News: Extra pounds can dampen your sex life–if you’re a woman

A new study suggests that obese women are less likely to have sexual partners than women of ‘normal weight’ and more likely to have unplanned pregnancies when they do. Researchers for study, published in the British Medical Journal, interviewed 12,000 French men and women about their sex lives, some of whom were considered obese based on their Body Mass Index (which, I suppose, also dispels the myth that French women don’t get fat). The researchers found that obese women were 30 percent less likely to have had a sexual partner in the past year. They also found that obese men are doing just fine in the love department.

Shocking? Not in the least, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not sure we even needed a study to learn this information’let’s just use comedian Jack Black as a case study: the rotund comedian can make a movie like Shallow Hal, a film about the absurdity of dating a fat woman, and then go on marry a gorgeous woman without losing any weight himself. Or, simply ask any woman who has ever struggled with her weight about the negative attitudes towards overweight women’s sex appeal.

Perhaps adding to these attitudes? Statements like this from study researchers:

"Maybe women are more tolerant of tubby husbands than men are of tubby wives," Kaye Wellings, a professor of sexual and reproductive health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and one of the BMJ study authors told the Associated Press.

Is ‘tubby’ the new scientific term for people who are overweight?

All sarcasm aside, the study’s results point to the serious fact that people who are overweight are at greater risk for sexual dysfunction and unplanned pregnancies. But why do you think overweight women have more trouble finding lovers than overweight men do?

Related:
‘ 6 reasons men say no to sex
‘ 7 ways to make sex great again
‘ 10 reasons why sex is good medicine