[aceofspad3s]

As a user, I can't think of any ads that would make me happy.

As an unattractive person, I wouldn't want to see unattractive people in ads either. Seeing fat people wouldn't make me happier.

(Why was this thread collapsed?)

[macintux]

Notice how you equate fat with unattractive?

[askafriend]

Yes because fat people are physically unattractive. Not only are they unattractive aesthetically, it’s just unhealthy and that’s far more of a factor in my opinion.

My biological instinct is to find a mate who has the highest probability of successfully reproducing. So even in this regard, someone healthy fits the bill over someone unhealthy any day. Healthy people live longer, are able to more successfully reproduce and have less complications in general.

Now should fat people in society be treated worse in terms of the opportunities they have? Absolutely not. But should society reward people for being fat? In my opinion, no, not explicitly.

Being unhealthily fat is just as abnormal as being unhealthyily skinny. Normalizing either is probably misguided at best.

[nunez]

> Yes because fat people are physically unattractive. Not only are they unattractive aesthetically, it’s just unhealthy and that’s far more of a factor in my opinion.

I think you’re wrong; bigger folks can totally be attractive. That they are unattractive to you is different.

[askafriend]

We can go back and forth on the aesthetics, but the health aspects are what ground us in natural reality and are probably why the norms played out like they did.

Again, representing the extremes as norms is not great - I think we can both agree on this point at least. But if there was an ideal that I would rather society value - it would definitely err on the side of healthy and fit.

[nunez]

Skinny doesn’t equal healthy and fit and most of the models you see on ads like this aren’t exactly healthy! Yeah, they watch their intake and work out a lot, but taking anabolic steroids/insulin/growth hormone/you name it and/or reducing your intake to something unmaintanable per day doesn’t exactly lead to a long life.

Also, many women have to work much harder than men to stay on the skinny side because they store fat easier. A 5’1” 110 lb woman with 18% body fat would need to eat 1500 cal/day to maintain that weight. That’s practically nothing! It’s harder still if you were raised in a family that encouraged overeating (several reasons behind this).

Then there’s the double standard that exists in many relationships where the woman needs to be “healthy and fit” at all times while the man can treat his body however he wants because practically nobody cares about an out-of-shape looking man.

I say look however you want and weigh however much you feel comfortable with. One life to live and all.

[askafriend]

I completely agree with you on all counts actually! I don't think "skinny" is the goal to aim for either and isn't attractive to me personally on either gender. But by that definition "Fat" is an extreme too. I think we both might just be arguing semantics at this point.

In any case, I mostly agree with everything you've written.

[StavrosK]

> are probably why the norms played out like they did.

Cheap food is why the norms played out like they did. In places with less easy access to calories, fat is considered beautiful and thin ugly.

[askafriend]

I think you raise a very valid point and there are a probably ton of other factors that I’m not even aware of that go into this.

I’ll throw another othrogonal point into the mix: our definitions of “skinny” and “fat” are probably very different and very relative to our realities.

Anyway, I don’t claim to have the answers - it gets really messy to articulate the big question of “how do values form”.

[aceofspad3s]

Fat people are unattractive. I am fat and I am physically unattractive because of that. Thinking otherwise would be fooling myself.

Being attracted to fat people is a kink, not the norm.

[macintux]

I'm not attracted to fat people. I'm attracted to attractive people. And there are, amazingly, attractive fat people, despite the cultural norm we've internalized.

[aceofspad3s]

I said PHYSICALLY attractive.

[newscracker]

In different times and in different cultures, fat people have been considered physically attractive and thinner/slimmer people considered unattractive. Now we live in a globalized world where many aspirations are sold wholesale across cultures and acceptance is manufactured to make it look like the norm.

[macintux]

And I still assert it's a cultural norm that barrages of advertisement like this reinforce.

[dragonwriter]

> Being attracted to fat people is a kink, not the norm.

Norms of attractiveness are social constructs that demonstrably change over time.