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Comment by belZaah | Hacker News Reader

What ticks me off in this is the statement, that a certain body shape is “unattainable for most”. I’m pretty sure the author does not have the data to back this up. Difficult? Yes. Requiring commitment? Absolutely. Unattainable? No. I really don’t care what body shape anyone is comfortable with. But as someone, who has struggled hard all his life not to be obese, I find it irresponsible to outright declare something that’s absolutely doable by anyone as “unattainable”. Being able to attain it might be someone’s only hope and it’s just wrong to take it away.

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You're wrong. They even explicitly call out that it's not about weight. Everyone has different proportions.

> Once I compared my personalized sloper to commercial patterns and retail garments, I had a revelation: clothes were never made to fit bodies like mine. It didn’t matter how much weight I gained or lost, whether I contorted my body or tried to buy my way into styles that “flatter” my silhouette, there was no chance that clothes would ever fit perfectly on their own. Finally I understood why.

Later they show how J.Crew has a certain ration between hip/waist for all sizes. Even if you had the same sized waist, chances are you wouldn't have the same sized hips as they expect. Most bodies just aren't that shape.

Body shape is not only about obesity, or fat, and I think it's obvious the author don't talk about this when speaking of body shape.

Maybe, but for sure the range of total size would be very different if everyone in the study was in shape.

It'd be interesting to see this study repeated after a decade of GLP-1 drugs being available (and cheaper).

Not sure. That level of size variance where the median falls off the middle seems to indicate a large extent of obese people.

The distribution in Japan would be very different.

There is the fundamental thing of skeletal structure and build though - people naturally are entirely different shapes, regardless of fat or excess weight, wich is what the comment is mostly referring to in my eyes.

I'm built very tall and very spindly, so there are certain body shapes that I will never have (or want, but that's a different question) purely from the point of view that my body just isn't the right base shape to produce them.

True but nobody changes shape fundamentally after puberty. The only change is fat and, to a much smaller extent, muscle (not including anabolic steroid use).

It's not just about that, though. Have you looked at many women's bodies? Some are almost like men: broad shoulders, narrow hips. Some are like boys: narrow everything. There are "hourglass" shapes, "pear" shapes, big boobs... so many different shapes.

It might be possible to have a one-dimensional sizing scale for men's clothing, but it seems impossible for women's. There's at least 3 or 4 dimensions that are independent and nothing to do with being fat.

It's true, everyone can be not fat. But I don't blame people for this. I blame fast food and us not cracking down on food addiction as a society.

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