Just FYI, Ambar, the drug in that ad, was a mixture of Methamphetamine and Phenobarbital.
It sounds YUMMY! 
I see people every day that are the same size as the two people in the picture, but I still would consider them obese.
When I shopped at wal-mart I tended to notice an over-abundance of XL, XXL and XXXL clothing. Either they were catering to their target demographic, or this is a coincidence, but either way I STG it spurred forth the current thug look.
BTW that list of fattest cities is completely unfair. DFW should be topping it, whether Arlington, Dallas and Fort Worth are technically different cities or not - all three are in the top 10. Astounding.
Sorry, should’ve made it clear that she would be considered huge by today’s standards. She’d easily be the biggest model in most magazines, and she looks a lot closer to this Lane Bryant model than to your average magazine model:
http://www.websitelisting.org/images/stores/side/lanebryant-side.jpg
Our bar for obesity may have been lowered, but our bar for thin has definitely been raised.
:rolleyes:
of course not, but rolling out bizarrely thin models without acknowledging that there’s a middle ground between the two options is silly…
(of course I can’t answer for dre2xl, but I imagine s/he would have a similar reaction)
@ The OP: actually I would have to say those particular women don’t appear that “obese”. I wonder if the ad people didn’t go out of their way to find people who wouldn’t be obviously huge in the ad to make it more socially acceptable.
And unlike humans and blood elves, the (badly drawn, in this case, but that’s another problem) hips for males and females are a similar width, which is realistic; what’s narrower for females than males is the shoulders.
I just hate how they bounce when they fidget, is all 
OK, and I’d kill for long legs…
Nava of the dwarven hips.
[fanwank] Well if you’ve ever seen the movie “The Untouchables”, there’s a scene where Sean Connery talks about stamping your feet to keep awake and energized. The Elven bounce is the same thing. Given as the women elves are the warriors of the society, it would make sense that this would be something taught from mother to daughter. They do it to keep themselves on-edge and ready to go. [/fw] 
Slight hijack with regard to the comment about fat people at Wal-Mart,
I heard on NPR the other day that there’s a direct corellation between overweight and income. The fatter a person is the less money they make in a year. They even narrowed it down to dollars per pounds though I don’t remember what the numbers were. (I’ve searched for a link to the article but can’t find it so far)
What was still uncertain was which came first. Did lower income lead to weight gain or did being fat limit their income potential. That question hadn’t been answered and I’m betting it’s a combination of the two.
Not to be obnoxious, but cite? Honestly, I am 5’3" and when I weighed 140 was wearing a size 6 (I currently weigh 117-123 and wear a 0/1). I am hoping that those numbers are coming from different statistics, because, uhmmm…
Obese is a medical term – it means you are more than 50 lbs overweight. Those women both look obese to me. I agree that most people do not realise that obese is a medical term and would not consider those women to be obese, but it doesn’t change reality. It is sad that we, as Americans, are getting so fat that we consider obese to be “mildly overweight.” At the same time, I have to point out that I abhor the way so many shows say things like “when samantha ballooned to 160 pounds” honestly, unless samantha is 5’3" or less, 160 pounds is not the end of the world. It’s shit like that that makes my 5’7", 150lb, slim and gorgeous 14 year old have self-esteem issues. BAH!
I will point out that although I buy clothing in the store, I have to buy size 0/1 or xs, but when I make my own clothing (because patterns go by the old measurements/size charts) I wear a size 6/8. Interesting, no?
The snippity snip snip is mine, naturally.
I think your post is a perfect example of vanity sizing. My friend is tiny-framed (small chest, mediumish butt and hips-- but definitely smaller sized hips), 5’1’’ and weighed 105 lbs- she couldn’t squeeze her butt in anything smaller than a size 3. Now she’s 125 and wears a size 8-11 jeans (of course, that depends on the store. In the Gap, for example, she’s a 6).
I’m asking for a cite on this, too. I’m 5’4", at 140 lbs I fit comfortable in a size 8. A 14 is too big for me at 185 lbs.
Here’s the cite y’all are looking for. In fact, here’s a whole bunch of 'em: average american woman 5'4" size 14 - Google Search
ETA: it’s mostly to do with shape and with the sizing being so completely NOT standardized. A 14 in Butterick and Simplicity patterns is 36/28/38 - which I was wearing with a few adjustments back in high school at 5’7", 120 pounds and 37/27/37 and looking like this (not anymore, alas!)
