UK Lingerie Brand Launches Campaign to Honor Fuller Figured Women

My comparison is based on people I knew working out, because we would have a weigh in and open discussion of people's weight, a setting that removes any guesswork on people's weight. This tended to include two groups of people, those ~15-30 lbs overweight, and those much closer to 100 lb overweight. At the same time I have some relatives that are really into running and attending big events, yet end up with a body shape outside of "normal," despite hitting healthy numbers. I don't think there is much more that can be said, and too much might have already been said as part of the problem is trying to make assumptions based on looks.

And I don't think reminding people that one can be overweight and still look like a normal person is encouraging unhealthy behavior. A big issue seems to be that discussions and thoughts about being overweight is 90+% not about health, but about a whole lot of other baggage based on people's assumptions or judgements. While people come in a continuum, a lot of things, like clothing, creates a divide, sometimes quite artificially. This destroys people's ability to approach it as a health problem, and instead focuses on a bunch of other fickle stuff that can make it much harder.

I also have people I care about that deal with being overweight, and I've watched the accumulation of psychological damage that has thrown up additional barriers. I've watched people make changes that would have big, positive impact on their health, only to have others tell them, sometimes quite explicitly, that they've changed nothing and wasted effort. Unfortunately, a lot of it stems from making assumptions, much like arguing over the weight of people from a picture...

And yes, I will admit that part of the reason I may be biased toward being against the celebration of unhealthily overweight individuals is due to the presence in my life of several people who are battling with that very thing.

I just don't appreciate the idea that we'd be clearly saying the VS ad women are unhealthy and not see that most of the supposedly full figured women shown in the other ad are equally unhealthy.

My mother was 250 lbs overweight at one point (she's been working hard to lose it since she was diagnosed with diabetes), and she looked quite similar to #3 and #6 from the left. Only difference is the waistline on #6, but she clearly wears her weight lower (on the hips) than my mother, who wore it higher (on her belly). That's a common discrepancy, but having something that appears to be a waistline doesn't mean one is a healthy weight. I don't think it's far fetched at all to suppose that those two in particular are at least 100 lbs overweight. I feel I'm going easy on that estimation, given how they compare to someone at 250 lbs overweight.

My wife is currently battling with being overweight. She's only 30 lbs over the upper limit of healthy, and she looks similar to about half of the rest of the pack up there.

The three on the far right are the only ones that look healthy. Maybe the redhead in the center as well, but it's harder to tell since only her one leg is really visible (she's twisted around, and her arm, hair, and shadow cover her midsection). The one on the far right "might" be labelled overweight, but only due to muscle mass, as she has clearly taken time to build more muscle tone than an average woman would. So she may be technically overweight on a pure numbers measurement, but she'd still be called healthy by any doctor worth anything.

I agree that a lot of people don't have an idea of what a healthy weight looks like. I think you're one of them, and you're ignoring obvious features that support the idea that, with the exception of maybe two or three, the majority of the women shown here are just as unhealthy as the ones in the Victoria Secret ad.

Maybe the problem is that so many countries, like the US, are more than 50% overweight among the population, so that people are starting to get used to seeing overweight as the norm. That scares me, but it makes sense that such a thing might happen.

I'm sorry, but none of those look anywhere even close to 100+ pounds overweight.

I'm not the greatest at estimating a person's weight, but from the people I've worked out with in the past, a woman even ~40 lb overweight would have trouble looking like a person in the photo unless they were contorting themselves and holding their breath. At the same time, I've know some woman that were quite active, were clearly within the healthy weight range, and still had trouble finding decent selection of clothes.

I think too many people don't even have an idea of what is a reasonable weight from looks.