Horizontal stripes makes people look fat?
Wearing horizontal stripes really does make one look fatter, an amateur scientist has revealed.
Val Watham, 53, was unconvinced by research which claimed horizontal stripes flatter the figure.
She undertook her own research, dressing models in a variety of striped designs and asking members of the public to rate their appearance.
The findings demonstrated that horizontal stripes make people appear wider, while vertical stripes make people appear taller.
Watham’s experiment won the BBC’s Amateur Scientist of the Year award, beating over 1,000 other entrants, the Telegraph reported. The judges described it as “a lovely idea which was well executed, had clear results and leads on to further research. You can’t ask more from a science experiment.”
The research which caught Watham’s attention was published in 2008 by Dr Peter Thompson, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of York.
He tested people’s perceptions by showing them 2D line drawings of identically-proportioned women wearing horizontal and vertical stripes. Those wearing horizontal designs were deemed to look thinner.
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