Talk:Fat men's club

FAT WOMEN'S CLUB????
These men were sexist and took women for granted did they have a fat women's club? The correct answer is no. They did not! 91.110.223.115 (talk) 05:43, 1 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Of course, everything in the world is an offence and needful of denunciation, yet factually, as one of the references says: However, female versions of fat men's clubs did exist, according to Leeworthy. He points to a Hazleton, Pa., venue whose female members weighed 236 pounds on average.


 * https://text.npr.org/469571114


 * To be honest, today is the first time ever in the history of the world I've heard of this phenomenon, 'Fat Person's Clubs'  ---  coming to it from the equally bonkers American sport of Competitive Eating  ---  but there seems no reason, apart from all men being sexist anyway, to indicate these were more so than others.  Quite considerably less so considering their gluttony and failing stamina;  PGW would have had a field day describing a Fat Men's Club Annual Race.


 * Besides, warning women to be thin sylphs would equally be wicked sexism.


 * Claverhouse (talk) 00:45, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

Wealth and fat men's clubs
, several of the already cited sources specifically highlight wealth as a component of these clubs:


 * NPR The fat men's clubs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were spectacular celebrations of the wealth and chubbiness of a bygone era.


 * HuffPost Self-proclaimed "fat men" -- wealthy, usually powerful men in major U.S. cities -- gathered together in clubs

