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If someone has genetic or health issues which cause them to be overweight, they have my sympathies. Known several people like that.
Unfortunately, I've also known several more people who were hugely overweight and not only expected the world to accomodate them, but to validate their choice (there's that pesky word again) to blow up to 350lbs and make all but inevitable the heart disease, diabetes, various cancers, breathing problems and $500 air-conditioning bills which follow. I had a woman once, about 5'3x3'6, upbraid me for a solid 90 seconds about how the fact that the History building at my Uni had no elevators was discrimination. I asked her why she didn't take the stairs; it turned out she'd broken her leg a couple of years before while stepping off a curb. I asked why she didn't exercise in order to lose weight so she -could- take the stairs, and was informed that she was "too fat to exercise, and fine the way I am!" A girl I knew in Junior High who weighed over 300lbs before she was 14 managed to break her leg (tib and fib) in two places because her bones couldn't handle the weight.
But what really gripes me are the "fat is beautiful" people. No, it isn't. "Fat" is a foghorn screaming "Evolutionary dead end!" The obvious genetic/health exceptions aside, "fat" is a sign that the person lacks even the rudimentary discipline and self-control to dodge the veeeery slow-moving bullets described above. There's a reason people conflate "fat" and "stupid." If you have a choice, it's really frikkin' dumb to be fat. I don't validate people's decision to drink and drive, play with loaded guns, or gargle acetone: neither will I validate an equally ludicrous decision to weigh 300 pounds at 25 years old and 5'4. I don't find acetone-gargling attractive, nor drunken driving, nor jiggling rolls of suet walking around in shirts meant for a size-2 teenager. No amount of makup, tight shirts, and undersized high-heeled shoes can make someone like that attractive: it may make them -feel- attractive, but it makes everyone around them feel nauseous.
Sorry to sound like an ass, folks, but this one's a pet peeve of mine. Anyone who's ever been sat next to someone this big on an airline knows what I mean. When the Rotundimus Maximus in the next seat has spilled over and pinned you against the far arm-rest because they wouldn't buy the two seats their ass actually requires, it tends to inculcate a dim view of such people.
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