What She Said

Skinny Girl with Money

What she said HERE!!!

Workin' Harder For Your Money

Surprise surprise, overweight women make less money than "average" sized women and significantly less than slender women...what about the mens? Slightly overweight men make MORE than "average" sized men. What's the solution? Shape up fatties! Yes, the researchers recommended that discriminated people seek to normalize their weight rather than we have to deal with bias and discrimination on a cultural level.

"That study found that compared to average weight women, those who weighed 25 pounds less made about $15,572 more, and women who weighed 25 pounds more made $13,847 less." That is a, pardon the pun, HUGE difference in pay and I'm feeling kinda ragey about (and poor!!!). Here's the Jezebel take down and HERE is the original study.

Its an international study and the US actually comes in 31st (with Iceland the least discriminatory), so anti-fat bias specifically against women was found to be present in all 134 countries studied. So, that's bad, but what's worse is the incredibly condescending "shape up fatties" message from the researchers at the end of the study summary. The simple minded, pat advice breaks down to: "Focus on what you can replace ice cream with," he said. "Maybe it's yogurt or fruit." 95% of diets fail, but regardless of those statistics, the researchers call on individuals to shape up rather than for anti-fat biases (found globally, though yes, there are still cultures that value and prefer fat women--though, insisting that women conform to being fat is as restrictive and body-diversity denying as insisting that they must be thin) be looked at as serious human rights violations and discrimination. Individual solutions are bunk--people's salaries and social mobility should be based on performance, education, hard work and skills, not suit size. I'm not saying that its impossible to lose weight and keep it off (and for those who do, they tend not to diet, but to integrate a lifestyle of exercise, healthy eating, extra movement whenever they can get it and a host of other things (like sleeping 8-9 hours instead of 6-7) and they tend not to be "thin" but simply "not fat" anymore--going from fat to thin and keeping it that way is really hard to sustain, but getting thinner is more likely to succeed if your goals in mind are health oriented and not specifically aesthetic.

So, dear reader, do you feel like your size has played a role in your salary? Career success? Share in the comments.

Lane Bryant: Censored?

So, apparently, Fox thought that the above commercial was unsuitable for an ad-buy during American Idol, YET similarly scantily clad Victoria Secret models/commercials have run during the SAME TIME SLOT!

From Lane Bryant's own Blog:

It appears that ABC and Fox have made the decision to define beauty for you by denying our new, groundbreaking Cacique commercial from airing freely on their networks.

ABC refused to show the commercial during “Dancing with the Stars” without restricting our airtime to the final moments of the show. Fox demanded excessive re-edits and rebuffed it three times before relenting to air it during the final 10 minutes of “American Idol,” but only after we threatened to pull the ad buy.

Yes, these are the same networks that have scantily-clad housewives so desperate they seduce every man on the block, and don’t forget Bart Simpson, who has shown us the moon more often than NASA, all during what they call “prime time.”

We knew the ads were sexy, but they are not salacious. Our new commercials represent the sensuality of the curvy woman who has more to show the world than the typical waif-like lingerie model. What we didn’t know was that the networks, which regularly run Victoria’s Secret and Playtex advertising on the very shows from which we’re restricted, would object to a different view of beauty. If Victoria’s Secret and Playtex can run ads at any time during the 9pm to 10pm hour, why is Lane Bryant restricted only to the final 10 minutes?

Discrimination? Yes clearly, but good for business? Probably. Lane Bryant will probably get more buzz from the controversy than the original ad alone would generate, but that doesn't make it right.

Well, Thank Goodness For That!

So, apparently BeautifulPeople.com has deleted 5,000 memberships because said "beautiful people" gained weight over the holiday season. Check the article HERE, but I'm not linking to beautiful people.

Site founder Robert Hintze actually said:

"Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded."

Well, he's honest!