Thin’s NOT in!

Lad’s mag FHM conducted an online survey asking whether its readers found a size eight, size 12 or size 14 model most attractive.

From 60,000 responses, four-fifths said they were more attracted to the size 12 and 14 models than the size eight model pictured.

Most votes went to the size 12 woman, with 41% of respondents saying she had the body shape of their “ideal girlfriend”.

The size 14 body was preferred by 39 %, while the size eight came a distant third with 20%.

FHM editor Ben Smithurst said the findings were good news.

“A piddling 20 per cent of readers selected our size eight model pictured as their ideal girl physique, while the size 12 and 14 models easily outscored their skinnier rival,” he said.

“Which proves one thing, ladies: crack a beer, hoe into a hamburger and we’ll love you just as much.”

But Julie Thomson, general manager of eating disorders and body image campaigners The Butterfly Foundation, said such surveys were far more damaging to women than they were helpful.

“It objectifies women and still perpetuates this ideal that men do look at women externally only,” she said.

“Ms Thomson said: “There is just far too much importance placed on size when you should be looking at a whole range of other aspects.

“From our perspective as an eating disorder foundation, those sorts of surveys are an issue because they are centred around judging people based on what size they are and it is really unhealthy to judge or view people in that way.”

She said that women embarked on extreme diets or developed eating disorders for a number of complex reasons, and it was oversimplistic to attribute such behaviour to a bid to appeal to the opposite sex.

“It is very, very complex and it is certainly not just brought about because some people desire to be thin in some sort of effort to attract men.”

Sourced from: http://www.theage.com.au/news/relationships/what-men-want-thins-not-in/2008/04/05/1207249536770.html