Is Obesity A Disqualifier for Sartiorialism? A Poll

I don't believe so, although trimming off fat does help, in my opinion.

I seem to recall that the rule of leaving one's bottom button undone on the jacket originated as an expression of solidarity with King Edward VII. Time was when you skinny plebs showed us generously-endowed chaps a bit more respect.

At first I thought absolutely not. With people like Winston here in mind. But Winston was not obese... People that are overweight have no problem looking very good still, but try to imagine a 500 lb dude looking sartorially acceptable. Much harder to do, not impossible, but close to it IMO.

i think if your young and overweight its pretty hard to look really GOOD. like where people will stop and go wow you look good. i think if youre older you can be overweight and pull off things better than if you were young.

By one measure, an obese person has a BMI > 30. Winnie was 5' 8", so he would have been obese at any weight above 196 pounds. Without knowing for sure, I think all the pictures I've seen of him in later life would suggest he was well above that.

I submit for your consideration, the great (pun intended) Jackie Gleason...Savile Row suits and all.



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Very well. The statistical definition of obese allows for people to still present themselves well while still being defined as obese. But there is a tipping point where ones weight must become an issue.

But as pictured with Gleason, who was considerably larger than Winnie, confidence certainly has its place because he looks mighty good and imposing.

Obese people are sort of automatically disqaulified from being attractive but I suppose they can be stylish.

I'll actually take the unpopular side here, and say yes it does disqualify someone from sartorialism. I'm not talking about people who are slightly overweight, but once a person is sufficiently over around 20-30 pounds overweight it becomes an issue. Before writing your angry responses (as I'm sure are being crafted) hear me out on this. So much of it involves taking good care of yourself and investing in very expensive clothes. Now, with someone who is considerably overweight the two are intrinsically tied. If someone who is quite overweight is spending thousands of dollars on an expensive wardrobe (which I'm assuming is meant to fit his current body type) what he is saying among other things is "I don't plan on changing, I don't plan on losing weight or living a healthier life." It's this sense of resigning onesself to a fate. Aside from that, there is just the "fat stigma" that exists in our societies. The overweight body type is (somewhat rightfully) looked at as undesirable, thus in a way hurting personal style regardless of clothes. I'm not saying that overweight people can't dress well, but there's a real ceiling to how good they can look, due to society's obvious judgments. Who am I to judge though? Perhaps being obese makes a person have to try harder, work harder on outfits and thus look even better (clothing-wise) simply to compete. I'm not sure about my real feelings because if you were to disqualify someone for being obese then why not disqualify someone for being ugly? It's tough to really draw a line, I think a fair amount of people on this forum (not everybody, please don't jump all over me for this) got as into clothing as they are because they are insecure in their appearance, while many others are extremely secure in their appearance and feel they deserve the best. So to summarize, I really don't know, what I do know is that I took a sleeping pill a few hours ago and will chalk this semi-coherent ramble up to that.

That's your definition. I've yet to see sartorialism defined as "taking good care of yourself".

I don't think your definition encompasses it all.

Actually one could argue that dressing well is an excellent way to disguise weight problems and certainly a much better way to do so than dressing poorly.

I tend to think that a heavy man in a well-fitted suit still looks quite good and may even project the image of power, whereas that same man in an ill-fitting shirt and pants would just come off as fat and sloppy.

+1 +1

If you are young it is difficult to look good when you are fat because you aren't supposed to be fat when you are young. People tend to gain weight later on but that can go hand in hand with looking distinguished.

no