You think there really is more obesity?

Well, so, Christmas came late for us. My family was a bit scattered, celebrating with in-laws and grandchildren in one case and creating a home-like environment for local jazz musicians in another. It was the morning after our Xmas that my brother railed against processed foods. It was the cause of mass obesity in the United States!

I disagreed. "Look at Tarzan," I told him. Johnny Weissmuller gradually getting flabbier. Or Elmo Lincoln, the fat guy who was the first movie Tarzan, (actually the second or third Tarzan since baby Tarzan and pre-teen Tarzan appeared in the same movie before him.) Lincoln really was an ape man, I told them. They had to shave his body hair for the movie.

Then there was the old serial Darkest Africa featuring chubby Manuel King as Baru the Jungle Boy.

Are people really more obese now, or were fat people considered healthy-looking back then? Women were more curvaceous up until the British Invasion. British youth, rendered dangerously thin by wartime rationing that continued into the 1950s, came to the US and people wanted to be willowy like them. But there was a time when big fat guys looked strong.

via GIPHY

By the way, they've started a new thing to make actors look more muscular. They discovered that, rather than making them build up more muscle, it was easier to get them to lose body fat. They're no more muscular than they used to be, but now they look sinewy and all their muscles are visible.

Look at old pictures of Charles Atlas. He didn't even have visible stomach muscles. It's because he wasn't some kind of freak with no body fat.