Body image?

plump woman were considered beautiful back in the french court of louis xiv
most if not all of his mistresses and wife were plump

Honestly, apperance is a way of gaining power. It sucks but that's more of an issue with society. Beauty standards change overtime, so like the queen said, it used to be considered beautiful. Also, in some countries it still is.

I wouldn't call her overrweight, but rather obese and honestly, it is not a plesant life. I have never been obese but I have been overweight and the back pain was a nightmare.

I do think that stories defenitively need to ahve a wider range of body sizes and heights.

Lol I've been thinking my body image a lot these days, partially cause I'm self concious, but also precisely as you described it. Image is a powerful tool (and it would definitely help me GET A JOB!!!!!)
Yeah, she is obese, but I say overweight to include those who are not obese but still considered on the larger side. As I said I don't mind the MC losing weight for health reasons, but

Oops. I accidentally submitted it.
Anyways, my issue is that these characters in manga who lose weight don't lose weight for the right reasons but do it for rather vain ones like beauty. But the horrible thing is you can be a bit chubby and be in a safe weight range, but do we really see such characters? NO, cause they HAVE to be skinny to get someone else's attention, whi h I really hate in romance as it implies a shallow relationship if the guy values looks over personality more.

Honestly in my opinion being beautiful is being healthy and confident (and also intelligence/food conversation but thats a personal preference that look in a guy i want to date)
confidence makes you beautiful obviously appearance too but it’s important to love yourself
obesity like anotexia is a problem society now is not acknowledging and is hiding it behind body positivity
health is what makes us live longer and happier it boost our confidence and makes us smile
and also healthy doesn’t mean skinny, i’ve read recently that skinny people can get diabetes and other problems since they think having a fast metabolism means they can eat anything and stay healthy but they are wrong
healthy means exercises and eating well
plus we are all born in different body shapes and sizes and it’s good that everyone is acknowledging it and is making efforts to include everyone
thats why different clothes suits different bodies not everyone can wear
but i wish like Exploit said that the MCs in mangas and manhwas should stop losing weight for the wrong reasons and promoting bad dietary habits
the probably good one that shows us a somewhat acceptable MC that loses weight is the one from “i’ll save this damned family” since it doesn’t show her starving herself plus she indulges in sweets and does exercises and loses weight for i think the good reaons i don’t really remember or because she wants a job not sure anymore
but anyways (ok i lost my train of thoughts here) so i wanted to say that we are all beautiful and we should be confident be healthy and to be surrounded by people with positive energy that don’t put you down (like a shit friend or boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever) (i think i wanted to say something else but since i type/talk alot i’ll stop here)

It's a very good topic to think about especially since it's very relevant to everyday life.

Personally, I have been making many positive life changes since quarantine began and along the way, I got into 2 communities that go against each other in many ways. I got into the fitness community and into the body positivity community (although I'm body neutral.) And I think that both groups have brought a positive influence into my life. I ended up making positive life changes and I also got to understand how other people think more. Personally, I have never paid much attention to appearance. This might be partly because I was never into the typical stuff a lot of people are into (celebrities, TV shows, magazines, advertising) so I think have avoided the many negative influences that play a huge role in how people perceive themselves. Personality-wise, I'm very good at not acting about what other people think, and from a young age, I had to learn how to deal with people who try to be rude/mean towards me so I'm very resilient. My mother never made comments about my appearance (except at prom, she was very rude cuz I was bigger at the time and she was projecting her insecurities on me.)

So to me, my self-worth has never been connected to my appearance. However, after reflecting on my life, I realized how differently people have treated me during the different points of my life, and it correlated with my appearance (mainly body weight.) I moved around a lot so I'm talking about how different people treated me. When I was conventionally attractive, people wanted to talk to me and to be friends with me. However, when I became bigger, society and people tended to choose to ignore me. I actually prefer that because (no offense to anyone else) but spending time with other people isn't very stimulating to me and I get a lot more enjoyment out of doing things by myself. The only exceptions to this are video essays because they are well written and I get to hear new interesting points of view.

During quarantine, I choose to start using weight. This was mainly because college messed up my relationship with food a lot. I was too busy to eat between 5 am-5 pm. So when I got back home I was insanely hungry and sometimes I ended up having no control over what/how much I ate (binging.) That was neither good nor healthy, it helped me maintain my body weight, however as soon as Covid started, I was free to eat whenever and my weight ended up going up like crazy. I continued being active (I always walk places and yes that's a good valid form of exercise.) However, despite being active, I ended up getting back pain ( sharp, painful, horrible - it felt like getting stabbed and it affected my movement a lot because if I moved wrongly, the pain would occur.) That was very bad and losing weight fixed the issue. However, I continued, I didn't stop. I took long breaks because to me while losing weight is an advantage (because I want the privileges) that come along with it (I'm anti-social, will need to work in groups when I go to university so people wanting to work with me would be an advantage that could help me further my education.) However, since to me my weight and self-worth are separate concepts, my desire to lose weight is minimal. It's motivated by the need to gain advantages, by the desire to be productive (how I eat and my productivity correlate), and my overall desire to reach a healthy eating routine that helps me maintain my weight. I'm just letting you know this so you get a better idea of me and where I'm coming from.

