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"   Photo: Twentieth Century Fox   Have you ever noticed that certain peer groups tend to look alike? Whether its teenage girls all wearing the same skinny jeans or Upper East Side women shopping on Madison Avenue, the company you keep influences your style and even your decision-making. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health earlier this month concluded that obesity could partially be due to social contagion. The authors of the study, based at Arizona State University, wanted to understand the reasons why obesity spreads among close friends and family members. They studied about 100 women, half of whom were obese, and over 800 of their close friends and relatives. The first finding was unsurprising and supported previous studies: Women who are obese are more likely to have an obese social network. The connection seemed to be that simply because you hang out with people who look a certain way, you begin to assume that it&amp;#039;s an appropriate body size. Remember the magazine girls in The Devil Wears Prada? Same concept, but in this case it&amp;#039;s going the other way.  What the study couldn&amp;#039;t answer was why obese women start to look like their obese friends and relatives. A lot of the study subjects did not want to look the way they look. They were asked if they would prefer certain socially stigmatized conditions to obesity, and 25% would have preferred to be severely depressed and almost 15% would have preferred total blindness. Pretty strong statements, right? So why does it still happen? This is the direction of future research\u2013people know how not to eat too much, they know that smoking is bad, they know they shouldn&amp;#039;t tan\u2013but why do they still do it? Nachos and margaritas with a group of good girlfriends after work everyday may be too good a bonding experience to pass up. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/beauty/health-fitness/news/a6529/study-shows-obesity-is-socially-contagious-21958/?src=global_footer>