Well, I haven’t been on the sites for a long long time, but I did used to peruse the women as well (you know, check out the competition), and I don’t remember seeing anything like that. But like I said, and you have seen yourself, that didn’t mean it didn’t exist.
But you’re right, double standards from either side is BAD.
Thanks for the clarification.
Would it be appropriate to post a link to a directory of photos I’ve gathered from WSM profiles, where the woman claims to be “about average?” No links to profiles, no names … just pictures I’ve right-clicked and saved.
Seriously, I’ve experienced the same phenomenon Portia describes, only it’s with women’s profiles. After meeting more than a few “average” women who shop at plus size stores, I now won’t write to anyone with a face-only profile, unless the profile reads “slim.”
I know, I should talk … I really do have to lose 10 or 15 pounds. I’m brutally honest in my profile, and say"I have to lose about 10-15 pounds" (I’m 5’ 10", 170 pounds). I really don’t mind what is literally a few extra pounds in a woman. However, when she is larger than me, things just seem off. Statements like “the average woman in the US is a size 20” or “Marilyn Monroe weighted 250 pounds” won’t make me feel any differently, either.
weighted = weighed.
I am teh suxx0rz typo king! Preview … doesn’t help. IBM Type M keyboard … nope. Damn.
Would you showing us exactly where anyone has made these statements? It seems like you’ve driven this point home twice now.
The way I’ve always heard the Marilyn Monroe story is that she was a size 12 or 14 or something. (Which I don’t think she was. I think Snopes has her at size 10 but I could be wrong. Too lazy to check.) But even at size 12 or 14, she would be far cry from 250 pounds or size 20. Size 12 or 14 probably is “average” looking on a lot of women, depending on their build and height. An “hourglass figure” type woman at perhaps 5’’ 4" - 5’ 6" and with a sturdy frame would probably look like she needed to lose a few pounds, nothing more. (My mom and sisters fit into this category most of the time, and occasionally I have too.)
So, please, give me a break. I cannot believe that anyone, ever, has made such a statement about "size 20 " and “250 pounds” in regards to Marilyn Monroe and been serious about it.
Oops, it looks like you were saying that people claim that the “average sized woman” is size 20, not Marilyn Monroe. My apologies. But the rest of my comments still stand. I’d like some cites somewhere that show that people have actually, seriously claimed that this is the case—that the average woman is 20 and Marilyn Monroe was 250 pounds.
Marilyn Monroe was a 12 or 14 (I forget which) in the '50s. Sizes don’t correspond anymore. (Never go by the size tag when buying vintage clothing for this very reason. Always get the actual measurements of the clothing and compare to a similar item that fits you well.)
Why are the only choices “a few pounds overweight” or “heinously obese”? I’m somewhere between the two. I’m obviously overweight, but when I choose my clothing carefully I look like I’m just excessively curvy; I’m too skinny for plus sizes although my clothes are in the upper ranges of misses’ clothing sizes. If I put “a few pounds overweight” then I’m lying, because it’s closer to 20, which is not a few. But the next step up makes people think I’m a weeble, which is also not true. So where is the line?
Sarcasm using exaggeration, at least regarding Marilyn Monroe.
I’ve been told all sorts of things regarding average dress size, but none of the answers correspond with what I think the majority of men consider “average” - that is, weight proportionate to height.
Googling “average dress size” lands me results of US 12, 14, and 16 .
Match.com offers:
Slender
Athletic and toned
About average
A few extra pounds
Big and beautiful
Curvy
Stocky
Heavyset
Other
That’s six caregories for women and men of size … seven if you count those who misidentify their body types as “about average.”
Some sites throw “thick” into the mix.
Just so you know, when I was a size 16, I probably weighed 200 pounds. Granted, I doubt anyone would guess I weighed 200 pounds (the women in our family tend to weigh more than the charts tell us we should, and yet we still don’t “look” fat).
