Dating a guy bigger than you - can not
Study on fat people with thin partners comes to a sad conclusion
"Date someone your own size."
Dating as a heavy person is a very mixed bag and now, apparently, you don't have to worry about things like finding a date — you also have to worry about what people think about you being with that person.
A recent study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships called "Date Someone Your Own Size" asked 230 volunteers to assess, on a scale from zero to 100, avatars that depicted real-life couples.
Partners who were both straight size received an average score of 64. Plus-size or overweight coupled received an average rating of 58. But couples where one partner was overweight and one was not received much lower scores: an average of 51.
That was true for overweight women and men in mixed-weight couples.
Researchers on the study tried to analyze why people view mixed-weight couples unfavorably compared to couples in the same BMI range. What do they have against it, exactly?
One theory was that, hey, maybe people are just generally against couples who look different (yes, even today in the 21st century).
But more likely (and sadly) is that some look upon a couple of two different weights and think, "doesn't he/she think she can do better than that?" or, "wow, I can't believe he/she found someone willing to date him/her."
TL;DR — Bigger people aren't as deserving of love as smaller people, and anyone smaller who dates a plus-size or overweight person is selling themselves short.
Owen Stupka, 36, from Raleigh, North Carolina, agreed wholeheartedly that there's a lot of judgement on couples of mixed sizes.
"I've gotten weird, backhanded compliments, like a friend going, 'Man, you really lucked out that she'd go out with you,'" the software analyst told Revelist over email.
"I've dated all sized people, and I'm a big dude, so I'm used to being big and the social perils that come with it. But when someone is talking to your girlfriend, trying to get her to ditch you because they think you're a loser because of your size? It's rough."
Stupka dated his ex-girlfriend for almost two years and said while it wasn't a constant thing he experienced, it definitely came up more than once.
Dafna Steinberg, an artist from Washington, DC, found a similar pattern in relationships of her own.
"I'm plus-size but I'm short, so I've dated a lot of taller, skinnier men," said the 33-year-old. "I've had people congratulate me on dating a man who they deemed 'sexy.' The way it was said felt like they were telling me to feel lucky that a conventionally attractive man would find me appealing enough to date."
She said she's also had thinner women hit on boyfriends right in front of her.
But there are positive aspects Steinberg has noticed.
"I had one serious boyfriend who was much thinner than me. One of the first times we had sex, I was feeling super self-conscious," she said. "He stopped mid-way and just looked at me and said, 'You're so beautiful.'
"He helped me to restore a lot of my body confidence throughout the relationship."
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