Scientific fact

Science - well, social science using Google searches as data, which strikes me as potentially reasonable, but which is to be condemned by all serious sorts as insufficiently scientific - has proven (no! demonstrated evidence of) the obvious: Parents want their sons to be geniuses, and their daughters to be thin. Where to go from there?

One major difference between "fat" and "genius" is that one is a bit more subjective (and ripe for delusion) than the other. Some people are fat, others thin, still others within normal limits. It kind of is what it is, and ideally a pediatrician will intervene if the parents' perception is way off. Whereas a boy is a genius if his parents want their boy to be a genius. It doesn't matter if there's zero evidence for this. If anything, a boy's low grades reveal his secret genius. He's not stupid, he's bored! Schools these days reward female obedience, but ignore male genius. And behind every monosyllabic boy with a peach-fuzz mustache is a level of brilliance mere school-teachers couldn't recognize.

Weight does not lend itself to similar delusions. It just doesn't. A girl's chubbiness is never recognized as a sign that she's thin, the way a boy's dimwittedness is taken to indicate genius.

But inasmuch as it does lead to delusions, it tends to go the other way. Parents deeply invested in having thin daughters don't imagine that their fat daughters are thin. They will instead insist that their thin daughters are fat.