And I don’t know if all men would consider size 16 “average” on a woman. Some men would, I am sure. And with some women, because of their build, they’d be right. But size 16, while probably not “obese” (at least not in my book) could be as much as 50 pounds overweight, easy. It all depends on the woman.
Is this what you think most men would call “average”?
I have no idea what the women you encounter (who claim to be “average” but don’t fit that definition in your opinion) look like, but perhaps some of them are a size 16 and weigh 200 pounds. By your Google research, at least as far as size is concerned, they are “average” and they might not consider it out of line to call themselves “average.”
Weird. When I last did a match.com profile, I swear “curvy” wasn’t one of the options. I never really considered it a weight classification myself, rather more of a description of how much T&A one had. Can’t you be curvy and normal weight? Would a guy ever list himself as “curvy”?
They need a category athletic and a few extra pounds. That would be me.
And I imagine that most men picture an average sized woman based on what they see on TV–so about a size four, max. Which is tiny in my book, but I’m pretty sure a size 14 or 16 is not what they have in mind, no matter how delightfully curvaceous we are.
So the men who are calling themselves average are also probably going by real life average as opposed to TV average.
You can put me down as a shallow, shallow woman who would rather go out with a man who is actually in better physical shape than I am. Not so much for the looks of it, but because that would indicate that he exercises, which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned.
Well…guys don’t really have curves, so to speak. But if a woman can’t be curvy and a normal weight, I’m in trouble. I’m pretty sure that no matter what I weigh, I’ll always have hips and breasts. “Curvy” doesn’t have to be a euphemism for overweight.
Likewise. I was curvy when I weighed 97 lbs. soaking wet. My mom is the same way; there are pictures of her on the beach as a teenager, when she literally weighed 85 lbs. (and yes, we are short, but not that short; we’re both 5’1"). You could see her ribs, but she still had curvy hips and thighs. I was never quite that skinny even at my thinnest, but I think I’d have to have a serious anorexia issue to lose my curves completely.
It just seems odd to me that they’re using “curvy” as a weight category. Why don’t they just ask people to post waist, hip, and bust measurements and be done with it? Or rate themselves by degrees of firmness? There’s the kind of curvy that’s toned, and there’s curvy but jiggly and cellulite-ridden, and every other conceivable combination.
Double standard? Where’s the double standard? Even if you are a little “overweight”, isn’t it OK to like slim people better? I have a few friends that range from average to slim who like meatier women rather than slim, is that a double standard?
Hell, I have blue eyes but I really like women with brown eyes, does that make me evil?
I am around 85 kilograms, I think, which would make me 187 pounds. I would like to lose around 10 pounds (more for athletic purposes than to be more aesthetically pleasing), but until I do - do I have double standards if I like “athletic” types of women?
How many questions does that make? 
As an overweight male, I no longer pursue women very hard. Why? Because to be honest, I don’t find overweight women attractive, so I don’t expect women to find me attractive. I see nothing wrong with this either. So until I lose weight (damn beer and chocolate) I have stopped pursuit.
The interesting thing for me though is, I have confessed this sentiment to many of my female friends and they have all told me that I am being silly, that women aren’t as shallow as men and that I am a great guy and a great catch, so I should get “more confidence.” This thread reinforces my belief.
Some dating Web sites just use weight in the profiles, but that might not be the best matching criteria either. If I entered a preference of 5’ 0" to 5’ 9", between 100 and 155 pounds, with the intent of seeking women with an “average” build, someone who is 5’ 0" and 155 pounds would be a match.
Here’s the way I think the categories were intended to fit for women, based on the majority of WSM profiles I’ve seen.
Slim: anorexic to a size 4 or 6.
Athletic and toned: just what it says, but intended to exclude athletic women with with a lumberjack build.
Average: mostly size 6 to size 10. I’ve seen women that easily weigh 200 pounds in this category, though. I’ve seen very slim women describe themselves as “average,” too.
