Marriage makes women get fat, divorce does same to men

Modern-day feminists will tell you that marriage is good for men and bad for women, and now they have the research to back it up. Getting married puts women at risk of piling on the pounds, while for men, divorce is the foundation of flab, according to a new study from Ohio State University. “Married women often have a larger …

[Marky W]

Deploy the cattle prod!

It's a good job that Sarah has left, or you (and several other commentards) would be toast.

Not tasty light-brown toast mind you, but jammed-in-the-slot, kitchen-full-of-smoke, have-to-dig-it-out-with-a-knife toast.

[Anonymous Coward]

call my a sexist cad but...

[anonymous because I'm scared of the wielder of the funnel and ramrod]

...I always assumed the women got fat because they'd already trapped their man ;)

Mines done an impressive job of fattening me up as well, I assume to discourage competition. I lose weight quickly when she's away and I'm not being treated like a foies gras goose! My brothers tend to quickly get back down to 'pulling weight' between women, however acrimonious the split was.

Of course extrapolating any weight related issue from research in the United Flab of America to the rest of the planet is wasted effort ;)

[Mark 65]

Agree

I reckon that it's the snare(d)-and-let-yourself-go angle as opposed to the beauty-pageant-of-singledom trade-off.

[Richard Porter]

Sorry, I didn't quite see ...

the IT angle on this one.

[That Awful Puppy]

It's obvious

They used Excel to process the data.

[Anonymous Coward]

Says something about modern life indeed

The person to put on weight is usually _NOT_ the one doing the housework.

As a lot of medical studies have shown one of the reasons why our moms were way more fit than our generation is that they did way more housework and with way less assistance from the friendly home appliances (so 1664 starts making much more sense).

If we look at these new stats from that perspective the most obvious explanation is that its the husbands doing a lot of the housework now. They do not get fat after marriage and they go fat after a divorce when they stop bothering (or being bothered) to keep the house clean, the kids to/from school and the dinner ready. Oh, and they still work too.

Viva la emancipacion...

[Jolyon]

re: 1664 starts making much more sense

I'm an ale man myself but yeah, in trying circumstances even Kronenbourg makes sense - and housework would definitely count.

[Zog The Undeniable]

Let's apply Occam's razor here

Women let themselves go once they've had their dream wedding. Long hair tends to go shortly after the nuptials, too. I think it was Thomas Hardy who observed that women would like to have a wedding without being married, and me would like to be married without having a wedding.

[Pete 2]

Think of the children

> Getting married puts women at risk of piling on the pounds

So it's got nothing to do with having children after getting married and being unable (or not incentivised) to return to a pre-childbearing weight after the sprog appears?

[Anonymous Coward]

nope, it's not the children

the mrs still put on a pound or two no sprogs in sight.

I'd put it as ots of flowers and chocolates to get the missus in the mood and then she makes you eat a salad.

[Daniel 4]

Childbirth

Nope. Modern birth control (of multiple varieties) provides enough couples without children that it makes childbirth easy to correct for in studies.

-d

[Dave 126]

Viz magazine already knew this...

Just reach for your copy of 'Roger's Profanisaurus' and look up

"Blimp my ride"

[Cunningly Linguistic]

I wonder what excuse...

...the women have for letting their pelvic floors go after marriage and kids?

[Bernard M. Orwell]

Snort of Derision!

I work all day in a physical role, I do more than my share of housework and childcare (ie, washing, ironing, household cleaning, gardening, DIY, all the daytime running around of children. I weigh about 15st and stand at 6'2", so not svelte, but I don't think of myself as 'fat' per se.

The wife does the shopping and cooking. She weighs around 18st and is 5'7".

How does your sexist theory jibe with that then?

Seriously, how long are we expected to swallow the "poor women who can do no wrong" bull?

grr.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe

head fat is less dense (however counterintuitive that may be).

[Anonymous Coward]

Bucking the trend?

Was 15 stone before separation and now hovering around 13 stone after 3 months of separation, going towards 12...

[Graham Bartlett]

@Pete 2

Too right - and not just women. With my 9-month-old, I've not exercised at all since he was born. Total lack of sleep reduces energy levels. And even if I had the energy, I look after him in the morning before I go to work and in the evening when I get home, and I'm "on call" until midnight to deal with crying, so there isn't any time I can actually get out for a run.

But even if we forget about kids, there's the simple fact that if you're married (or in a long-term relationship), you'll have other things to do in the evening. (Not necessarily just that, you dirty sods!) Going to a movie, or vegging out at home, or whatever, just spending time together. If you're single then you have no such claims on your time, so you can spend five nights a week at the gym without someone complaining that they never see you.

And then there's age. If you're married, chances are pretty good that you're older. And as you get older, it becomes a damn sight harder to keep the pounds off - it's just the way the body works.

