As the American obesity epidemic continues to balloon, public-health advocates face another hurdle: Lots of people with weight problems don't even know they have them. New research from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston shows that nearly 25% of overweight women (those with a BMI of 25 or above) think they're merely average, which 16% of average to thin women think they're overweight. In short, obesity is gradually becoming the new normal. And mirrors apparently lie.
What's more, there are economic consequences to this delusion. A University of Florida survey found that very thin women earned a whopping $15,572 more per year than average-weight women. And economists at the University of Texas at Austin made a broader point, suggesting that "the majority of beauty's effect on happiness works through its impact on economic outcomes." So: Thin, beautiful people are happier in part because society values them more in terms of cold, hard cash. It may offend our moral sensibilities, but, unlike mirrors, numbers don't lie.
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