I know that this is an oft-repeated factoid, I’ve seen it in publications many times over the last 10 years, maybe even longer. (That it is so old is one reason to suspect that it is invalid, because I believe Americans have gotten fatter, and just a wee bit taller, on average, over the past decade or so.)
What I’d like to know is where it originally came from. I always suspected that two different statistics were brought together artificially. One statistic being that the average American woman is 5’4", 140 lbs. The other statistic being that 14 is the average dress size sold in America, if you count up all the dresses sold, from 0 on up to whatever the largest available size is. Separately they are believable, together, not so much.
Oh, I hate this whole vanity-sizing thing. It makes it almost impossible for me to find things that fit. If I go to Wet Seal, they carry their own brand of jeans (which sticks pretty well to standard measurements) and also Paris Blues brand. In the Wet Seal brand, I wear a 3/5, but in Paris Blues I wear a 00. Drives me batty. I do admit I have unusual measurements, being as how I have no hips at all, but still! Often, my husband and I will marvel at some girl or another who is truly teeny-tiny and wonder where she buys her clothing because we know that she is smaller than I and yet I wear the smallest size available in misses clothing!
Thanks, WhyNot, it does look like a conglomerate of cites, so that makes more sense. Different studies, different averages. I have heard before that the average American woman wears a size 14. I hadn’t heard the height/weight though. I think that must be an older study, because 5’4" and 140 lbs is not overweight at all, and the average American woman is overweight.
As for velvetjones’ slight hijack, I remember reading an article in the local paper (sorry no cite) that said the same thing. My theory (and IIRC, the article basically said the same) is that it is due to at least some of the following reasons:
[ol]
[li]healthy food is expensive – try buying fresh vegetables for a family of 4[/li][li]food is a comfort, one that is relatively inexpensive and easily attainable – “sorry, Johnny, I can’t buy you a PS3, but I baked you some cookies”[/li][li]hi, Opal[/li][li]lack of education in poverty-stricken homes leads to less knowledge of portioning/nutrition/exercise[/li][li]time to workout at a gym (let alone paying for said gym membership) is a rare commodity when you are working your arse off to make ends meet[/li][/ol]
And, is it just me or does anyone else cringe when they see someone who is “on a diet” eat a whole box of “Sugar-free” cookies and think it’s ok, because they’re sugar-free?
Oh, sure, make me work harder! Ok, the Anthropometric Reference Data for Children and Adults: U.S. Population, 1999–2002 gives very detailed information on everything from height and weight to waist circumfrence and armfold tests, broken down by “race or ethnicity groups”. warning, PDF I’m going to assume that this is accurately summarized by this page of the National Center for Health Statistics because the baby just ran off with my calculator. It claims an average waist circumference of 36.5 inches, which is actually between a 20 and 22 in Butterick and Simplicity patterns.
Patterns are well known for being much smaller than current ready-to-wear clothing. Lane Bryant’s sizing chart puts that at an 18. Macy*s as an 18W and Bloomingdale’s as a 14-16 or 1X
I’m afraid that’s as “high end” as my personal shopping ever gets. What are some REALLY snooty places? I bet we can get a 36.5 inch waist down as low as a 10 or 12 in some places! 
In my search for clothing that fits, I often hit Ross Stores and discovered the vanity-sizing is worse in the more expensive brands. The worst in vanity sizing is DKNY (36" waist is a size 12). I am sure that there are others that are worse, but I remember from trying on a pair of DKNY jeans – I held them up and they looked the right size, so I tried them on. They were baggy. At the time, I was wearing a size 7/8 in most other sizes, the DKNY jeans were a size 1/2. it’s nuts!
I recently lost quite a bit of weight, and just bought a pair of size 8 jeans at the Gap. That got me thinking, because I’ve NEVER been a size 8, and while I’m looking damned good, I am most assuredly not the thinnest I’ve ever been. Hell, after a six month bout with mono in high school I weighed about 110lbs, and wore a size 10.
So I pulled a pair of decade-old size 12 Gap jeans out of the dark recesses of my closet. Sure enough, they fit fine. A *little * big, but not unwearable. Oh, and the decade old size 12 regular length is a full three inches shorter than the new size 8 regular length.
I’m 5’3", 130 lbs. and most of my pants and shorts are a size 10. My shirts are usually Mediums, though to continue the DKNY point, I have a t-shirt that’s a size Small from them that fits like some of my size Large t-shirts from other brands.