Parted-at-birth twins discover truth...after getting married

[Illuminatus Primus]

215 lbs for an average, even tall woman, is objectively morbidly obese.

Nonetheless, there was one famous stage actress in the 1890s who reputedly weighed as much as 205lbs.

10 lbs under the upper limit of your range, and a single example? Being a contemporary sex symbol or even representative of the sexual preferences of the era is not a strict requisite of being a renown stage actress.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

10 lbs under the upper limit of your range, and a single example? Being a contemporary sex symbol or even representative of the sexual preferences of the era is not a strict requisite of being a renown stage actress.

She's portrayed that way, and she wasn't as tall as some women can get; believe me, I know, my mother's 5'9" and she's certainly not the tallest lady I've met. For some reason tall women seem much more common (well, in the caucasian population anyway) along the west coast than in the rest of the country. So someone could be of the same height/weight proportions at 215lbs if noticeably taller than Lillian Russell.

[Broomstick]

215 lbs for an average, even tall woman, is objectively morbidly obese.

Yes, but there have been many cultures where what we consider morbidly obese is attractive - it means you have enough to eat. In a man, that means he's wealthy or a good provider. In a woman, that means she's got enough body fat to get pregnant and/or survive a famine and therefore more likely to raise her children to adulthood.

Granted, there are real downsides to obesity, but for most of human history being fat was much less of a problem than the possibility of starving to death.

[Adrian Laguna]

You can't just use a person's weight to call them obese. The percentage of that weight that is actually fat is very important. A professional bodybuilder can weigh in at 250 pounds or more with only 4-6% fat, and yet a normal dude who weights the same can be generally called a lard-ass. Furthermore, the word "morbidly" has no medical meaning. I don't know about anyone else, but the phrase "morbidly obese" brings to mind a humanoid walrus. Something which, as Duchess demonstrated, is not necessarily the case.

[Illuminatus Primus]

215 lbs for an average, even tall woman, is objectively morbidly obese.

Yes, but there have been many cultures where what we consider morbidly obese is attractive - it means you have enough to eat. In a man, that means he's wealthy or a good provider. In a woman, that means she's got enough body fat to get pregnant and/or survive a famine and therefore more likely to raise her children to adulthood.

Granted, there are real downsides to obesity, but for most of human history being fat was much less of a problem than the possibility of starving to death.

Thank you for reminding me that there are exceptions to cultural rules. Its not like Duchess didn't say "any time (and implicitly, anywhere) before the last 100 years". And my point is morbid obesity is an objective health problem and generally considered unattractive in human society. Gluttony is, after all, one of the seven deadly sins.

[Illuminatus Primus]

You can't just use a person's weight to call them obese. The percentage of that weight that is actually fat is very important. A professional bodybuilder can weigh in at 250 pounds or more with only 4-6% fat, and yet a normal dude who weights the same can be generally called a lard-ass. Furthermore, the word "morbidly" has no medical meaning. I don't know about anyone else, but the phrase "morbidly obese" brings to mind a humanoid walrus. Something which, as Duchess demonstrated, is not necessarily the case.

Yes, and its not like we weren't talking about the mainstream, and the typical woman ESPECIALLY PRIOR TO MODERN DAY NUTRITION is very unlikely to be in the height and build stratum where 215 lbs would not obese. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but that has little to do with Cleopatra in any case. Not to mention that her beauty as depicted is of course unrealistic and she could very of well looked like shit, but politics is politics.

[Raw Shark]

Are you still in touch with her? You should totally find out if your suspicions are correct. I couldn't sleep unless I knew.

I am actually, but we've lived far apart for years and it'd be a weird thing to bring up out of the blue now. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't want to know for certain unless we were planning to have kids together.

[Jadeite]

I wonder how many times the twins boinked each other...

I'm surprised it took as long as it did for someone to bring that up. Personally, I wonder if any therapy is going to be needed. Finding out that the woman you've been stuffing is actually your sister (and vice versa) can't be good for the mind.

[Adrian Laguna]

I'm surprised it took as long as it did for someone to bring that up. Personally, I wonder if any therapy is going to be needed. Finding out that the woman you've been stuffing is actually your sister (and vice versa) can't be good for the mind.

Not necessarily, there are siblings who have sex with each other despite knowing about it before hand and even being raised together. I would find it more probable that having their marriage dissolved suddenly to be more emotionally damaging.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm guessing the annulment was at their request, rather than a unilateral decision of the state.

[ArmorPierce]

Some of you guys seem that the taboo against incest is a human invention. Considering that there are many primates that have the same taboo against sex, I think it is much more deeply ingrained into us.

[Zac Naloen]

I'm guessing the annulment was at their request, rather than a unilateral decision of the state.

Incest is illegal, I imagine it was forced upon them.

[Adrian Laguna]

Some of you guys seem that the taboo against incest is a human invention. Considering that there are many primates that have the same taboo against sex, I think it is much more deeply ingrained into us.

There is no way for a person to tell if someone is or isn't a family member just by looking at them. So the biological imperative is to avoid sex with people one has been raised with, as well as the people who raised one. Adopted siblings are also not attracted to each other, even though they are not blood related.

