The weight/wage gap: Skinny women take home fat paycheques
As if bikini season isn’t brutal enough. Here’s another reason for us to hate skinny women:
A study in the Journal of Applied Psychology finds that “very thin” women make more money than their “average” counterparts — nearly $22,000 more.
It gets worse.
The study, called “When It Comes to Pay, Do the Thin Win? The Effect of Weight on Pay for Men and Women” found that skinny women might make more, but overweight women actually suffer financially for those extra pounds.
Forbes reports that 'heavy' and 'very heavy' women lost over $9,000 and almost $19,000, respectively, than their average weight counterparts."
[Related: Eating at your desk may be ruining your diet]
Most shocking is that “very thin” women are punished most harshly for the first few pounds of weight gain, with “thin” women making $15,000 less than their “very thin” colleagues, dictating that the skinny ideal be seen as ”normative, expected, and central to female attractiveness.”
The study examines what many women already know: physical-beauty standards are getting worse:
“This media ideal is quite pervasive in society, with female cartoon characters, movie/television actresses, Playboy centerfolds, and Miss America Pageant winners all having become increasingly thinner over the decades.”
[Related: Is your job making you fat?]
The study found that men don’t suffer from the same weight/wage gap. So not only do they already typically make more than us, they aren’t punished or rewarded for their physiques either.
Perhaps most frustrating is that it’s often our jobs that are making us fat in the first place. We’re working longer hours, getting less physical exercise, and sabotaging our bodies by making poor lunch choices and eating at our desks.
The study is an observation, not a workplace-practice recommendation. Taking care of our bodies should be priority, not paycheque-motivated crash dieting.
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