Calling pedants, teachers, wordsmiths and class warriors.

size 10 for a mature woman is small

This is UK size 10, a perfectly normal size which is probably what used to be size 12 50 years ago before we all started eating too many donuts and fat became normal. Size 10/12 has always been a fairly normal sort of weight in most cultures at more times, except perhaps amongst the Tongans.

you have to wonder why most people think size 10 is best (well women actually as men don't seem to care much)
it can't be evolutionary (or whatever) as on most people size 10 doesn't allow much fat for breeding! It's got to be cultural. We just can't see 'spare' fat as part of an attractive person.

oh xenia

shall i oblige...pop

Yes, you're right. Men genuinely aren't bothered about this as women think, within reason. Man I saw is dating a woman who weighs 7 stone now, we were talking about and last year he saw someone who was 13 stone. He thought they all were great. Obviously once you get very heavy it's not quite the same.

Personally I think size 10 looks best, 12 is fine, 14 is getting a bit much, 16 rarely looks that good but I'll probably get shot down for the generalisation.

slim = beautiful seems to me to be a standard mostly enforced by women on other women.

I was brought up in a household in which it was considered fine to comment on weight daily, if not more, and I have to say the impact on my self-esteem was hideous. Constant unfunny jokes and comments on my vast size 12 figure and round face. Really not helpful as I had a perfectly healthy teenage appetite (oh except for the eating disorder I developed at 14 )

then I gain all the weight back, leave home and go to university and people's (partic men's) perception of me and my figure seems very, very different.

I've never known a man to comment on his partner's or anyone's 3 kg weight gain (except for my gay friends, who seem similarly anorexically obsessed about themselves and others as a lot of women are). It's really sad and I think teenage girls in particular really suffer from this competitive control obsession.

Oh well, that's lucky for them

duchesse - I was responding to some questions from soapbox, totally off topic. I agree, the first part of the thread was much more interesting.

There are literally thousands of topics to be addressed in business. Anyway, glad you thought well of Insead.

No - all ours were professional services leadership courses.

Well, there are lots and lots and LOTS of materials out there. Did you do any retail or lifestyle marketing courses? They were my babies, my favourites...

Ooh - we might have used some of them then!

Small world and all that!

I wish I had the time and inclination to try to work out how we got to here from the OP, but I haven't.

I thought the first half of this discussion was quite interesting. You've lost me now...

I got my MBA from INSEAD and worked for a big consultancy before going back there as a researcher and trainer. I wrote a lot of materials, wome of which are copyrighted to Insead (sniff, so they get the royalties) but some are my own (yummy yummy royalties while I'm not working). And then, on that basis, I got work in other business schools.

Oh really! I thought you worked for yourself? Racy casestudies in management schools - whatever next!

Anyway lots of them are terribly good - the last ones we had were profs from London Business School. But INSEAD has been better I think - a little bit more rounded

I've only ever worked in big brand name consultancies and management schools. I know nothing about Joe Bloggs outfits.

Should have been clearer- it is made to measure within a managemnet school, as opposed to joe bloggs executive coach/course provider which is what we used before.

But management schools (and I only work in management schools) offer BOTH open-enrollment and made-to-measure programmes. The advantage of made-to-measure is that you often get to tackle a specific set of hard business issues and over the week of the course the executives and teaching staff often come up with great solutions for real issues. Obviously on an open enrollment programme with lots of companies represented that doesn't happen and the course outcomes are a lot more general.

That's intersting. My firm swapped to management school from tailored, as the tailored was too non-businessy. We found management schools much better at fusing the personal development training with the business context in which it takes place. So leadership is covered in the context of being a CEO of a FTSE100 company, rather than purely as a 'soft' skill.

Oh yes, I've done both and will do both again. I love tailored, you get much better outcomes.

I meant instead of tailored exec coaching. Or do you do work for both markets?

People should be nice to each other and not make things personal by the way.

"What if the fat, ugly one was better-qualified, Xenia? I've beaten many a skinny-minny in competitions for a job!"
True, I meant all things being equal. Also if the person recruiting doesn't want someone better looking around I suppose they might then be biased against the slim good looking one. But over all studies have shown looking good if all things are equal does help. Also if someone is clinically obese they're going to have a lot of time off work and ultimately might die, get diabetes etc so you're courting trouble by taking them on.

"Every firm I know of including my own, seems to be going down the management school route at the moment - INSEAD, Chicago, LSE etc." = demand is huge

Anna - I asked if demand was dropping off - not stating that it was huge - dear god, I really must have had a bowl of soup too many for lunch!