Ultimately what the author is complaining about is that fat people can’t buy clothes designed for thin people.

Why are we trying to work towards normalizing obesity instead of trying to figure out why the median is shifting to the right?

Oof, unpopular opinion there, my dude. I think it was a bit more nuanced than that, but ultimately, I agree with you… I don’t think we should be normalising obesity (in its narrowest definition - not what its definition has become). But let’s get real, buying clothes for different shapes and sizes can be painful if your body isn’t cookie cutter.

It was only slightly more nuanced than that, but I do agree with the author’s premise that lack of standardization makes buying clothes that fit well difficult.

It was when they started mentioning the statistics of how many adult women can’t wear certain sizes/brands that I realized the heart of this complaint was that too many American women are overweight.

There’s two things at play here. People who don’t give a shit about how their bodies look are less likely to be vain enough to buy designer clothes. Obese people are hard to make clothes for due to how we all store fat differently.

At the the of the day, if it were profitable, companies would adapt to the size of their customers. It’s not profitable (enough) so we get vanity sizes as a compromise.