[rglullis]

Is this primarily due to the fact that women get fatter as they get older and hence the overweight/obese group is overloaded with the women at the high end of the (15-44) age range?

I don't agree with your premise, here. You need to show any study that would demonstrate that women (a) really get fatter as they get older and (b) they get so much fatter that they would increase their BMI to the point of jumping up in the classification.

Also: When a man propositions a woman, she can respond in one of two ways; she can say "yes" or she can say "no". When a woman propositions a man, he can also respond in one of two ways; he can say "yes" or he can say "yes, please." He has no realistic choice to say no.

You may be grossed out by fat women, but rest assured that not all men are. Combine that to your following statement about fat women being less picky, and you have a formula where the available mate population is far more favorable to fat women than to normal-weight ones.

[hugh]

I don't agree with your premise, here. You need to show any study that would demonstrate that women (a) really get fatter as they get older and (b) they get so much fatter that they would increase their BMI to the point of jumping up in the classification.

Four seconds of googling turns up: http://obesity1.tempdomainname.com/subs/fastfacts/obesity_wo...

see Table 3. The prevalence of obesity (as of 1999-2000) increases from 23% in the twenties to 42% in the fifties, and declines after that.