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It's possible that those on the left value being skinny and attractive more than those on the right do. The urban left is more likely to be interested in casual sex with strangers, and more likely to be going from relationship to relationship as opposed to settling down with someone. Also more likely to get divorced and try to find a new partner. With that environment in mind, it is advantageous to maintain your attractiveness so you can continue to attract mates.
In contrast, the further to the right you go the more likely you are to have a culture valuing finding someone to settle down with and start a family. Once you've bagged a mate and said your vows, staying physically attractive is much less important for your day to day happiness. What's more, on the right you're more likely to have broad family and local networks to fill your social needs: people who don't need to find you attractive to be in your life. For the urban left, I can imagine you have to build your social network more from fostering relationships with new people rather than leaning on your family and the people who have known you since you were a kid.
All that is speculative, of course. What I can confirm is that in right wing cultural spaces if someone is fat they'll usually say something like "I love to eat, that's why I'm fat!" or "I know being fat ain't healthy, but eating food is what makes life worth living." It comes from a place of personal responsibility, including the personal responsibility to accept the consequences of your actions and the trade-offs you have made.
Is this true? I don't think this is true. Maybe it's true after controlling for education, but when we look at the most stereotypically Blue people (urbanites with graduate degrees, either in academia or comfortably adjacent to it), the divorce rates are low. I might even suggest that staying fit and attractive helps people stay married.
I'll first note that your comment seems to reinforce my point; the idea that staying fit and attractive helps people stay married goes hand in hand with the idea that your partner becoming less attractive is reasonable grounds for divorce. That's much more of a left wing than right wing perspective on marriage. But you're right! We should find some actual data and check.
Pew found that when it comes to the statement "Couples who are unhappy tend to stay in bad marriages too long" 69% of Democrats agreed compared to 41% of Republicans. That divide gets wider the further to the right or left you go: for Republicans that described themselves as "conservative" (as opposed to "moderate" or "liberal") only 35% agreed, compared to 76% Democrats who described themselves as "liberal".
Of course that's just stated attitudes, what about actual divorce rates? A study from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia found that for people who had ever been married at all 41% of Republicans had been divorced compared to 47% of Democrats. They also found that 57% of Republicans are currently married, compared to 40% of Democrats.
Another study found that the divorce rate was higher in red states than blue states, but they also noted that the marriage rate was much higher in red states than blue states which may account for it. A smaller percentage of divorces among a larger number a marriages may mean that Republicans divorce more per capita, but divorce less as a proportion of all married individuals.
Red states vs blue states is an apples to oranges comparison, because the south is dysfunctional, poor, and very red, and most non-southern red states are very rural.
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Huh. That seems pretty dispositive that my impression was just wrong. Thanks for enacting the labor.
Thanks for asking for data. It's easy to armchair philosophize about things that we actually have data for, and I usually forget to check.
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I think you are overthinking it. A lot of it just feels like cars versus no cars to me. When I am in a city anything 10 min away is a walk but everything suburban is a drive.
I also think the food industry has optimized for taste and gotten really good at it and these things are readily available everywhere and an easy pleasure in rural areas.
Philadelphia's SEPTA buses are full of extremely fat people.
Unfortunately while there's plenty of data on rural vs metropolitan obesity (rural is higher), there doesn't seem to be all that much on suburban vs urban (both are metropolitan).
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