Few extra pounds: size 12 to 14. Really used for size 14 to infinite.
Large: Camryn Manheim
Damn, this is superficial, but it’s based on what I’ve seen online. I’d like to know what the male equivalent is.
Some may call me cynical, but I don’t believe there is any significant difference in the overall level of shallowness between men and women. I too have stopped pursuing women, but not because I’m overweight. I could stand to exercise more and tone up a little, but I could honestly describe myself as average when it comes to my weight. However, I’m on the short side. Not tremendously short, only about a 1.5 inches shorter than average for caucasian adult males. But that’s apparently enough to rule me out of consideration for the majority of women. I get a large potential pool of ‘matches’ in online dating services if I don’t include my height. But add that one bit of info (and no other changes at all), and I’m practically undateable.
I recently tried one site and got a grand total of 3 potential matches. This is within 50 miles of a major metropolitan area and with out me specifying any criteria about the women other than that they be non-smokers. If I adjust my height up 1.5 inches, I get 17 pages of hits in the search. So what do I do? I could fudge it, and hope to get my foot in the door with someone. . . I haven’t done that, but I suspect that lots of people do the same sort of thing, whether it’s about their weight, height, or whatever.
I don’t condone lying about yourself (as it has been said, lying is a bad start to a relationship!), but I think it’s understandable why it happens in this context. Meeting people online is one of the few avenues available where you can try to make a first impression that isn’t based primarily on what you look like. If you are afraid that your physical appearance may detract from or overshadow your other desirable qualities, it might seem sensible to camouflage those shortcomings until you’ve had a chance to demonstrate your strengths. Perhaps people resent this kind of deception so much because we are so used to being able to immediately assess appearance when meeting people in person. Obviously, it’s a strategy that tends to backfire, but the temptation is pretty great.
Ummm, you ARE aware that it’s the computer matching up YOUR criteria with the women’s criteria right? And that people are just like you in trying to figure out what to put down for their criteria, as well as what to put for their stats?
If everyone put down zero requirements, and zero stats, we’d all match everyone. The whole idea of dating, period, whether it be online, or out in real life, is to narrow our “prospectives” down to the ones that most match us.
I don’t think I’d call this “shallow”.
Regarding the “weight” question on these online sites, I don’t think its that people are lying, so much as, as it’s been described by other posters, that of "Well, I reallY AM only a few pounds overweight, but if i PUT that, the other people are going to think “grossly obese” and so on.
Of course, I am aware of that. It was part of my point that I didn’t specify any criteria for the women (I was just browing as the time). I guess I didn’t make my point very clearly there. . . I was trying to show how drastically one variable can effect the results. All the other stats about me remained exactly the same, but adding 1.5 inches to my height meant that I went from falling within 3 women’s criteria to being within something over 100.
We all have our preferences and it’s not a bad thing to have standards, but most of us have some flexibility in them. For example, I couldn’t imagine rejecting a woman I was otherwise compatible with simply because she happened to have ‘a few extra pounds’ even if my general preference is for a more slender build. Likewise, I would hope she wouldn’t rule me out for being a little shorter than her normal preference if we meshed well in other ways.
I don’t know how advanced the matching algorithms used by online dating sites are, but I know that they can’t take into account this kind of fuzzy logic. In a way, they can be unnatually restrictive. So I think some people try to make up for that by fudging some of their own stats. Not really out of intent to deceive, just in trying not narrow the possibilities too much.
I have no doubt that this kind of ‘data creep’ occurs. I’m sure there are also self-deluded people out there as well and of course, a few jerks in the mix. I was just trying to point out an additional motivation behind these answers that is perhaps misguided, but not nefarious.
[As an aside, I’m typing on a laptop today and I’m having a devil of a time typing anywhere near my normal rate without all kinds of errors. I didn’t think it would be so much different! How long does it take to get used to the keyboards on these?]