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Comment by password11 | Hacker News Reader

Paywalled, but

> It is economically rational for ambitious women to try as hard as possible to be thin

It is economically rational for all ambitious people to try as hard as possible to fit into the accepted standard of attractiveness, including weight. This is just a special case.

Another point, I don't think most people find hyper-thinness attractive. In fact being underweight is far worse for your health (HR=~1.6) than overweight is (HR=~1.05). I hope notions of attractiveness in Western societies can normalize on just being healthy.

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> I hope notions of attractiveness in Western societies can normalize on just being healthy.

I believe this is happening, particularly noticeable for American women. "Fit/Athletic" is in, "skinny" is out. My wife has noticed that high-status/high-income American women tend to be much more athletic than high-status women in Europe and elsewhere, where they tend to be thin. In both cases, genetically inherited attractiveness also dominates (e.g. height for men, facial structure, etc).

> Another point, I don't think most people find hyper-thinness attractive.

Depends on the society. In Asia it's still by far the most popular aesthetic, especially for women.

Thanks for addressing my edit --

> Depends on the society. In Asia it's still by far the most popular aesthetic, especially for women.

I guess I outed myself as an American. I'm not sure I want to compare attractiveness standards with other cultures. I'm ok to take a hedonistic view here: if adhering to super-thin attractiveness standards causes women suffering or shortens their lives (which it does) then the standards are bad and I hope people in those countries reevaluate their standards.

I think a lot of that has to do with perception in media as well. I remember as a kid, it seemed that almost every male protagonist in coming of age stories had a tomboy girlfriend who was very athletic. Recently I had a discussion with some friends on childhood TV crushes, and most of them mentioned characters that fit the "fit" tomboy archetype.

Sure, it's anecdotal. Still, I wonder how much media people see in childhood influences what people view as attractive later in life?

> Depends on the society. In Asia it's still by far the most popular aesthetic, especially for women.

This would surprise me. Being fit and muscular is a sign that you are wealthy enough to spend time exercising and researching how to exercise, and/or have a trainer.

Being able to control your diet is cool, but what is even cooler is being able to go for an 8K run and then eating whatever you want.

I'd like to add Fit/Athletic is only "in" for a certain class of affluent liberal white women.

Pretty much any woman under 40 in the C-suite or Big-3 consulting regardless of their political orientation.

Which is very relevant to an article discussing the ROI of body type.

> I don't think most people find hyper-thinness attractive

I remember hearing this years ago, and from my observations, it appears to generally be true in the US:

Men prefer women heavier than women think they do, and women prefer men lighter than men think they do.

The crucial statistics/claims in the article are the following

> Myriad studies find that overweight or obese women are paid less than their thinner peers while there is little difference in wages between obese men and men in the medically defined “normal” range.

> The upper estimates of the wage premium for a women being thin are so significant that she might find it almost as valuable to lose weight as she would to gain additional education. The wage premium for getting a master’s degree is around 18%, only 1.8 times the premium a fat women could, in theory, earn by losing around 65lbs—roughly the amount that a moderately obese women of average height would have to lose to be in the medically defined “normal” range.

Which is used to support the conclusion that it is "economically rational for women to lose weight".

Yep, and I believe the life expectancy change for just being overweight is very small, weight doesn't start really affecting expectancy until you hit the Obese mark.

The article seems pretty clearly to indicate that this is far from "just a special case". It cites data that show that the rewards to thin women relative to fat ones far outpace the differences in reward for men on their own axes of attractiveness.

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