See, buddy, there's this thing called "manners". Do try to look it up sometime, okay?

It might also help if the Powers That Be didn't move the BMI whenever it struck them as convenient.

BMI is an laughably terrible measure of whether or not someone is at a healthy weight. Among numerous issues, BMI doesn't take into account the fact that muscle is pretty damn heavy, nor that there's many different builds that can be seen at any height. There are far more appropriate and accurate ways to determine whether someone is overweight; that is, ones that actually measure your body fat (shocking, I know). Many (obviously not all, but still) people that would be considered "overweight" based on BMI alone are actually well within the healthy range for body fat percentage.

Does Mae Whitman (in her roles on Arrested Development and the Scott Pilgrim movie, at least) count?

Has there been much talk about the actress or her characters being fat, either in the series/movie or by the fandom? If so definitely. If not then no.

Okay, so apparently there's a war on because of the whole 'Hollywood Pudgy' deal. It's true, BMI isn't 100% accurate, and the media, for some reason, is afraid of actually using fat people to portray fat people. However, this trope isn't about actual fatasses. It's about people with stockier builds being labeled as supposedly 'fat' when in reality they're at a pretty healthy weight.

I'm technically considered 'skinny' if not downright 'boney,' but I'm not sure if Hollywood would say I'm actually fat. The way TV, magazines, etc portray 'fat' and 'thin' is one of the main reasons why so many teens develope eating disorders.

No, you've got a valid point. :) I think at some point this has to become a Subjective Trope, and while editors are good about removing the more extreme statements, if you find any bias still lurking, pls by all means remove to this page and let the community take a look.

Thank you for saying what I was thinking. It's not too bad, but it seems to have a bite to it. That's all.

Why do people think a person can be either skinny or flabby? Ever heard of a thing called "athletic figure"? Only strong and fit body can be beautiful.

Might want to watch it there with the absolute declarations, buddy.

There should be no mention of YMMV anywhere on a main page. It just invites natter, flame wars, and talking in the main page. If you think there are examples that don't fit, post them on the discussion page and give a reason. Don't post weasel words on the main page.

The issue is that it's inherently ambiguous, and given the subject matter, you are always going to have arguments and different boundries.

Now this doesn't make the article useless, but I am not going to go through and tag a third of the examples as useless (which talking honestly is about what I'd need to strip out of the piece), and then get into long arguments over every single one. Someone will draw the line looser then me, some tighter - but either we set some guidelines which will leave out valid examples, or draw it so loose as to be meaningless (say 'No one over 300lbs!'), or we point out that this is inherently open to differing opinions.

Because either you do that, you shunt it over to 'subjective', or you leave it as is and re-title it 'fat acceptance'.

Edit: I would be opposed to putting it in subjective because I think it can be salvaged rather then it being left to die.

Sandor, would you please be specific about at at least a few of the examples you have in mind? This conversation would, I think, be more productive if we could get a more concrete idea of what you mean.

Why it's another America hater! Are you sure you're not doing it just to seem "Cool" and "Edgy"?

DO EET!!!

Yes, if you feel the page can be cleaned up to be more neutral, go for it. Although mirr1 overstates the case a bit above, this trope is supposed to be about the abnormal: how in Hollywood's worldview really thin people can be pudgy. On the other hand, merely preferring people to be in shape — even assuming that fit, healthy bodies may be more appealing on several levels than the results of laziness/bad habits/self-indulgence — is not wrong.

There's the whole Bridget Jones thing, where British and American values clashed; to look plausible as a British thirtysomething, Renée Zelwegger had to put on two and a half stone (and whoo boy, there's another little difference... that's about thirty pounds to Americans). The point is, to British eyes she did not look "fat" at all - she was pretty hot, her face and figure looked right. Even if in the film she persisted in weighing herself in American units, which after all the effort spent in making RZ convincingly British was a letdown. British women would say they are nine stone ten, for instance, not a hundred and thirty-six pounds).

The character in the film who said men like an arse they can park a bike in and thighs they can grab hold of was enunciating a basic truth. We can export Kate Moss, agree she looks good in theory, give her a bye for being in a trade calling for professional anorexics, and then point out that "emaciated stick insect" is not how we like our women to look. In the film "Bridget Jones", RZ slims down to her target weight - something which would only just be acceptable to Americans - and is tolds by a room full of Brits she's over-done it and taken too much off.

I hear she had to slim down to anorexic stick insect on her return to the USA. And that's a hell of a shame.

It makes you wonder how the voluptuous actresses of old, like Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, might fare in the modern Hollywood.... my suspicion is that they'd be overlooked and told to lose a lot of weight.