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No matter how smart, talented or rich a woman is, she is still judged on her appearence before anything else.
You might be well educated, well spoken, well dressed and highly skilled, and what it all comes down to is your physique.
I 100% agree with the poster above who said that this is especially a problem for white women because of the ideal of white women as being frail, pretty and virginal. Fat women are not frail. Our culture denounces them as ugly. And many are a bit fat because of past pregnancies, so not so virginal either.
Men are allowed to be fat, as they're judged on their acomplishments and wealth, not on their looks.
Black women, while they suffer many grevious stereotypes, are not under the same 'frail white lily' stereotyping that white women are (although they still suffer a wage gap because of their fatness, and compounded with the wage gap they suffer because of their race and gender as well, a fat black woman still probably earns less than a fat white woman).
White women are seen as the gatekeepers of morality in our society, and we are ever moralising the 'sin' of fatness. (Just look above at the guy who grouped it with drug and alcohol addition... the other big sins in our society! Why, throw in the sins of homosexuality and abortion, and you'd have a whole sinful party!) So, obviously we judge them harshest when it comes to failure.
Just look at the way we treat the white female celebrities who do drugs and flaunt their sexuality... compare that to the treatment of male celebrities who do the same. Men can be fat, take drugs and have lots of sex and suffer no social backlash... were a woman to behave that way she would be burned at the stake.
