With women, there’s a very strong desire to maintain their body shape and look very attractive to their partners.
And a new study has found that women are at a higher risk of developing eating disorder because of their desire to diet and seek a slim body depending on the attractiveness of the partner.
The study found that women who were evaluated as less attractive were more motivated to diet and be thin if their husbands or partners were attractive than them.
However, women who were more attractive than their husbands did not have this extra motivation to diet.
According to Tania Reynolds, a doctoral student at the Florida State University: “The results reveal that having a physically attractive husband may have negative consequences for wives, especially if those wives are not particularly attractive.”
To arrive at this conclusion, the study examined 113 newlywed couples — married less than four months, average age late 20s, living in Dallas area — who agreed to be rated on their attractiveness.
The study was published in the journal Body Image.