Why Mr. Practical Won’t Date Fat Women

After reading his first post, you might wonder why Mr. Practical insists on dating slender women. The answer is because he can.

A study published in the journal “Evolution and Human Behavior” 26 (2005) 227, entitled “Hurry Date: Mate preferences in action” looked at speed dating events and found some interesting things about men’s and women’s preferences in speed dating.

For those of you who haven’t heard of speed dating, you get an equal number of men and women in a large room and rotate people every three minutes or so. At the end of the event each participant checks off the other participants with whom he or she would like to communicate further.

Astute readers would guess almost all of what the researchers found. Guys prefer young, attractive, slender women. Girls prefer big, tall, attractive guys with good personalities. No surprise there.

Guys have often debated whether a nice body or a pretty face is more important. This study provides an answer. “BMI (body mass index) dominated the analysis, alone accounting for a remarkable 25% or the variance in women’s desirability.” P. 234.

Participants generally recognized the speed dating event as a marketplace. The more appealing participants were more selective, excluding less desirable people. More selective men chose women who were “thinner, younger, and more attractive ….” P. 242. In short, Mr. Practical doesn’t date fat women because he doesn’t have to. He can date slim women.

And for those chubby women who want to date Mr. Practical: don’t loose hope. One of the study findings was that as people become less desirable, they become less selective. For example, participants who had been divorced or had gotten fat were less selective. If Mr. Practical gets married and divorced, or becomes fat, or goes broke, then you plumper girls might have a shot at him.