The Detroit Tribune

Fat Wives Blamed on Selfish Mates

NEW YORK, N.Y.—Husbands who object to reducing diets for their wives are either jealous, selfish or hen-pecked, says Victor H. Lindlahr, nutrition and reducing expert.

When a man forbids his wife to diet healthfully, his reasons are usually rooted in some selfish motive. Sometimes it's fear, or an inferiority complex at work.

The husband may be afraid that if his wife is attractive, some other man will look at her, so his subconscious drives him to encourage her to be fat. He feels more secure when she isn't so attractive to other men.

A man may also be motivated by the desire to pay his wife back for nagging, or fancied hurts. He knows what punishment it is for a woman to lose her attraction and charm.

Deep in his subconscious, he plots to humiliate and degrade her by almost encouraging her to become fat so that some day he can gloat over her unhappiness at her unwanted weight.

Often the man who is such a slave to his appetite that his appearance is clumsy and awkward may resent the contrast between himself and a pert, slim attractive wife.

Rather than give up his own addiction to rich, fattening foods, he drags his wife down to his level and insists that she indulge his appetite and her own.

Lindlahr urges fat wives to take matters into their own hands. Get a medical check-up, he says, and if it's necessary to reduce, do so.

No husband has a right to do anything which makes a wife lose her figure, any more than he has a right to forbid her to comb her hair or dress attractively.