Not so long ago, say 150 years and earlier, it was ok to be fat. In fact, fat people were considered healthier than skinny people. Why? First, fat people were likely to have higher incomes. More income means more food and easier lifestyles. Second, skinny was associated with poverty and ill health. Poverty was associated with diseases such as tuberculosis (then called "consumption" and untreatable). There was a reason why artists 350 years ago, such as Rubens, used fat women as models. I would also add that people had a different idea of what was "fat" in those days. What we consider "fat" today would have been viewed as average, even thin. Body image was also less an issue 150 years ago because people wore much more clothing.

Today, if one is "fat" then one is likely to be viewed as unhealthy, even poor. Our mass media projects super-thin as a desirable attribute. It is a sin, however, to judge people on this and similar attributes. I know plenty of wealthy fat people (mostly lawyers). The time may yet come when "fat" is cool again, and, retribution will be sweet.

you have a very bad understanding of history. 150 ago was not that long ago, at it still wasn't cool to be fat then. Try reading.

You don't have to go back 150 yrs. Try 50 yrs. compared to some of todays screen stars, Marilyn Monroe would be considered chubby by a good many people. But I wouldn't consider some of the water buffalo wandering the aisles of Wal Mart to ever be "cool."

I try to be empathetic with those wandering Wal Mart heards, but, sometimes I am too repelled. I wonder if there was ever a time when they were of normal size and I must conclude that there was. So, how does it happen that someone who may have been born a 7-8 lb. baby balloon to over 300, 400 lbs? I know that there are medical issues that cause some of the obesity I see, but I tend to think that most and I do mean most of the ginormicas I see are and have been for a long time lazy and self loathing. How else can someone let themselves become that big?

Regarding the social stigma of being fat one would need to define fat. Here in Texas we have big women and fat women, and for the most part big women are very attractive. And in the black community large black women are considered very sexy. But then there are those women I see at PTA (or whatever) meetings weighing 350 lbs and scarfing down two dozen cookies. I realize there must be some psychological or physical needs they're attempting to fulfill by doing this, but it's not attractive to most of the population. And for better or worse attrative people have opportunities unattractive people do not have, much in the same way highly intelligent people or physically gifted people have that others don't. Certainly discrimination is always wrong, but without taking advantages of opportunities, i.e. the intelligent person going to school or the physically talented person practicing hours a day, society cannot be faulted for the person's failures.

Honestly, the "Wal Mart water buffaloes" didn't exist 150 years ago, because the cultural, technological, and socioeconomic factors that have lead to their existence didn't exist.

And ditto on the big texas women. Seriously, if you don't know what we're talkin' about, then just stay in connecticut and enjoy the rest of your miserable life.

Eastheimer-

For the sake of argument, I'm going to say that it's my "miserable" skinny life that provokes me to hate fatties...fair is fair, no?

Weighing 300-400 pounds, especially for women, is seen as desirable only in hunter-gatherer cultures with no food security whatsoever. For any culture that understands pastoralism or farming (notably including the American Indians), it isn't desirable at all -- the extremely bad effects on health and stamina come into play. As a rule, as a civilization gains greater food security, its ideal body type becomes thinner -- so wishing for fat to be cool is tantamount to wishing for the collapse of industrial civilization. Few of us appreciate how bad it was prior to the 1800s; remember that from 1650 to 1700, France, then the most prosperous country in Europe, suffered seven famines across the entire nation, plus more on a regional scale.