Ideals change throughout history.

Look at ideal before and after that period of time and outside that particular geographic region.

OK.

Women with the present 'ideal' female figure wouldn't have lasted a week throughout most of history in most geographic regions. As to art, you will find most depictions of women from the early Greek to early modernity to be considerably more sturdy than today's ideal. What we find "chubby" today in fact signalled health and most importantly fitness for work back then — and the prospect of giving birth to many healthy children to boot.

We have a problem with obesity in our society, certainly, but it's largely unrelated to the topic at hand.

With women, the shaming begins much earlier than actual health problems. Bringing up the "BBW" as an extreme shows where the discussion is dragged into the unreasonable. As a matter of fact, porn has diversified a whole lot more and takes quite different preferences into account. Vary the search terms and you find a heap of variety south of skinny. This is not a black & white issue. There is, for starters, hardly anything unhealthy about what we consider "plus size" models today.

"Fat" lies in the eye of the beholder. We all have body fat. Quite an interestingly high percentage of it.

actually it also lies in BMI

It irritates me that they're called 'restrooms'
"sorry mate, were you next for the urinal? I didn't mean to cut in..."
"Oh, no, no, I just came here for a rest"

There is a difference between the ideal and the normal. The ideal is just a fantasy. However, there is a normal and when I talk about fat people I mean people beyond the healthy normal. Just google fat activist. That's not "chubby" anymore, it is obese.

Oh how about

Drive on the Parkway
&
Park in the Driveway
=P

Fat chicks are criminally underrated.

Neither seems fat to me, curvy maybe but not fat. When I see others mention fat in this thread I believe they mean morbidly obese. A BMI of 40+ means you have trouble walking and breathing. It's a very serious medical condition and it will kill you.

While I think calling someone a landwhale is unnecessarily rude, it doesn't change the fact that someone morbidly obese needs to lose weight. Not treating it is like ignoring cancer - a very bad idea in general.

^^
+1!

About this whole 'Tim Schafer mocked minorities' thing I'm sorry but no, just no!
Tim has been on the writing team of some of the funniest games in gaming history and I think his biggest crime was that his joke was just plain not funny - is he the Kevin Smith of gaming - burnt out and failing to live up to his potential? They certainly LOOK similar
Also he seemed a bit dickish for doing it and was stirring a pot that had been stirred way too much already

But NO to the whole 'minorities' thing - look at it this way: If Sarah Palin started a pro-life group called 'Mother's Against Abortion' and got high-level, high-profile support from certain ethnic minority groups that have gained quite the reputation for being more than a tad conservative of late, it's like if a white, middle-class, male pro-choicer couldn't call them out for anything without pro-lifers going
"Shocking! Did you see how that white guy disrespected the views of that group for women and minorities, because its not ABOUT abortion anymore, its about their views and opinions being white-washed and belittled!"
No, no, it's still totally about abortion

In fact, if anything, it really just serves to highlight the fact that GGer point to #NotYourShield to add supposed legitimacy to their cause and use them as a sort of, well... SHIELD!

Dammit!

NotYourShield formed itself as a direct response to the accusations of every gamer being a white male nerd. It was not formed by another entity for publicity. Tim Schafer directly went for NotYourShield and implied they were all sock puppets. And finally, NotYourShield is a subset of GamerGate.

Also, don't use terms like "certain ethnic minority" in an international forum. I don't live in the USA, I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.

Nor do I...
*edit* Live in the USA, I mean, I know what *I* mean, it'd be weird if I didn't!

Ah he only IMPLIED that
But yeah for the other thing - see the Kevin Smith comparison...

I guess that is what "fat is in the eye of the beholder" means. There are people who call i.e. Adele or Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones fat or Roseanne. Hell some people would even consider Marilyn Monroe fat by today's standards. And those are the people most vocally declaring that fat equals ugly.

Obesity that borders to the pathological, that is a sickness, is a whole different cup of tea - just like the opposite - excessive skinniness. And it should of course be treated. But statements like will drive some people who already have problems with themselves further down their road:
- I'm depressed that I'm fat - I need chocolate.
- I fear I could be fat - anorexia ftw.