[tcwdddvf] Fat shaming

The conventional logic about fat shaming is that fatness signifies someone who doesn't care about his or her personal appearance.  But there is a critical assumption underlying this logic, often not explicitly stated: for certain social classes, personal appearance matters a lot, but for other classes, usually lower classes, personal appearance matters less.  Being fat signifies membership in those lower classes.  The act of shaming, or its threat, keeps the classes segregated.

This model, that fat shaming is a symptom of social class conflict, could explain why there are so few plus-sized fashion models.  The original question was this: People are of many shapes and sizes, buying clothing for themselves (as a population).  One would expect that market forces would cause the shapes and sizes of fashion models to reflect the shapes and sizes of the population, because people want to know how clothing will look on themselves.  Why is it not?

Marketing dollars spent on fashion models are only worth it if the target demographic cares enough about personal appearance, and is wealthy enough to pay the markup that is induced by the cost of marketing.  The lower classes are neither of these things.

Free market economics is unforgiving when one producer believes in a lie; a competing producer will take advantage of knowing more accurate, true, information about consumer demand.  Assuming this model is correct, then it truly is the case that fat people have been a demographic toward which marketing by clothing producers has not been worth it.

(Originally I thought of another hypothesis: if fat people are untouchable for producers for some other reason than economics, then creating goods for them could poison the producer's brand, cheapening their entire product line.  However, even if true, the producer can easily avoid this by establishing separate brands for fat and thin people.  They do similar brand segregation all the time.)

Hypothesize that not becoming fat is a result of habits inculcated (by means like fat shaming) from a very early age, habits that some social classes do and others do not, which is the reason being fat is an accurate marker of social class (though being thin is not).  Furthermore, because of the body's powerful homeostasis mechanism to maintain weight, this marker of social class, much like skin color, cannot be easily hidden or disguised, explaining why society so powerfully fixates on weight to judge people.

It might be that the demographics of who is fat, a.k.a., the obesity epidemic, is changing for exogenous reasons (maybe a change among gut bacteria which don't discriminate by social class).  If so, this model predicts that we will see more plus-sized models.

The fat acceptance movement will have seemingly succeeded, but the underlying class conflict would persist.