signed,Rosguill talk 03:31, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Texas Monthly The fat men’s clubs were also not places for the impoverished or those with physically demanding jobs. These were clubs of men with enough money to sustain themselves and then some
 * Further, relating to the contested claim about perceptions of fat people, my statement from the edit summary stands: cited texas monthly source backs up this claim directly, [Cambridge] link in prior edit summary doesn't really prove or disprove anything related to fat men's clubs and attests to a range of perspectives on weight in the 19th century. signed,Rosguill talk 04:59, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The sources used such as the Texas monthly source have very little information to back up that claim that " attitudes towards male obesity were largely positive". from work such as Obesity in America, 1850-1939: A History of Social Attitudes and Treatment, The metamorphoses of fat : a history of obesity, The Culture of Male Beauty in Britain and so on claim that obesity in the gilded age was widely unpopular. Going over other sources of this wiki page also have very little sources in there articles and most of them clearly copy the other, I would highly suggest doing more reading on the subject rather than believing the first articles you see on it. Also look at the sources used in these articles as well. Wikiedit4444444 (talk) 19:55, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Generally reliable journalistic sources aren't expected or required to spell out the bases of their assertions; they aren't Wikipedia. While they can be refuted by higher quality sources, the sources you have proposed in edit summaries have not refuted, but rather further supported, the claim. Let's look at the best one IMO, from this edit, as the most recent one is an entirely unrelated article about masculinity in Nazi Germany and you haven't provided an accessible link or citation for the work you cite above:
 * In contrast to the generally negative view of “excess” body weight today, scholars note that fatness was regarded positively in the past, as it indicated either wealth or health, and often both (Green Reference Green1986; Stearns Reference Stearns1997). These accounts have been supported by research suggesting that fatness was widely valued in the nineteenth century, even becoming fashionable as an appearance ideal for women in the form of voluptuousness (Dinh Reference Dinh2012). While this bodily “plumpness” was indeed praised by the fashion world, it was also extolled by nineteenth-century physicians who associated a plump figure with good health. However, this more positive view of fatness receded at the beginning of the twentieth century, as interest in slimming techniques and weight reduction took hold (Czerniawski Reference Czerniawski2007; Schwartz Reference Schwartz1986). Spurred by a cultural fascination with efficiency and scientific management (Haber Reference Haber1964), and driven by growing anxieties over excess and abundance in US society (Schwartz Reference Schwartz1986), reducing one's weight and monitoring diet became taken-for-granted norms in the early 1900s. Thus, scholars suggest that Western societies gradually transitioned from valuing plumpness to stigmatizing fatness.
 * What troubles this historical narrative, however, are the many warnings against body fat throughout the nineteenth century. Physicians and laypeople alike wrote regularly about the unhealthy state of “corpulence,” illustrated by Banting's (Reference Banting1864) popular pamphlet, Letter on Corpulence. Such texts existed alongside numerous physician reports and medical essays praising plumpness. But, given that doctors did not regularly weigh patients or measure bodily fat in this time periodFootnote              1             (Czerniawski Reference Czerniawski2007), there is little evidence as to what these different states may have looked like. In some cases, people were proclaimed to be healthy and vibrant because they were fat, and in other cases they were proclaimed to be unhealthy and debilitated because they were fat. How these two seemingly disparate diagnoses sat side by side in the same era constitutes an interesting historical question.
 * The source presents that during the 19th century opinions of general society in the US viewed fat as a generally positive trait. Doctors, meanwhile, were only just beginning to recognize the health risks of obesity, leading to contradictory claims about health indication of obesity within the field during the time period. It in no way contradicts the claim attested by the several journalistic RS, that heavy weight was popularly (not necessarily medically) associated with positive traits (not necessarily health), including wealth in particular. signed,Rosguill talk 20:37, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * First sorry for the unrelated article on Nazi Germany it seems I accidently sent that a while back, that was for something else. Second I'm not sure you really understand the source you have just quoted, In David Hutson's article it goes over the meaning of different uses of vocabulary in the 19th century from corpulence which was seen as a negative and plumpness generally viewed more positively. When going over his article plumpness usually describes slightly over weight women babies and sometimes the old but never men, I even got in contact with David and he he stated to me "my article doesn’t make the claim that plumpness was an ideal form of male embodiment—only that it was a category through which doctors understood bodily health. The article is really just about that narrow space where embodiment and health intersect... But, your points about male embodiment are very in-line with what other scholars have also found—that it was more complicated than just equating fatness with wealth/success and assuming that was an ideal form of male embodiment." He also told me that both Green and Stearns were not the best sources to use to back up equating wealth with obesity. Finally your first point that "Generally reliable journalistic sources aren't expected or required to spell out the bases of their assertions; they aren't Wikipedia" Yes they are, if you quote something and your source is incorrect and has little sources its self to back it up, it means your source is bad and you should probably do more research. In all honesty it seems your "research" you did for this wiki page was that you clicked on the first links you saw after typing in fat men's club into your google search bar. Please in the future try your best to do more research, if you were being graded by a teacher/professor for your sources you would probably get an F. Hope this helps you out. Wikiedit4444444 (talk) 20:29, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * You can't keep restoring your same edit over objections. I'd suggest you revert your last attempt to edit war before it results in a block; the correct way to raise your objections would be to do that and then move to call an WP:RfC on this question, as the two of us seem unlikely to come to an agreement.
 * I maintain that you're barking up the wrong tree with your objections: the variety of existing perceptions of health in the 19th century does not invalidate that there existed of a popular perception that obesity represented health and wealth, especially in contrast to 21st century perspectives. In particular, your repeated removal of the perceived connection of wealth to fatness, alongside your more plausible arguments regarding health, is egregious, as none of your sources address this question at all. signed,Rosguill talk 21:21, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * In the Huff post article you cite, there is no source used to back up what you quoted in their article. Same thing in the other two of your articles you quoted. I suggest you should get in touch with these authors and ask where they got their information from for these specific claims. Wikiedit4444444 (talk) 20:13, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * First sorry for the unrelated article on Nazi Germany it seems I accidently sent that a while back, that was for something else. Second I'm not sure you really understand the source you have just quoted, In David Hutson's article it goes over the meaning of different uses of vocabulary in the 19th century from corpulence which was seen as a negative and plumpness generally viewed more positively. When going over his article plumpness usually describes slightly over weight women babies and sometimes the old but never men, I even got in contact with David and he he stated to me "my article doesn’t make the claim that plumpness was an ideal form of male embodiment—only that it was a category through which doctors understood bodily health. The article is really just about that narrow space where embodiment and health intersect... But, your points about male embodiment are very in-line with what other scholars have also found—that it was more complicated than just equating fatness with wealth/success and assuming that was an ideal form of male embodiment." He also told me that both Green and Stearns were not the best sources to use to back up equating wealth with obesity. Finally your first point that "Generally reliable journalistic sources aren't expected or required to spell out the bases of their assertions; they aren't Wikipedia" Yes they are, if you quote something and your source is incorrect and has little sources its self to back it up, it means your source is bad and you should probably do more research. In all honesty it seems your "research" you did for this wiki page was that you clicked on the first links you saw after typing in fat men's club into your google search bar. Please in the future try your best to do more research, if you were being graded by a teacher/professor for your sources you would probably get an F. Hope this helps you out. Wikiedit4444444 (talk) 20:25, 21 April 2023 (UTC)