“The reason people are obese is not because they don't know that chips are bad for you.” exactly and I get fed up seeing people assuming the overweight are stupid/ignorant purely based on their weight! I am 3st overweight, I was very very slim for many years (but did eat), but I was MUCH more active then. Motherhood, disability, illness have affected that. Plus I still think like a ‘thin person’ I posted on another thread that I went to a slimming club for 3 years with little success. I don't think that's their responsibility, but it's really not as easy as many who've never been overweight seem to think! Particularly where reduced mobility is concerned.
But equally until I was mid 30’s and started gaining the weight I had experienced as a ‘skinny’ person the other side of things, people whispering behind my back that I must have an eating disorder, that I looked ill, couldn't possibly be healthy etc etc.
I do stand by my belief it's patriarchal/misogyny based. That doesn't mean men/boys don't get shit too, that is also based in patriarchal concepts of what a ‘real man’ should look like. Something my ex struggled with being also very slim and short in very macho (military) environment.
As a mother to a very very slim daughter it's worrying, especially when as a pp rightly pointed out the only time we see other than a very slim (and tall) PERSON (male or female) advertising a product is for “plus size” products! (With the possible exception of ‘mumsy’ roles eg Ruth Jones on the current tesco ads). We need people of ALL shapes, sizes, colours...all varieties of appearance in advertising. ‘Normal’ is a fallacy.
Regarding the banning of models being very low on the bmi scale. While I hate the shaming of ‘naturally’ very slim people as much as the shaming of the overweight, this was brought in mainly not to attack the models but to stop the agencies and designers putting pressure on the models to be unhealthily thin, to take extreme measures to achieve those sizes.
And yyy the faux health concern pisses me off, I've been healthy and unhealthy at all the sizes I've been (both physically and mentally). I'm overweight but my BP, pulse, cholesterol and other health indicators are well within healthy ranges. Being overweight can contribute to certain health issues but so can being underweight and being neither also doesn't mean you are in perfect health. My ex Mil has been roughly the same weight her entire adult life, always within what medics consider a healthy range,with the only exception being pregnancy. Yet her health is very poor, including conditions associated with being overweight. My mother has been overweight most of her life, yet is still in pretty good health, and certainly has more stamina than many 20 years younger! Weight/size is only one factor.