not race or disability.

Okay, Gandhi, why not tell us all a little about yourself (not talking about your weight, either) so we can see what a stellar example of morality and brilliance you shine upon us, and what an inspiration you are to everyone around you.

Hey, at least you made it through your post without misspelling any words! I'm impressed.

A larger percentage of men than women are obese.

Yet there's a constant barrage of nastiness directed towards all the fat women responsible for the obesity epidemic.

... but only for white women. For men, it's a sign of seniority or joviality; for black women, a sign of tough-broad femininity. But for white women, it's aesthetically contemptible and therefore morally contemptible.

Because the divinely ordained role of white women is to be fragile and ornamental. Tough to do that when you're fat.

Betcha the effect plays out worst of all for blondes, too. Too bad the research didn't track that.

Obesity IS a danger signal for a person's health. But if that were all it was, the signal would play out equally across the demographic spectrum. And the whole point of this article is that that's exactly what it doesn't do.

Clearly we need to discriminate against overweight people equally. It's not fair that hispanic women, black women, and all men are getting a free ride here.

I'm kidding, of course.

However, given that there is no acceptable form of discrimination, in the big picture this is discrimination that affects a small group which can avoid the discrimination by losing the weight, and consequently becoming healthier and living longer lives. All discrimination is bad, but at least this is something people have control over.

Do white women actually suffer a disproportionate penalty for being obese? Or is it that white women enjoy a disproportionate premium for being thin? It seems like women of color have more trouble achieving pay parity, overall... I'd be interested in seeing the data in this case, or I am not sure how much of this report is data and how much is projection of one interpretation onto that data.

It could be that successful women have the time, energy, leisure, etc. to spend more time working on their physique. Rather than thinness leading to a higher income, a higher income could lead to lower BMI.

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.

Did I not read this right, or is there no methodology given?

The only way a study like this has real meaning is if wages are compared apples to apples. So if an overweight lawyer lady makes less than a slim lawyer lady, and they have the same job title, education, experience and responsibilities, well, there's some real lousy business going on.

But if this study pooled women's wages in aggregate, I can't see how this illuminates anything. It doesn't take research to know that women who make more money eat higher-quality food, take better care of themselves in terms of exercise, smoking, drinking, etc., and make a greater effort to stay slim to fit the profile (literally) of their higher-powered careers.

blah blah blah blah

I'm almost 50 and in my field my career has been over for years whether I know WTF I'm doing or not.

Get over yourselves. Life is unfair.

at least not because she is attracted to him. The only difference in the way men and women are judged is that women get a credit for looking good, or normal, and men don't. Unlike women men HAVE to accomplish something or they are nothing.

Well as much as I love reading all these charming letters, I have to say that I recently read a very convincing undergraduate thesis that outlines how Queen Anne has been essentially ignored by history because she was overweight.

What drugs are you on? You want a high paying job, you have to look like a competent professional.

A friend of mine was hiring a director of HR and the best candidate was a woman of 25. The problem? She looked frail, pretty, and virginal -- she looked like she was 15. I was absolutely appalled that he thought this was an issue. He hired her and she turned out to be a great HR director. But I suspect she had to work harder on projecting competent professional than the average woman.