New York University sociologist Dalton Conley conducted a study and discovered that a woman's weight negatively impacts her household income and "job prestige." In fact, a 1% increase in body mass results in a 0.6 percentage point decrease in family income.

Another study by Jay Zagorsky titled "Health and Wealth" found that Caucasian women get the most financial slack for higher weight, seeing their wealth drop 12%. In comparison, men wealth wasn't affected.

Statistics are great and give us all an insight into what may or may not be true. But let's look between the lines of these statistics. We all know that these are generalisations; that they are merely looking at averages. Let's ask a couple of questions; is there any correlation between weight and attractiveness?

Yale's Daniel Hamermesh conducted a study, "Beauty in the Labour Market." He found that people with above average looks typically received premiums in pay of 5% or more, and that less attractive people "suffered a salary penalty of up to 9%."

Is there any correlation in weight and attractiveness when you look at it on general terms? Is there any correlation between how well dressed someone is and how heavy they look? Did they measure perceived weight or actual weight and if so did they get different results? Is it more to do with how attractive they were and really nothing to do with weight at all?

I put it to you that when you are looking at generalisations you can say that heavier people generally are less careful about their looks? Does the fact that, nearly all clothes advertising is done using skinny models and most clothes are designed for skinny people, have anything to do with larger people having a harder time dressing well?

On the flip side; one study, "Physical Attractiveness Bias In Hiring", shows that beauty can be beastly. When women apply for jobs typically handled by men, they are discriminated against. One of the researchers says, "In professions such as manager of research and development, director of finance, mechanical engineer and construction supervisor, being overly attractive was highly detrimental to women."

So what does this say to those people that are overweight? I believe that it is not weight that is the issue; it is general attractiveness, and taking pride in your appearance, you don't need to be beautiful you just need to be acceptably attractive. I believe that it means that larger women need to put more emphasis on how they look and put more work into their personal image in order to compete on equal ground to skinnier women. Weight is all about perception, the clothes you wear and how you wear them will determine how well you carry your weight and how attractive you look.

Attractiveness can, in most cases come down to how well groomed you are, how well you do your makeup and how well you dress. You have all seen those makeover programs and compared the before and after pictures, they can seriously go from unattractive to attractive or from ugly to beautiful in extreme cases. So if you feel you have let yourself go as you have gained weight, or you don't buy new clothes because you are waiting to lose the weight, maybe it is time to get serious about your appearance, forget about what size you are and start learning how to dress well and be attractive at any weight.

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