Many women report wanting to drop significant amounts of weight before their wedding day. But the relative difference between the height and weight of a bride-to-be and her fiancé — regardless of their actual size — appears to determine just how far the weight-loss efforts will go, according to new research.
The study suggests that women seek to lose weight before their wedding day to maintain the sociocultural norm of the male partner being larger than the female partner.
“It thus appears that while many, or even most, brides-to-be claim to want to lose weight before the wedding, only the ones who are not visibly smaller than their fiancés are actually motivated enough do so,” Ivanka Prichard of Flinders University and her colleagues wrote in their study, which was published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
The study also found that men and women tend to pair up with partners of similar size.
“Findings from the two studies presented demonstrate the presence of both objective (measured) and subjective (self-report) similarity in weight, height, and BMI among couples, supporting the hypothesis that mating is assortative, with people seeking out mates similar to themselves on important dimensions. Across both studies, there was a strong correlation between partners for weight, height, and BMI,” Prichard and her colleagues wrote.
The first study examined the similarity between the weight and BMI of more than 600 brides-to-be and their fiancés over a 6 month period. The researchers found brides-to-be tended to report lower weight and height for themselves than for their fiancés. Brides-to-be who were not smaller than their fiancés tended to report losing weight before their wedding.
“Notwithstanding the widespread reports of Western brides overwhelmingly wanting to lose weight, it appears that having a partner who is visibly larger protects women against feeling compelled to lose weight for their weddings, regardless of their own actual size,” Prichard and her colleagues explained. “However, if one’s partner is the same size or smaller, women may feel compelled to lose weight.”
The second study of 36 heterosexual young couples examined the differences between self- and partner-reported weight and physical attractiveness. Men perceived their female partners to be more physically attractive when there was a greater discrepancy in BMI between the couple. In other words, males perceived female partners who were smaller than themselves as more attractive.
Both male and female partners tended to rate their partner as more attractive than themselves, though this discrepancy was greater for women.
“The present data suggest that mating couples really are selective about each other’s physical qualities, and weight/BMI appears to be an important and influential attribute in mate selection for young couples, perhaps because of social norms,” Prichard and her colleagues concluded. “People tend to choose partners who are relatively similar to themselves in physique. Featherweight birds do seem to flock together.”