[Darth Wong]

215 lbs for an average, even tall woman, is objectively morbidly obese.

Yes, but there have been many cultures where what we consider morbidly obese is attractive - it means you have enough to eat.

Granted, there are real downsides to obesity, but for most of human history being fat was much less of a problem than the possibility of starving to death.

So? For most of human history, it was perfectly acceptable to kill people for being different, to butcher women and children after a successful invasion, or to enslave other humans. A lot of that was directly induced by the same marginal subsistence lifestyle that led to this obesity fashion you describe. And even the obesity fashion was hardly universal to such cultures despite the practical benefits of wealth; there are plenty of ancient sculptures which depict what various cultures viewed as a beautiful female form (often in a quite literal and anatomically accurate way, unlike 2D artwork), and while such women tend to be heavier than your average modern runway model, they're not morbidly obese.

I'm just a little tired of all these people who run around saying "hey, they loved fat chicks in the old days!" every time someone says that it's bad for women to make Richter-scale disturbances when they get up in the morning.

[Broomstick]

215 lbs for an average, even tall woman, is objectively morbidly obese.

Yes, but there have been many cultures where what we consider morbidly obese is attractive - it means you have enough to eat.

Granted, there are real downsides to obesity, but for most of human history being fat was much less of a problem than the possibility of starving to death.

So? For most of human history, it was perfectly acceptable to kill people for being different, to butcher women and children after a successful invasion, or to enslave other humans. A lot of that was directly induced by the same marginal subsistence lifestyle that led to this obesity fashion you describe.

I wasn't trying to make a moral judgment, just pointing out that what we value as beautiful traits may or may not have valued by other cultures and vice versa. Cleopatra may have been beautiful by our standards, or maybe not.

I'd also like to add that the statement "215 lbs for an average, even tall woman, is objectively morbidly obese." isn't quite true. A woman over 6 feet tall or taller is overweight at 215 lbs, but not "obese", much less "morbidly obese" - "objectively morbidly obese" is nonsense at that weight because you always have to take into account height and muscle development. Granted there would have been few or no women that tall in antiquity, and women will not develop as much muscle mass as a man. Using BMI, which is a flawed measure but is at least a reference point, someone 6 feet tall and 215 lbs has a BMI of 29.2 - that's overweight, NOT "obese". If our hypthetical woman is an athlete, by measures other then BMI she might not even be considered overweight.

And again, no, I don't think Cleopatra was a 6 foot tall elite athlete. I have no idea if she was beautiful or not, if her contemporaries considered her beautiful or not (certain powerful men certainly found her attractive, but having power herself and being good in bed could have overcome deficiencies of face or physical form), or if men these days would find her attractive. Unless we have some reliable information on what she actually looked like it would be impossible to say whether or not she'd be considered beautiful today.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I'd also like to add that the statement "215 lbs for an average, even tall woman, is objectively morbidly obese." isn't quite true. A woman over 6 feet tall or taller is overweight at 215 lbs, but not "obese", much less "morbidly obese" - "objectively morbidly obese" is nonsense at that weight because you always have to take into account height and muscle development. Granted there would have been few or no women that tall in antiquity, and women will not develop as much muscle mass as a man. Using BMI, which is a flawed measure but is at least a reference point, someone 6 feet tall and 215 lbs has a BMI of 29.2 - that's overweight, NOT "obese". If our hypthetical woman is an athlete, by measures other then BMI she might not even be considered overweight.

Right, because choosing "6 foot" as a benchmark when 99.6% of women (over two standard deviations above the norm) are below that height and when it just barely moves you out of the "obese" curve is really representative of "tall women", especially in the context of pre-modern societies, right? That goes beyond nitpicking.

I suppose next time you make any generalization, its totally appropriate for me to nitpick you on the basis of a 00.4% lapse in its precision.

[Broomstick]

Sure, have at it. I can hardly criticize you for being as nitpicky as I am, can I?

If you had said it was obese for a normal woman I wouldn't have quibbled

[Illuminatus Primus]

I suppose that's the way imbeciles reply when they lack substantive rebuttals.

[Broomstick]

I'm sorry you're offended by outliers

[Illuminatus Primus]

You're a nitpicking dipshit. There was simply nothing wrong about my statement, and you had to take an outlier (i.e., something which is irrelevant in a discussion about what is typical or common) to make a point. You simply moved the goalposts of the discussion to "well there may exist some person that doesn't fit your generalization so nyah!" Want a cookie for changing the goalposts to an unfalsifiable position? I think it is the default assumption is someone says "for an average, even tall woman" they do not mean "tall defined as beyond two standard deviations above the norm". Assuming that a person's generalization is specific to an abnormal degree is nitpicking. It could not possibly meaningfully apply to Cleopatra or the typical pre-modern woman. So you're a bullshitter. I do understand your need for attention though.

[Adrian Laguna]

You're a nitpicking dipshit.

So are you, given that you focused exclusively on the upper limit of the range.

[Broomstick]

I can't understand why he's getting in such an emotional lather about it.