Internet Daters’ Body Type Preferences: Race–Ethnic and Gender Differences

Glasser, Carol L.; Robnett, Belinda; Feliciano, Cynthia

doi:10.1007/s11199-009-9604-x

Cited by 82 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…These societal biases are reflected in online daters' declared physical preferences [53]. Furthermore, the U.S. has a long history of media portrayals of Black women as a combative relationship partner, which may limit non-Black men's willingness to initiate contact with Black women, even if physically attracted [54].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intercultural Dating at Predominantly White Universities in the United States: The Maintenance and Crossing of Group Borders

Keels

Harris

2014

Societies

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Abstract:The increased representation of minority students on the campuses of predominantly White universities in the United States presents increased opportunities for intercultural contact. Studying dating experiences across racial and ethnic lines has been used to determine the existence of a post-racial America. While most previous research has examined general racial/ethnic and gender differences in intercultural college dating experiences, this study analyzes precollege and college-going friendship diversity and skin tone as factors accounting for romantic distance between racial/ethnic groups among a recent cohort of college students. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses were conducted on a 4-year longitudinal sample of 2804 undergraduate students from 24 colleges and universities. Results confirm that White students continue to be the group most likely to engage in intragroup dating relationships, Latino/a students were the most likely to date interculturally, and that Black men were significantly more likely to date interculturally than Black women. For Black students there were significant within group differences in intercultural dating based on skin tone.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intercultural Dating at Predominantly White Universities in the United States: The Maintenance and Crossing of Group Borders

Keels

Harris

2014

Societies

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“…Third, this research carries significant implications for understanding gender dynamics between women by providing an intracategorical approach to gender [3,28,[30][31][32][33]. Women in this study find comfort in partners who can understand experiences with racial discrimination and therefore view interracial dating between men of color and white women as an insult to their racial group and a threat to their respective group's cultural maintenance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although interracial dating is increasing, especially among the highly educated, race continues to guide perceptions, prospects, and behavior surrounding romantic partnerships, with interracial marriages comprising only 12 percent of new marriages in 2013 [2,3,23,[28][29][30][31][32][33]. Not only do most members of all racial/ethnic groups gravitate toward members of their own race, whites are also less likely to seek out people of color for romantic relationships [34], and people of color, when surrounded by same-race peers, express adversarial attitudes toward interracial dating [35].…”

Section: Intersections Of Race and Gender In Romantic Partnershipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Normative Ideals, “Alternative” Realities: Perceptions of Interracial Dating among Professional Latinas and Black Women

García

2015

Societies

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Abstract:Family types continue to expand in the U.S., yet normative patterns of endogamy and the privileging of nuclear families persist. To understand how professional women of color navigate endogamy and family ideals, I draw on 40 in-depth interviews of professional Black women and Latinas to ask how they construct partner preferences. I find that professional Latinas and Black women prefer same-race, similarly educated partners but report significant barriers to satisfying these desires. Respondents' experiences with racism, the rejection of ethno-racial and cultural assimilation, gendered racism from men of color, and the college gender gap emerge as mechanisms for endogamous preferences. These preferences resist and support hegemonic family formation, an ideological and behavioral process that privileges, white, middle class, endogamous, heteronormative ideals for families comprising courtship, marriage, and biological childbearing. By challenging the racial devaluation of people of color while preferring the normativity that endogamy offers, the women in this study underscore the fluidity embedded in endogamy.

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“…Men also judge obese individuals more harshly than women do (Fletcher 2014). But the existing results about differences in groupspecific norms and biases are inconsistent despite prevailing beliefs that African Americans and Latinos are more accepting of people with larger bodies than whites are (Altabe 1998;Cachelin et al 2002;Glasser, Robnett, and Feliciano 2009). Individuals also have different body size ideals for their own race and/or ethnic group versus across races (Hebl and Turchin 2005;Fletcher 2014).…”

Section: Bodies Biases and Stigmasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Obesity Is in the Eye of the Beholder: BMI and Socioeconomic Outcomes across Cohorts

Maralani¹,

McKee²

2017

SocScience

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Abstract:The biological and social costs of body mass cannot be conceptualized in the same way. Using semiparametric methods, we show that the association between body mass index (BMI) and socioeconomic outcomes such as wages, being married, and family income is distinctly shaped by gender, race, and cohort rather than being above a specific threshold of BMI. For white men, the correlation between BMI and outcomes is positive across the "normal" range of BMI and turns negative near the cusp of the overweight range, a pattern that persists across cohorts. For white women, thinner is nearly always better, a pattern that also persists across cohorts. For black men in the 1979 cohort, the association between BMI and wages is positive across the normal and overweight ranges for wages and family income and inverted U-shaped for marriage. For black women in the 1979 cohort, thinner is better for wages and marriage. By the 1997 cohort, however, the negative association between body mass and outcomes dissipates for black Americans but not for white Americans. In the social world, "too fat" is a subjective, contingent, and fluid judgment that differs depending on who is being judged, who does the judging, and the social domain.Keywords: obesity; BMI; gender; race; wages; marriage N UMEROUS studies link obesity to poorer socioeconomic outcomes, including lower wages, family income, education, marriage rates, and spousal earnings (Averett and Korenman 1996;Cawley 2004;Conley and Glauber 2007;Glass, Haas, and Reither 2010). But does the medical definition of "obese" apply to the social world? Obesity is a condition defined as having excessive body fat. Because body fat is difficult to measure directly, obesity is usually approximated by body weight adjusted for height using standard cutoffs along the body mass index (BMI) (Ogden et al. 2007). The continuous BMI scale is divided into four major intervals (underweight, normal, overweight, obese) with subclassifications of mild, moderate, and severe within these groupings. 1 Although more accurate measures of body fat exist (e.g., waist-to-hip ratio, waist circumference, body volume index), these are far less commonly used in the social science research literature.BMI is a flawed measure of actual body fat because it is not sensitive to differences in mass that are due to fat versus muscle or bone, and it misclassifies more African Americans as having excessive fat than white Americans (Burkhauser and Cawley 2008). However, it is a simple and standard measure that allows medical and public health studies to examine the biological links between this measure of corpulence and health-related outcomes. The BMI cutoff of 30 is used internationally as a standard medical definition of adult obesity. Once we move from biological to social outcomes, however, the definition of obesity becomes far more subjective. What counts as being excessively fat in the social world? A sizable literature demonstrates that the body is socially constructed and that our perceptions of fat bodies are tied...

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Internet Daters’ Body Type Preferences: Race–Ethnic and Gender Differences

Cited by 82 publications

References 91 publications

Intercultural Dating at Predominantly White Universities in the United States: The Maintenance and Crossing of Group Borders

Intercultural Dating at Predominantly White Universities in the United States: The Maintenance and Crossing of Group Borders

Normative Ideals, “Alternative” Realities: Perceptions of Interracial Dating among Professional Latinas and Black Women

Obesity Is in the Eye of the Beholder: BMI and Socioeconomic Outcomes across Cohorts

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