What an honest, response and reflection this essay is!
Great points you bring up.
For me, I have a condition called lipedema which disfigures my body with fat. Although I live a strict lifestyle with diet and exercise, it can only go so far.
Oddly, 500 years ago, lipedema was considered beautiful on women, and the ideal. Women who had the condition were considered very desirable. This is interesting because my grandmother, whom I inherited the disease from, came from a very wealthy family that’s money went back over 1,000 years. Many of the women in her family had the condition, and back in the day they were chosen as wives for this wealthy family because of this condition.
I once saw ancient artifacts of early porn, and it featured women whose bodies looked like mine, very, very fat. Back then it was argued that its men’s genetics to want fatter women because it showed those women were healthy (starvation was a problem then) and didn’t need about of food to survive with extra fat.
Also, women with my body type were usually post partum. Which showed that they were capable of surviving childbirth (many women died from childbirth then), and thus healthier and less likely to die in future births and leave their men with an infant to care for alone. It was argued then it was in men’s biology to want fatter women as part of evolution.
Now it’s considered the opposite. Men are supposed to want women who are then (food is abundant) and women who appear virginal and haven’t given birth.
It is very much cultural.
In Africa, there is a history of fat camps where young girls are sent to camps where they gain weight because fat is seen as beautiful and skinny girls have less marriage prospects.
So, I’d say it’s more cultural than biological.