Model Stephanie Naumoska, who is 1.8 m tall and weighs 49 kg, poses in a bikini in Sydney. Australian health experts are worried that the Ms Australia Universe contestant¹ is sending out a wrong message.

France has by far the highest proportion of clinically underweight women in Europe, but only half of them think they are too thin, according to a new study.

In other European countries the opposite is true: the number of women in Britain, Spain and Portugal, for example, who see themselves as seriously skinny easily outstrips² the number who actually are.

"This shows that what people consider an ideal weight in France is lower than in other countries," said the study's author Thibaut de Saint Pol, a researcher at France's National Institute of Demographic studies, which published the study on Wednesday.

"If a French person who feels fat were to go to the United States," - which has much higher rate of obesity³ - "he probably wouldn't feel fat anymore," he said.

The study also reveals a big gap, both objective and subjective⁴, between sexes.

In western Europe, the mean weight of men in every country except France and The Netherlands tips the scales into the "overweight" category, according to World Health Organization (WHO) standards.

By contrast, in only three nations do women join the men in crossing that line: Britain, Greece and Portugal. And only among the Dutch does one find more overweight women than men.

France is the one country in which both sexes are solidly in the "normal" weight bracket, and the only one in which more than five percent of women are officially "underweight".

The universal standard introduced by the WHO for assessing weight is the Body-Mass Index (BMI): one's weight in kilograms divided by the square of one's height in meters.

A BMI of 25-to-30 indicates being overweight, while above 30 means one is obese⁵. The range of normal weight is 18.5-to-24.9.

The proportion of overly thin women in France has long been the highest in Europe, but has shrunk from 8.5 percent in 1981, to 7.8 percent in 1992, to 6.7 percent in 2003, according to once-a-decade national surveys.

In that same period, the proportion of underweight French men held steady at just under two percent.

一项最新研究显示，法国体重不达标的女性比例一直居欧洲之首，但只有一半的女性认为自己过瘦。

而在欧洲其它国家情况却恰好相反：比如在英国、西班牙和葡萄牙，认为自己过瘦的女性比实际上很瘦的人还要多。

法国人口研究所研究员、研究负责人Thibaut de Saint Pol说：“这表明法国人心目中理想的体重标准低于其它国家”。该研究于上周三公布。

他说：“如果一个觉得自己胖的法国人去肥胖率高很多的美国，也许他就不会觉得自己胖了。”

该研究还从主观和客观方面揭示了男女在体重问题上的巨大差异。

根据世界卫生组织标准，在西欧，除法国和荷兰外，每个国家男性的平均体重均为“超标”。

相反，只有三个国家的女性平均体重超标，分别是英国、希腊和葡萄牙。而且只有荷兰体重超标的女性数量多于男性。

法国是唯一一个男女体重都在“正常”范围内的国家，而且是唯一一个有超过5%的女性体重未达官方标准的国家。

世界卫生组织衡量体重的统一标准为“体重指数”，即用一个人的体重（公斤）除以其身高（米）的平方。

体重指数在25至30之间的人为超重，超过30为肥胖。正常体重指数在18.5至24.9之间。

据一项十年开展一次的全国调查表明，法国过瘦女性的比例一直居欧洲之首，但已从1981年的8.5%降至1992年的7.8%，2003年进一步降至6.7%。

在此期间，法国体重不达标的男性比例一直维持在2%以下。

Vocabulary:

tip the scales:to register weight (at a certain amount).（称重为...）