over the past 30 years," said Heiland, who also is affiliated with FSU's Center for Demography and Population Health. "Medically
speaking, most agree that this trend is a dangerous one because of its connection to diabetes, cancer and other diseases.
But psychologically, it may provide relief to know that you are not the only one packing on the pounds."
While ubiquitous statistics cite the epidemic
of U.S. obesity, the FSU researchers cited
results of a previous study in which most respondents categorized their bodies as “socially acceptable,” a phenomenon
which researchers attribute to the sheer rise in the number of heavy individuals. In the previous study, 87 percent of respondents
placed their body sizes in the socially acceptable category, including nearly half of whom (48 percent) were actually obese.
This maladjusted perception of weight and
body size will lead to a more severe and pervasive epidemic of obesity, according to Heiland and Burke, because the process
is so gradual and those who are already heavy will suffer most from its effects. Because fat is metabolically less active
than muscle, that extra slice of cake will more readily harm an obese individual than a thin or muscular one, packing the
pounds on the heavy person first, according to Heiland.
This biological bitchslap also explains why
it’s so depressingly easy to go from fat to obese and why in one longitudinal study of women and their weight, “disproportionate growth among the most obese women as the 99th percentile weight increased a hefty 18.2
percent, from 258 to 305 pounds,” while “the average woman increased by 20 pounds, or 13.5 percent, during that
period.”
