How come rich women are usually skinnier than poor women?

Dear Rich Bitch, I’ve noticed that rich women are usually skinnier than poor women. Why do you think that is? Anna, San Diego

Dear Anna, that is interesting because you’d think poor women would be skinnier than rich women considering being poor means you don’t have much money to buy anything, including food; but there does appear to be a bigger problem with obesity among poor people.

I don’t know what the statistics are on obesity in rich women vs obesity in poor women; but let’s assume you’re right that rich women are usually skinnier than poor women. If I had to come up with an explanation for why that might be, I would suggest that there are a number of reasons having to do with the the quality of life experienced by rich women compared with the quality of life experienced by poor women.

There are a number of different factors that would seem to be significant in explaining the situation where rich women are skinny despite having all the money in the world to afford food while poor women are fat despite not having enough money to afford to buy whatever food they want.

Consider the following contributing factors:

• Rich women are generally more active than more poor women. They travel frequently, they party more often, they have more active social calendars and spend less time sitting around at home with nothing to do but eat
• Healthy foods are very expensive. Poor women cannot usually afford to buy healthy foods when they shop for groceries. They have to get the cheapest brands and the cheapest brands, for some reason, are usually the most fattening.
• Rich women have numerous outlets for relieving stress that poor women cannot afford. Where a rich woman might head to the spa or to Saks Fifth Avenue when she’s starting to feel a bit overwhelmed, a poor woman might head to the grocery store for cake and ice cream, or else she might order in pizza or Chinese.
• Rich women tend to socialize in circles where the women are always trying to outdo each other and live up to a certain image of wealth and perfection. Being thin is part of the image of wealth and perfection; as such rich women tend to feel an added pressure to be thin.
• Rich women have household staff to help them with running their homes and raising their children, which leaves them with time on their hands that poor women don’t have. They can get up and go to the gym whenever they feel like it. They can go play tennis, go kayaking, running or engage in any other physical activity which helps them stay fit. This is not to say being poor stops a woman from getting exercise, but all the other responsibilities she has to take care of in a given day can drain a poor woman and leave her disinclined mentally to be bothered with exercising.

These are just some of the possible reason that rich women might be skinnier than poor women.

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