I was reading an article the other day about "chubby chasers." Basically, it was about men who have a "fetish" for heavy women. The article talked about how they hooked up sensors to read the brain activities of average men who claimed to like slim women and men who said they preferred large women. They showed both groups of men photos of women of varying sizes and asked them to rank which women they preferred the most as well as read their brain activity to see if it matched what they said.
This is the discouraging part for me - they said that the men who were "chubby chasers" most often preferred women with a BMI of.....29! My BMI is around 28! I thought for sure they would be going for BMIs in the 30s or 40s...is a BMI of 29 really so freakishly large that it's considered a fetish to be attracted to someone in that range? Yikes!
Here is the second discouraging part - the average men in the study most favored women with a BMI of....18! For me, I would have to get to 110lbs to be in that range! A BMI of 18 is slightly underweight for most women, yet that was the preferred body range for the average man!
I guess it's true that we have to lose weight to please ourselves and decide on our own what is healthy and attractive. Otherwise we can drive ourselves crazy trying to please a man, our mom, our friends, etc...