General

So, the other day I was rereading ‘The English Assassin’ by Michael Moorcock. I haven’t read it in about thirty years so wanted to see how it had fared. Anyway, that’s by the by, what struck me was a brief passage where two of the characters, who are both supposed to be quite to very fat, end up in bed together. They are described as having a combined weight of 380 lbs. I did something of a double take when I read this as this doesn’t seem to me to be particularly heavy for one person, let alone two!

I guess what it made me realise is that back in the 70s, when the book was written, the percentage of fat people out there was probably a lot lower. Also, what people considered to be very overweight was a lot different to where it is now. Even from my first time visiting FF way back in the mists of time when it was VERY pink (iykyk!), people showing themselves off at 380+ lbs was relatively rare.

I guess where I’m going with this is probably something a lot of folk have realised over the years is that my perspective of what I consider to be big/fat has changed over the years. What at one point was a rarity now seems quite ordinary. Not very interesting, I know, but I just wanted to share,

That's crazy.

A combined weight of 380 would make both parties about 190. There's no mention of their heights, but most fictional men during this time would have been about 6 feet. That gives each man a BMI of 25.8 - merely overweight. And on the low end of overweight at that.

You would have to be pretty short - 5'5" approximately - before you enter class 1 obesity. So it then begs the question of what the author considers very fat.

I wasn't alive then, so I can't say with certainty, but I've read about how historically fatness has been treated.....I guess it is going up, but very fat people have always existed, at much more than 190lbs, and been a part of art and culture. Before health insurance and BMI in the states especially, fatphobia existed, but nothing like what we see now, as I understand it (by medicalizing & classifying it as a disease as opposed to bodily variation).
My guess for the 1970s would be either a. the author does not understand the weights at which people are commonly seen as "very fat" (which is still a problem now. I see fics online treating 300 as if it were 500-600 lbs) ,or b. doesn't understand the measurements well, maybe he was more accustomed to metric? Also, in the 90s in the states, BMI was shifted to categorize even less people as "normal" weights- many became classified as "overweight" or "obese" literally overnight, so 190lbs would probably, at least medically, considered even less fat in the 70s.
While perhaps much less common, I just don't buy that very fat people were so exceedingly rare unless you go back in to a time, place, and group where starvation is commonplace (and even then, you will have outliers in a large enough group if any of them are not actively starving, because fatness is partially just genetics).
If you look at the visual art made across history and cultures, fat and very fat people are represented throughout. (There is also a racial element to this- fatness became associated as a negative characteristic alongside being associated as a black characteristic specifically. sabrina strings' "fearing the black body" talks about this development in detail. really interesting read especially in light of how all forms of fat sexuality are seen as deviant/inherently kinky.)
(Also also, while not a problem, I think 5'5 as very short is a little funny- I'm 5'4 and have met tons of people shorter than me, so I usually don't consider myself all that short. But I guess it just depends on the people you're around unless you're looking statistically, and it's not a bad thing, just perspective.)

I'm impressed you know about the anti-black roots of modern fat phobia. Not many people know that fatness was more accepted in western culture until it was tired to racist stereotypes about black people.

to be fat in up until the modern day, like as late as mid 20th century meant you were either a priest or a noble no one else could have maintained a caloric surplus, food was scarce and when it was present it wasnt very much, unless of course you were a noble.