Of course, if you're married to someone who does a lot of exercise, then chances are you're both going to keep each other working out. But if not, you're probably going to lose that toned look.

[Neil Cooper]

Married wome DO get exercise

trouble is, its just the muscles that they use for sitting at home, phoning, texting, nagging, and buying stuff with credit cards.

[Anonymous Coward]

(Correlation == Causation) == false

I know a married couple. She's as fat as it gets and does absolutely F all around the house. The husband does everything from hoovering to DIY.

She's just self obsessed and only made an effort as to her personal appearance and weight when she needed to in order to get a man. When she got married, she stopped trying, the weight piled on and she started being very dismissive of her husband and his family. Literally right from the first visit after the wedding.

What is being researched here is no different from people turning up to job interviews washed and dressed very smartly, and then working diligently right up to 5:30pm in their first week. After a few months, they start to wear old smelly clothes, shave occasionally and do a half-arsed attempt at every task whilst clock-watch all day, disappearing for a fag break 10 minutes before lunch time and packing their bag & putting on their coat 15 minutes before home time.

I suppose that's a sexist issue, all down to having too many male managers...

Sheesh.

[Destroy All Monsters]

No sex for you!

Even it's the truth.

[Jim 59]

Marriage / divorce

It's no secret that women do better out of divorce than men. They get the man's family and his home, for a start, then part of his income for decades. I've never been married. But a divorced friend told me that divorce deals are *so* one sided that divorce actually becomes an attractive option for women, at least materially. He thinks it encourages divorce.

For women, a divorce means the loss of a husband only. For a man, it means the loss of a wife, loss of child contact (often orchestrated by the wife flouting court orders) and the ruination of every area of his life.

And married women bulge out due to "less time to exercise" ? Oh please. That assumes they were big athletes before marriage. You sure it is nothing to with liking cornettos and not having to go out and attract men every Saturday night ? Question is, why is it not the same for married blokes ?

[Steven Roper]

I hear you

With only one exception, every single one of my male friends who got married are now divorced, some of them twice. Because of my way with words, and because I have the ability to spot mistakes and contradictions in large bodies of text, many of my friends asked me to help them with their paperwork in divorce cases, and to sit in court with them.

Consequently, I am *very* familiar with Australian Family Law and Family Court procedures, even though I myself have never been married (and after what I've seen, I never bloody will be!), and in the 9 or so cases I'm personally familiar with, I've observed a number of things of interest:

1) Every divorce I've ever been privy to was initiated by the woman. I know of no case personally where the man divorced his wife. It is also notable that in every divorce I am privy to, the woman waited until there was at least one child before initiating the divorce (since a woman divorcing from a childless marriage has far less to gain from doing so.)

2) The woman, without fail, ALWAYS claimed to be a victim of Domestic Violence, even when it's clearly impossible or so completely out of character for the man as to verge on absurdity. In only one case was the woman so good a liar that even I could not fault her affidavits, even though one of her statements had to be false since the man was with me at the time she claimed the incident occurred. All the other women had small inconsistencies in their affidavits that I was able to spot and point out to the respondent husband.

3) Until 2006, with the passage of the shared-parenting legislation (which I and other supporters of the MRA* had spent several years lobbying for), the Family Court in every case I am familiar with, awarded custody of the child(ren) to the mother by default. The only time I saw a father gain custody was when the mother was hospitalized for psychiatric treatment and alcohol abuse, and even then it took several months before we could get the father custody - and that's several months the child was in the care of a mentally-ill, alcoholic woman. All because she had accused him of domestic violence (which I knew to be false) and the court was reluctant to grant the father custody "just in case."

All this is because of the systematic assault on men conducted by feminists over the last 3 or so decades. All men are rapists, all women are victims, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle - these are the messages that have been hammered into us through media, feminist propaganda, and so-called "equal opportunity" legislation that assumes men are guilty and women are innocent.

Groups such as the MRA have made considerable headway against this scourge in recent years though, so in Australia at least it's not quite as bad now as it was 10 years ago. At least, unless the woman can now PROVE Domestic Violence, children can now spend 1 week with their mother and 1 week with their father, and nobody pays anybody maintenance - the shared parenting laws we lobbied for. Of course, the feminazis (a surprising number of whom are traitorous "manginas") are fighting tooth and nail to get it repealed. So much still remains to be done, but as long as people like you speak out for your divorced friends, the effort remains worthwhile.

*MRA = Men's Rights Agency, http://www.mensrights.com.au. Founded and helmed by a woman, no less ;)

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Frikkin' hell, Steven

You need to urgently find a good woman who would bring you out of your misogynistic trance and victim mentality. Or read the Arabian Nights or something...

