History of BBWorld Part VI

Since 1600 the WHW title had continued to be hotly contested, with the honor largely bouncing between the primary European empires. The 450-lb mark was achieved in 1674 by Maria Theresa, wife of Louis XIV of France, but subsequent advances began to slow due to the previously mentioned novel issue: immobility. Citizens of the lower classes had already started to sour on the idea of having the largest possible figurehead for their country due to the struggles of women in their own classes to attain anywhere near that size, both in terms of lack of nutritional availability and the widespread legal restrictions associated with the weight-tiered class systems; the lack of relatability was further exacerbated by the increased likelihood of noblewomen at such elevated weights to lose their mobility. Immobile women were seen as simple drains on society, as they could not contribute in any meaningful way to the local public or broader country as anything other than a trophy to be paraded around; in the lower classes, a woman’s size was seen as a symbol of status and femininity, but this had to be balanced against her ability to continue to play a role in the community. Reduced mobility was acceptable as long as she could still perform her tasks, but once these too were neglected, her size had reached a point of impracticality.

Minor periods of unrest had occurred sporadically across the globe in reaction to local noblewomen becoming immobile at weights as low as 350 lbs, but now that the women at the highest levels of nobility were reaching their mobility limits as well, the illusion of the intrinsic superiority of the highest nobility was beginning to break. In practice the distinction between high and low nobility had allowed for a degree of separation with regard to the onset of immobility (low nobility often had the affluence to provide their women with excess foodstuffs but not much more, while high nobility could also afford attendants devoted to developing physical training exercises to maintain a woman’s mobility, discreet technological assistance allowing borderline-immobile women to continue to move under their own volition, and the like), but even the most state-of-the-art methods of the time, available only to the most affluent and powerful, had their limitations.

A schism began to form between states who continued to follow the traditional “heaviest woman” benchmark of power and those who, adapting to the attitudes of their citizenry, adopted a new “heaviest mobile woman” benchmark (subsequently abbreviated as HMW). The latter allowed smaller states to make larger claims to fame on the world stage; for instance, while the WHW title continued to be dominated by European powers, from the 1690s through 1740s claimants to the HMW title included the Mughal Empire, