Society has doubled back on its advances. If you look at pictures of people from the early 20th century, most people were pretty worn out by 40, absolutely ruined by 65. The current fatass generation will sit on their asses and eat their way to being more crippled than some piss poor farmer or dock worker who shoveled shit for 50 years.
Yeah, you're right. I never forget that while I was safely in school at eleven years old, my grandmother was ripped out of class and made to work in a cotton mill to help support her family. Even so, she lived until 90, in decent health for most of it too, because she wasn't an over-indulgent, stupid piece of shit whose only focus was stuffing her maw with sugar and grease 6 times a day and bent on excusing her every flaw with some fatuous political pseudo-theology learned from super-expensive college courses that would keep her in debt her entire life. What issues she had were from poor healthcare in the early 20th century, poorer nutrition. She had a family history that moderns would use to justify every addiction and 'poor me' behavior too, but didn't because working class women were tougher than that back then, the social expectations were way higher than this age where the response to every hardship is to mollify one's emotions with food or substances. But she like most of her contemporaries, cared what she looked like. She presented herself with care and self-respect. She dressed as well as she could. Kept a decent figure. Knew how to cook decent meals from very little. Compare and contrast with these modern slobs given everything ... argh.
Modern body horror isn't from a hard life, it's from perpetual over-indulgence and being pandered to in the worst ways from an early age and as such, it's inexcusable. People throw words like 'food addiction' around to excuse it, but it all comes down to one thing - indulgence, on every level. Gluttony. People like Corissa have everything they need - access to good foods, cooking facilities, nice housing (the spaces she and J have would be considered a palace by old standards where entire working class families lived in one room), endless leisure time to take care of themselves, a plethora of affordable and advanced skincare, access to gyms and sports facilities, trainers, the joys of modern contraception, modern healthcare in all its amazing abilities - all the things our ancestors 100 years ago never had or could dream of - to ensure they can be healthy and fit and look nice all their youth and well into later life if they choose.
They don't choose it. That's what staggers me. Everyone from Fat Amy to ALR to Anna to Corrissa and fucking Jay. They choose a life of hogging themselves out of perceived slights from life and looking and feeling like horrific, bloated, pocked-marked, stretched-out bags of crap when they could so easily look and feel great in both the youth and into old age given their financial resources and freedoms they enjoy. I still know people in their 70s and 80s fitter than most of these hambeasts and it's because they basically take rsponsibility for how they look and feel. They stay active, they eat decent food, and when they do indulge, they indulge in moderation. Something the modern age seems bent on getting people to eschew. We live in an age of excuses, and it's not going to end well.