A recent study appearing in the British Journal of Psychology suggests that men who have been deprived of food are more attracted to heavier women than men whose bellies are full. During the study, 61 men (half of whom were hungry) were asked to rate various images of women's bodies on a scale of one to seven.
According to Dr. Viren Swami, a psychologist at Liverpool University's Department of Public Health and one of the study's directors: "Hungry men were much more tolerant and rated obese women more positively than men who had eaten."
What does the study tell us? Well, even though popular culture force-feeds us images of waif-like models and pencil-thin actresses, there is something hard-wired in men that leads us at our most primordial level to prefer rounder women.
Dr. Swami puts it this way: "In evolutionary terms, if you are overweight it means you have more resources." And in evolutionary terms, those "resources" would have been the difference between survival and death. A more ample woman would have a better chance at living longer and having healthier children if food were scarce.
Indeed, throughout the ages prior to the 20th century, thinness was equated with poverty while plumpness signalled wealth and prosperity. Even today, certain "primitive" cultures link girth with health and fertility. Paradoxically, the richest individuals in today's society -- those living in Western or what we might call Fast Food Nations, in a tip to author Eric Schlosser - are most at risk of dying due to obesity-related illness.
What happens now that our cultural upbringing seems to be at odds with our evolutionary instinct? It may be one explanation for eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia which have plagued entire generations of girls and women and now, sadly, seem to be gaining a foothold among boys and men as well.
The study also gives credence to the many 'fat admirers' (or more disparagingly dubbed 'chubby chasers') out there. Often thought of as fringe fetishists, it may be that fat admirers may be more in touch with their survival instinct than the rest of us.
Indeed, a fat admirer who goes by the Internet handle FatKatLuvr, says: "To put it plainly, I find fat women, large women, supersize or ultrasize women, more appealing because they represent the feminine form in all its glory. Ample, abundant, and ripe."