Cultures from the ancient Greeks and ancient Egyptians onward have sometimes considered being overweight, not ideal,

and in some cases even considered it to be a medical condition. But it wasn't until the 17th century

that it became viewed, in some circles at least, as a kind of social disease, something that

we need to address, as opposed to just a trait born by some people and not by others.

People of different weights existed for all different sorts of reasons,

and in some cases it was associated with wealth and royalty,

and thus celebrated, and romanticized, and even sexualized.

And in other cases it was the opposite, associated with maladies, physical imperfection,

laziness, sloth, and even illness or disease.

Most cultures have probably fit somewhere between these extremes, considering obesity

to be a generally neutral sort of thing, though perhaps rocking back and forth on extreme

versions of it. The same as a culture might sometimes view extreme thinness as aesthetically pleasing,

and sometimes consider it to be not attractive, or even to be some kind of horrible affliction.

The Oxford English Dictionary's first documented usage of the term obesity comes from 1611, the term derived from a Latin

originator word, Obesidas, which means stout, fat, or plump.

This term didn't become medicalized until later, though.

In its modern incarnation, the term obesity is usually differentiated from terms like fat

by presumed objectivity.

To call someone fat is to make a subjective judgment,

comparing them sometimes unfavorably, sometimes morally, neutrally,

to other people you know, or perhaps yourself,

in terms of weight or visual bigness,

...