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is it's sometimes true..

Not universally true, and not limited to women, but sometimes very much true.

I've seen it from both sides, and although I usually only have one side of the story if I take the information given with a pinch of salt (and the admission by the person that they made mistakes too) I've seen some extremely vindictive behaviour dedicated to denying the other partner as much money and access to children as possible.

So, perhaps sometimes it's misogynistic, but other times it is unfortunately true.

If you want to be more analytical and possibly less sexist, it would be more accurate to say that humans in general tend to exploit any power they receive. Divorce settlements have historically been skewed in favour of women; therefore they exploit that situation.

In Steven's case it should be fairly easy to check if his claims of people trying to lobby against what seems a very reasonable arrangement are actually true.

[Gil Grissum]

Facts versus opinion.

You need to re-read what Steven wrote and realize those are actual facts from actual cases he's worked on with real fathers dealing with real situations. Not opinion or conjecture based on facts. The laws in the USA tend to favor women in divorce as well, although the mere mention of domestic violence without any form of proof actually hurts a woman's case.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

No opinion or conjecture?

"All this is because of the systematic assault on men conducted by feminists over the last 3 or so decades."

"Of course, the feminazis (a surprising number of whom are traitorous "manginas")..."

Well, maybe you're right - it's not opinions but a simple paranoid delusion...

[Steven Roper]

Ok...

Vladimir - From your posts it is clear that you are a male feminist. Your use of the word "misogynist" - a favourite of feminists everywhere - to simply mean anyone who doesn't kowtow to feminists, and accusation of me having a "victim mentality" establishes that right off the bat. Seeking justice and a fair go in the face of lies, propaganda and innuendo is not a "victim mentality", it is a perfectly natural human desire to respected and treated with dignity. As to the systematic demonisation of men at the hands of feminists over the last 30 years being "opinion and conjecture", allow me to point you to some resources:

http://baltonorth.blogspot.com/2010/01/martha-coakley-amirault-case-and.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathanson_and_Young

http://www.singularity2050.com/2010/01/the-misandry-bubble.html

To AC: I agree with you that there are many cases where the accusation of domestic violence is true, and I am also personally familiar with two cases where the man did indeed abuse his wife. The problem is, that the large number of women who lie about domestic violence to bolster their divorce cases, seriously undermines the cases of those women who who are genuinely victims of violence. So addressing the issue of false accusations is as much about helping women who are really victims as it is about men who are falsely accused. You are also right about humans exploiting any opportunity available - we all do it. Which is why I do NOT blame *women*, I blame *feminists*.

Let me explain something here. Feminists have for years tried to equate "feminist" with "female" in the public mind. This I call "the first lie of feminism". Female is a sex, a biological form. Feminism is a socio-political movement. Being opposed to feminism is not "misogynist" as they are so fond of pointing out. Hating women is misogynist, and I most certainly don't hate women. Opposing feminism is simply a political stance. During my various campaigns against the excesses of feminism, I've discovered a startling truth: Some of our most staunch supporters have been women themselves, such as Sue Price, the founder of the MRA in Australia. And some of our most bigoted feminist opponents have been men, such as Vladimir above.

So feminist does not equal female. When one understands this point, it becomes easy to see that those of us who simply want justice and equal treatment at the hands of the law are not "misogynists", do not hate women, but simply fairly ask that we are not punished for some imagined misdeeds of our ancestors and that we are given equal respect by the law.

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Re: OK...

"Feminism is a socio-political movement."

It is a fringe socio-political movement. The one even much more marginal than BNP. Basically irrelevant.

To think that men are under attack and are a target of global female conspiracy and that women are out there to exploit the innocent angelic men for their sperm and money is not a political stance but is simply a psychosis.

You have nutcases of all sorts among people of both sexes, yet the majority are normal and just get on with their lives. To be so afraid of some extreme tail percentile is nonsensical.

[xperroni]

Jumping to conclusions?

Just because marriage (or divorce, for the men) and weight gain seem correlated doesn't mean one causes the other. Without further data we have no way to tell whether it's the other way around - say, fattening women looking for a man to hook up to, and then dumping the bloke when he's grown too fat and ugly? - or a third, unknown factor is causing both.

Then again, they're sociologists. It's not as if, you know , getting how statistics works was their job or anything...

[BinaryFu]

What a load of bollocks...

I GAINED weight while married the first time, LOST weight the second go-round. In-between? I was still fat.

Why? Simple - the first marriage was hell, I ate to compensate for my depression - constantly.

Unhappy marriage = weight gain.

Unhappy being on your own = weight gain.

Therefore we can extract the following formula:

Unhappy = weight gain.

