{"id":301,"date":"2008-02-12T16:14:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T16:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2008\/02\/12\/301\/"},"modified":"2015-03-01T17:05:13","modified_gmt":"2015-03-01T22:05:13","slug":"301","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=301","title":{"rendered":"Girlwatcher Blues (but still like Hilary for Prez)"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a little piece in the March Atlantic Magazine regarding a U.S. Bureau of Labor study<\/a> showing that overweight women have and are facing increased employment discrimination. Over the past 25 years, men and women of all ages and races have been getting heavier, and at the same time the discrimination against overweight women, in terms of salary differences, seems also to be increasing. <\/p>\n

What also captured my eye is a bar chart that went with the article (using data from the study). This chart purports to show that between 1981 and 2000, the percentage of white working-age women who are either overweight or obese rose from 12.6 percent to 50.4 percent. I.e., from one-in-eight to one-in-two. If that is true, it is quite astonishing. But I didn\u2019t think it was accurate. To check, I took a look at a report called \u201cHealth, United States, 2007\u201d, published by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. Table 74 of that report shows that in the 1976-1980 period, 38.7% of white women age 20 to 74 were overweight or obese; in the 2000-2004 period, this went up to 61.4%. That\u2019s still a huge jump, and shows the current situation to be even worse than the Atlantic numbers (6 in 10 overweight versus 5 in 10). But it\u2019s still not a fat revolution, as the study stats would imply. <\/p>\n

There certainly is a health crisis lurking behind all of this, as excess weight correlates with an increased risk of diabetes, cardiovascular conditions and muscular-skeletal problems, from what I\u2019ve read (and what I\u2019ve seen in my own family). From an aesthetic point of view, I also find this regrettable. Every guy has his tastes in women; some guys like the Rubenesque figure and probably welcome the trend. But I myself like the tall thin type best \u2013 that is, from the shallow perspective of appearance. I\u2019m mature enough to know that true human worth goes way beyond looks; still, I\u2019m still entitled to what I find most immediately pleasing regarding body appearances. A little bit of \u2018girlwatching\u2019 doesn\u2019t hurt anyone.<\/p>\n

Sticking with the looks-only perspective, it\u2019s no secret that most guys find women in their 20\u2019s and early 30\u2019s to be the most aesthetically pleasing. That\u2019s just nature at work; most men have enough brainpower to realize that true friendships and relationships depend upon much more than surface appearances. But nevertheless, even the most enlightened guy can Platonically admire what nature does with reproduction-age females. So, perhaps the most disturbing statistical trend for we girlwatchers is what has happened to the 20-34 year old cohort of females; in the 1960-1962 period, only 21.2% of such women were overweight or obese; in the 2000-2004 period, that number went to 51.6%. My goodness, McDonalds and Hagen-Daz and ADM (with all of that unhealthy corn syrup<\/a> they crank out) are trying to kill off girlwatching in America!<\/p>\n

Just to show that I\u2019m not being totally chauvinistic here, I\u2019ll leave behind a link to an article that I just read on the New York Magazine web site regarding the differences between Obama and Hilary. Actually, I\u2019ll link to the last page of that article<\/a>, which sums things up very nicely. To paraphrase it, Hilary is the practical choice, the choice which assumes that politics in Washington and the world at large are nasty and are going to stay nasty. Obama reflects the assumption that through American good will and idealism, the world of nations and the world of politics can become kinder and gentler. Right now, the Obama point of view seems to be winning, and in a lot of ways, that\u2019s a good thing. But I just don\u2019t think that the world is ready for Obama\u2019s paradigm; or, said another way, Obama is just not ready for the real world\u2019s paradigm. His speeches sound like wishful thinking to me. But McCain and the GOP are just too pessimistic about the human race. I still think that Hilary, however uninspiring politically (and not much from the girlwatching perspective either), is the right mix, the best you can do. I still hope she can pull out of her tailspin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a little piece in the March Atlantic Magazine regarding a U.S. Bureau of Labor study showing that overweight women have and are facing increased employment discrimination. Over the past 25 years, men and women of all ages and races have been getting heavier, and at the same time the discrimination against overweight women, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5243,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions\/5243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}