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While the arrival of the "plus-size" model onto the runway and into the pages of high-fashion magazines like ELLE, Glamour and Vogue has been one of the buzziest topics of the fashion world this past year, it seems that ditching the uber-unrealistic size 0/2 models for women closer to the size-14 U.S. average might not be as ego-stroking for larger women as the world might think.

In a controversial study released last week, researchers from Arizona State University, University of Cologne in Germany and Erasmus University in the Netherlands put fake ads similar to Dove's groundbreaking "Real Women" campaign to the test, showing hundreds of female participants who were overweight, underweight and normal weight a selection of images in which there was a variation of extremely thin, normal-weight and extremely large models.

"As a consumer and magazine reader, I was slightly surprised and saddened by the results," ASU researcher Naomi Mandel told Lemondrop about the outcome. "I enjoy looking at beautiful plus-size models such as Crystal Renn in the magazines. [But] we found that overweight women experienced lower self-esteem after looking at any models (versus an ad with no models) and underweight women experienced higher self-esteem after looking at any models (versus an ad with no models)."

Here's why she says that might happen.

"When overweight women look at thin models, they see the dissimilarities between themselves and the models, which activates knowledge that they are heavy," Mandel explained. "And when they look at heavy models, they see the similarities between themselves and the models, which also activates knowledge that they are heavy."

In other words, larger women don't like looking in the mirror when they open up a magazine or see an advertisement. The product alone, without a large or small model that they can subconsciously compare themselves to, is good enough, thank you.

To measure the participants yo-yo in self-esteem after seeing the images of models that were both similar and dissimilar to themselves, the researchers used what they call "nonconscious measures," Mandel says, "such as reaction times on a task where they had to press a key on a keyboard as quickly as possible to indicate whether they recognized a word or not."

Women were asked to respond to negative words such as "heavy" and "fat" and positive words like "thin" and "skinny."

"This is an established way to find out what knowledge is currently active in someone's mind," Mandel said.

And, oddly enough, it seems seeing an easy-to-relate-to tummy roll here and there isn't conjuring happy thoughts for heavier-set women, contrary to popular belief. But is this really the case? How does seeing women of larger sizes make you feel when you see an ad or magazine spread showing diverse shapes?