It might be just an exception, but I've seen a striking example involving one of my acquaintances.

When she was around 30 years old, just barely a little chubby, she started to get wrinkles, and she looked somewhat older than her age.

Now she is 35 years old, and gained a lot of weight during the last few years. Her hips got significantly wider, her belly button turned into a deep crease, making her belly start to hang, but at the same time it pokes out farther forward than her quite sizeable breasts. Her face is rounder now, but without her chin getting too big to distort it, and her wrinkles disappeared.

What is interesting, is that she looks much younger now. I bet she could hang around with twenty-somethings and not stand out. If she told you that she's 25, you would probably believe her without a second thought.

I know that it's not because of my biases as a FA, because I know people who don't have similar preferences at all, but they still say how young she looks now. She is much more confident now and is happier with her life (unrelated to her weight), this might also have some effect.

Did anyone else have similar experiences? I guess it heavily depends on how one's weight is distributed. Some people might be luckier than others.

Same here, but from the other side. (FA)

My preferences did intensify over time, but not about my body. I can still get attracted to thinner women, and I was always being able to be attracted to women somewhat bigger than what I found ideal, but both my ideal and the upper limit of desirability slowly increased over time.

Long ago, my ideal was a normal-ish, slightly chubby build, and I remember a photo of a "woah, she's really fat, but I still like her" girl, forming the upper limit of my desirability back then. Looking at her photo now, she doesn't seem really large at all.

As my "preferences" intensified very slowly but surely over time, I now got to the point of looking at a blob of a woman, waddling heavily, her wide hips blocking the way, her belly not just bouncing but swaying around, one half of her butt wider than a regular person, and I can still think that just a little more weight would look good on her.

There have been several surveys in the style of "in what size range do you prefer your female partner to be?"

I observed about myself, that it depends heavily on her body shape. (another reason this question is about the size of BBWs is that females have much more varied body shapes than males)

Although weight is not the most important attribute for me, I do have preferences, weights and shapes which I find more attractive. And the ideal weight I wish for in a BBW is different for various body shapes.

- The smallest is the all-belly shape, where only her belly grows, and the rest stays mostly as if she was thin. For such a body shape, anything above chubby starts becoming too large for me.

- On the other hand, in case of the extreme pear shape, where the hips are wide and the thighs are very thick, and the upper body much smaller in comparison, the ideal size for me is already which would start creating difficulties in finding clothes, fitting through narrow places, and would almost always make her be the largest person around. however, when bumps would stat forming on her legs, that starts becoming too large for me.

- However, if the distribution of fat is perfect (think of Foxy Roxxie or BoBerry as examples, to name two famous models), everywhere, with wide hips, thick arms, huge breasts, and a belly which is huge but not out of proportion with the rest of her body, without the neck and chin becoming too fat to distort her face, the limit would be as high as possible, given she can still stand up on her own.

Also, both the upper weight limit and the ideal weight is higher if she has a double belly than if she had a single one.

Do you guys also have varied size preferences, depending on body shape? Are they similar?

That's the main point. The poor grammar and unconvincing story are all deliberate. Scientists actually examined this phenomena: microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/WhyFromNigeria.pdf

Basically, the scammers want only the most gullible to reply them. Sending out millions of such messages in bulk is very cheap. However, once someone answers them, they have to keep in contact with the victim individually, which is time-consuming and therefore expensive. If the victim then later realizes the trick (before sending money or banking information, password, etc.), the scammers wasted their time.

Therefore it's not optimal for the scammers to make the initial story very believable, because they want answers only from the most gullible and unintelligent, those who are more likely to go all the way through the whole scam.

Also, looking at the stories in the profile, it lists a lot of random stories, not only those i wrote. If I've never even opened a story, it might still be listed there.

Adding a cover image to the story removed it from the "female weight gain" list, although the keywords "female" and "weight gain" are selected.

I tried lots of combinations, but couldn't manage to make the story appear under the correct category.

A lesser annoyance is that I have to select the image again if i change something in a story's properties (which already has a cover image), otherwise the image disappears.

Being fat went in and out of fashion multiple times during human history.

As social acceptance for previously taboo things seems to become more common, I would guess being fat can become more accepted, even fashionable, even if not generally, but at least for a larger and more visible part of society. As society is becoming less monolithic, there will probably not be one single beauty standard for everyone, and being fat might be among one of the most widespread beauty standards.

However, I suspect this is only for those who still fit inside the BMI chart. Being barely able to walk, belly-to-the knees size would almost certainly never become a fashion in real life, and will remain a niché.

For all those who desire to gain a significant amount of weight (or who, in the past, intentionally gained a lot of weight):

How did this desire develop in the first place?

1. Did you always desire to be fat, as far as you can remember?

2. Did your desire appear suddenly, or in a relatively short period of time?

3. Did your desire grow slowly, from trying out a little extra weight, liking it, and going for the next "step"?

4. Did you gain unintentionally at the beginning, hated it, and later grew to accept it?

5. Did you gain unintentionally at the beginning, and liked it or at least had mixed feelings about it?

6. something else?

Yes, I don't find this implausible to happen to me. I'm not finding women with any significant mobility issues alluring, but I guess if I really was in a relationship with someone at (or growing towards) that size, this might change and my horizons would expand even further.

And as there are still a few (very few) thin or just slightly chubby women whom I can find very attractive, my horizons are really expanding and not just shifting

I observed that the size I would find ideal on a woman did grow through the years. Even though I was always attracted to women both smaller and larger than my actual "perfect" preference, that ideal did indeed grow steadily.

Are there FAs for whom this didn't happen, who had their preferences as large as they have it now for as long they can remember, or are there even FAs for whom it was the reverse, and they had larger ideals in the past?

For me, many years ago the "perfect" woman's body shape was the smallest which would still be obviously called fat, who could just no longer hide the fact she's overweight. Now it has grown to a size where one starts having to make adjustments to many things in her daily life as activities start emerging she can either no longer do or can only do it in limited ways, and where many things are no longer designed for her size. Still completely independent, but there are obvious adjustments having to be done due to her size.

I wonder if this keeps going on...