Do plus-size clothes make women fatter?
It’s an explosive debate. Here a top academic and a woman who’s struggled with her weight do battle
YES Dr Raya Muttarak
Leafing through a newspaper earlier this year, i spotted an advertisement for the launch of a new fashion range by Marks & Spencer. Called ‘Curve’ — a more flattering term than ‘plus size’ — its designs are aimed at the woman with the ‘fuller figure’.
M&S is the latest in a long line of shops and online retailers to cater for plus-size ranges. evans, River island, H& M, JD Taylor and asos all make flattering clothes to fit women over a size 16, the average size of the UK woman.
We celebrate plus-size models on the covers of magazines and on social media, while vanity sizing — where clothing manufacturers label the clothes with sizes smaller than the actual cut — is widely practised.
after years of demonising size Zero and being warned that ‘too thin is unhealthy’, it appears we’ve reached the other end of the size spectrum.
Plus- size ranges are an attempt to promote body positivity and help reduce the stigma of being larger. With vanity sizing, buying a size 14, when you’re actually a size 16 or 18 is likely to lead to positive mental imagery and increase self- esteem. Psychologically, this can only be a good thing.
But is there any impact for our health in the long run? Because while ‘normalising’ larger bodies may help reduce stigma, i believe it can potentially undermine the recognition of being overweight or obese.
With nearly-two-thirds of adults in the UK now being overweight, this familiarisation with larger sizes appears to be an increasing trend. Our perception of what is healthy and what is not is now becoming alarmingly skewed.
it led me to a recent study in which i looked at the survey data from 23,460 adults aged 16 and over and analysed what they thought about their weight.
Were they too light? about the right weight? Or too heavy? Of course, it’s a subjective perception of one’s weight. i then looked at their Body Mass index (BMI) — an approximate measure of nutritional status commonly used to classify underweight, overweight and obesity in adults.
The results were telling. The proportion of overweight people who misper-says ceive their weight — that is, they are overweight based on their BMI but think they are a healthy size — has increased over the past 18 years.
More than half the men we studied, 57.9 per cent, believe they are a healthy weight when, in fact, they are overweight. This figure is up by almost 10 per cent from 48.4 per cent in 1997.
The figure for women who believed they were a healthy weight but who were actually overweight has also increased from 24.5 per cent to 30.6 per cent.
it means that more than half of overweight men and nearly a third of overweight women do not think there is anything wrong with their size when in fact they are overweight.
So what has caused this rise in weight misperception? it is important to say that at the moment we are simply raising a plausible hypothesis.
But if people don’t see that they are overweight or obese and think that is fine, this means they won’t do anything about it.
for example, if we accept now that size 18 represents normal weight, we are shifting the average size upward. What is dangerous here is that although, relatively, a size 20 is not that much bigger than size 18, in absolute terms it is a large size.
and medical research has shown that being overweight is associated with many health risks, including Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and stroke. Therefore, by changing a perception about what a normal weight is, it risks increasing the number of people not knowing that they are overweight or obese.
This is indeed a worrying development. in the UK, we skirt around the issue of obesity. fat- shaming — publicly reprimanding someone who looks overweight — is frowned upon, and rightly so. fat- shaming is cruel and harmful. and it is unlikely to help the overweight individual.
a negative image about oneself creates stress and may eventually lead to an individual experiencing a lack of self-esteem and may lead to eating disorders and physical inactivity.
BUT
liking yourself is different from not knowing that your weight status can potentially be harmful to your health. Under-assessing your own weight can undermine any action to do something about it.
indeed, my study shows that people who underestimate their weight are 85 per cent less likely to try to lose weight, taking into account socio-economic factors and self-rated health.
With more than one in four adults aged 15 and older classified as having clinical obesity in the UK, this underassessment can impose a serious burden to health and our health services.
Many people who are medically obese may feel happy with how they look. That’s all very well. But what we need to do is help people understand obesity. Unless we want a global health crisis, something has to be done soon.