Fat is a class issue. Rich, educated people are not fat;
Bravo Sierra! I am rich, educated AND fat.
Obese means not just podgy, but dangerously, disablingly, distastefully fat, as in American fat.
Exactly what the does this mean? 5'2" @ 110 pounds is considered "fat" these days.
This is not just shocking; it has also happened shockingly fast.
Easy to do when one keeps moving the goal posts.
Years ago there were these little chart thingys. They had different charts for men and women and they included 3 different bone structures. I think some even had a different chart for age groups etc. Do they still exist?
Just like my Aunt Ann, a great lady, God rest her soul. She knew where all the best restaurants in DC were, especially for seafood and elaborate desserts. I used to love going to dinner with her.
And that is it in a nutshell.
People look at me and have asked what kind of a diet am I on...people who don't know me well are actually surprised by the vast quantities of food I can consume. I'm 5'10" and bounce around 120-125lbs.
OTOH, my husband is considered fat by the new standards because he is 5'11" and 175.
Bravo Sierra! I am rich, educated AND fat.
The author should have phrased it differently. She is making the mistake of equating "rich" with upper- or upper-middle class. Those class divisions are not perfectly correlated with wealth. In other words, it's possible to be rich and middle-class or lower-class: the guy from the inner city who wins the lottery and becomes rich does not therefore become upper class and change his tastes, interests, goals, and values. Similarly it's also possible to be upper-class and poor.
Go to the gentlemen's clubs in London, to the committees for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to the boxes at the Lyric Opera, to the older foxhunting clubs. You will not find fat people there. And as the author points out, there aren't any fat kids in the older private schools unless Mom and Dad just got rich day before yesterday and somehow got them in.
There are always a few exceptions; I do know a few people from very old families who for some reason put on weight. But they aren't waddling-fat.