[Gil Grissum]

WRONG

While married, my wife put the pounds on me to prevent "competition" from liking what they saw in me. After divorce, I lost the weight, have kept it off, and lost even more. I intend to live a long healthy life. I'm 47 and do not look it. So this bit of research may apply to some, but definitely not all.

[dave 46]

Conclusions seem flimsy

You work your fingers to the bone doing the house work so don't have time to exercise - wait, house work IS exercise, do it in a spandex jump suit if it makes you feel better.

Simply fact is men and women look after themselves to get laid / married, as soon as a woman gets married she stops trying. The man still wants to get laid.

After a divorce a woman jumps straight back into 'get a man' mode (must be in their dna) while the man breaths a huge sigh of relief and falls back into a comfortable batchelor-hood for a period of time before the 'must get laid' instinct over--powers the horrors of marriage and divorce.

[JC 2]

Absurd Assumption

"“Married women often have a larger role around the house than men do, and they may have less time to exercise and stay fit than similar unmarried women,”

... should've read "Married women more often engage in sedentary activities like sitting around surfing the 'net, watching TV or talking on the phone while if they were really doing a lot around the house they'd be burning off the calories - although convenient access to the refrigerator would make anyone a bit heavier".

Next, "“On the other hand, studies show that married men get a health benefit from marriage, and they lose that benefit once they get divorced, which may lead to their weight gain.” which should've read "Men in general gain more of their weight later in life so after a period of marriage they're subsequently older than they were previously and thus closer to their peak weight gaining years"... 'course, it doesn't hurt that you can bum around drinking beer all day when there's nobody nagging you to mow the lawn. ;)

[druck]

Wedding dress

I can easily explain weight gain after marriage - she's just returning to her natural weight after spending a year dieting in order to fit in to a wedding dress which was deliberately bought too small!

Posted anonymously as I don't want to find out what weight gain after divorce is down to.

[Glenn Charles]

Ahem

Poor excuse for putting on a few since wifey left ya.

[druck]

Re:Wedding dress

Ok, not posted anonymously then, anyone know a good lawyer?

[IsJustabloke]

I refuse to enoble a simple forum post!

hah!

I didn't put on weight when I got married and the only thing to lose weight after my divorce was my wallet...

[Muhammad Imran]

its cuz of only one law ...

You keep pumping semen in their body. where do all those drops packing the energy of universe go !?!... thats ABSORBED in their bodies. so they get fater. On the other hand since u r loosing your 'white' blood your health kinda stay there, infact penis absorbs wealth through their vaginal walls and its unlike sowallowing truck loads of ur dump. Now when u get divorced the supply you had been producing has not much drain.. or should i say thriling drain. so u could get fat.

[namae nanka]

feminism is fringe...yeah, right!

"It is a fringe socio-political movement. The one even much more marginal than BNP. Basically irrelevant."

Are you kidding me? Harriet Harman ringing any bells?

"To think that men are under attack and are a target of global female conspiracy and that women are out there to exploit the innocent angelic men for their sperm and money is not a political stance but is simply a psychosis."

http://www.aei.org/article/103674[/url]

and look up iVAWA. The global sisterhood gets exported under the auspices of U.N.

In US, the recent statutes against sexual assault in the academia will be a good example.

(College Rape Accusations and the Presumption of Male Guilt by PETER BERKOWITZ in WSJ)

and google false rape society .

------------------------------

"You have nutcases of all sorts among people of both sexes, yet the majority are normal and just get on with their lives. To be so afraid of some extreme tail percentile is nonsensical."

Which is disingenuous to say in face of the evidence.

A man who barely criticizes feminists(and sometimes women) gets called misogynist at the drop of a hat(gets forced out like Larry Summers), but women like Mary Daly can not only hold a job in academia, ask men not to attend their classes but are also invited to speak at various institutions.

http://www.feministcritics.org/blog/2007/11/19/the-mary-daly-test-feminism-and-complicity-part-3/

So unless you agree that soft misandry is a normal condition for humankind, today intensified by feminism, and thus Mary Daly isn't as bad of a nutcase as a man with reversed roles, your argument falls on its face.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rkl_oLSKQc

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

Hmmm

Look. I am not a psychiatrist and not going to try to cure you of your fear of women. Suffice it to say you need to consider that you may be suffering from a persecution complex.

You may have many problems in life but I can assure you they are not caused by a fringe minority of any kind (feminists or not).

There are -ists of many kinds: communists, fascists, feminists, zionists, masochists, you name it. I dislike them all but I'm not going to commit suicide just because they are there.

Your Mary Daly (never heard of her before) is dead. She can't hurt you now any more than Immanuel Kant.

Harriet Harman is a control freak just like the rest of the Labour leadership. If she is also a feminist that's like a terminal cancer sufferer having hemmoroids - irrelevant for the outcome.