As a rule, women who go beyond modern standards of beauty are discriminated against and condemned. Nevertheless, full buttocks and hips are perceived in society much more positively than a bulging belly.
Psychologists from Oklahoma and Arizona State Universities (USA), whose article in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, are studying such a socio-psychological phenomenon that exists in the public consciousness of the developed countries of the world as a prejudice against people who are overweight and obese. And most often the victims of such prejudices are women.
In the course of their new study, the scientists decided to find out how the shape of their body, that is, the distribution of adipose tissue in different parts of the body, affects the attitude towards obese women, especially bearing in mind that this factor is of great importance for health. So, fat deposits in the buttocks and thighs in young women signal their high fertility. And fat deposits in the abdomen and waist (abdominal obesity) are associated with an increased risk of various diseases, such as diabetes.
The study involved 486 residents of the United States of different races and 263 residents of India. These people were shown images of women’s bodies specially created by graphic artists with a variety of weights and shapes. Some participants were asked to rate these women on a wide range of personality characteristics based only on their body shape (how outgoing, lazy, greedy, reserved, etc.) The other participants were simply asked how positively or negatively they felt about each of the women.
It turned out that women who are overweight or obese, who have more fat deposits on the hips and buttocks than on the stomach (pear-shaped body), are treated with less prejudice than women with the exact opposite distribution of adipose tissue (apple-shaped body) . At the same time, women with both body shapes can have the same weight and height, but still, a protruding belly is perceived more negatively than full hips and buttocks.
Moreover, plump ladies with a pear-shaped body outperform even thin and slender girls. But women with too low weight are treated worse than those with normal weight. Thus, the researchers note, «fat» is not always associated in the public mind with something bad.
Jaimie Arona Krems, Steven L. Neuberg «Updating Long-Held Assumptions About Fat Stigma: For Women, Body Shape Plays a Critical Role». Social Psychological and Personality Science, February, 2021.