Ok so anyway, I like essays, I am interested in this topic and I have learned the following/intresting stuff that might be simple but it's worth remembering:
-Pretty privilege is fleeting and if you don't have the personality and social skills to back it up, people will get bored with you.
-If people are friends with you based on appearance, they will stab you in your back. Your friendship will be weak.
-We live in a society that teaches us what beauty means. This affects our self-perception.
-Society is cruel, and it is wrong in many ways.
-Beauty standards tend to be ethnocentric.
-There are a lot of people who straight-up hate on people because of body weight.
-So this isn't exactly about appearance and self-perception but in general, we as humans have the tendency to hurt other people (not often, but too often, it's a lot like retribution.) This is a general statement but for some reason, we have the desire to get back at people who are mean/rude/say something we don't like. It's normal and everyone does it but it's so unproductive. This is super hard to change and it took me years to realize but it's so obvious.
-While getting advantages is good, it's important that we maintain ourselves. For me, weight is not a part of my identity therefore changing it makes little difference. However other things such as my clothing style (which I have only started embracing recently) is a part of my identity and it is important to me. I dress unusually so it's a disadvantage because I don't fit into the norm however, that's ok with me, I shall take that disadvantage on because who I am as a person is the most important thing to me, and in this case, my outwards appearance is a part of that.
-A lot of fitness models and bodybuilders are extremely unhealthy.
-Diet culture promotes ways of losing weight that are harmful and insanely hard, this means that people fail and try something new. This is done on purpose so they get more money.
-Life changes that we enjoy are far better than diets and unlike diets, they are effective.
-A lot of people are very shallow.
-Our bodies are only vessels however, they are also the only vessels we have which is why we should do our best to be healthy.
-This doesn't get talked about enough but: You don't need to lose/gain weight, your psychological well-being is an important factor that will determine whenever you're successful at it (I'm not referring to something like someone being "weak" mentally, but I'm referring to the fact that we are human beings with emotions and we can be in places where all our energy is being sucked up by other things.)
-Enjoyable body movement and a healthy way of eating will positively impact your physical and psychological wellbeing.
-We need a wider variety of closing sizes and more representation.
-We have the power to make social change happen. I call it the power of the individual. Personally, I live my life in a way that I enjoy even if that breaks social norms. It makes being different more normal and I believe this to be something we should all do if we can. I think that it helps people, it helped me. If we lack representation in the media, having real-life representation will be helpful. A bit off-topic but I remember taking part in "NCS the challenge" and during that program, I met a lot of people, one of them was this conventionally attractive skinny pretty popular girl (good personality, nice and neither mean nor rude, she was one of my roommates and she was one of them rare ppl who did not judge based on appearance) and the thing about herself was that she was proudly and outwardly bi sexual. Sure, being LGBTQ+ is far more accepted nowadays, but in my experience, it is something that I need to hide. I live in the UK, in the 21st century, my mother who neither goes to church and who isn't pro-life, believes that women can work, etc. calls homosexuality a mental illness. She made it very clear that she would kick me out if I was gay (I am, but she shall not know.) While I was in high school (it was one of my pretty life periods), a lot of people thought that I was lesbian. My friends didn't unfriend me so I thought that they were safe/good, that they would be ok with me. So I decided to tell them that I was Bi (had to pretend I was straight for years so I was trying to lessen the surprise) and let's just say that my assumption that they weren't homophobic was extremely wrong. So for me, seeing someone be outwardly not straight was a rare occurrence and frankly, it was wonderful. Seeing a representation of yourself can make you feel safer/freer to be you.
-Also, you should wear clothes you enjoy regardless of size.
-Society values us being neither too small or too big over our health.

Some interesting videos (some that I agree with a lot, some that I somewhat agree with, some that I somewhat disagree with), if you're bored and want to waste some time, you could give some of them a watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6FWZ-TpkFI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44Vh_w_Qb1A (animated series, pretty good IMO, it's mainly a fun series with some messages)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOlMsY-sr4M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV96Msiallg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToytFyfwSMg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzYkUmk0PWw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcIy_yrSADw&t=80s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nAoIRBLzoc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9mspMJTNEY&t=4s

I 100% agree with ya that we need more representation of different body sizes

I think that this story will focus on health, cuz in her skinny sick body that has some illness she said " a healthy body." It's hard to tell yet, but there is hope.

I remember reading this one other manga that also made it about health (forgot the title cuz I have read so much) so that was very great to see.

sorry for the essay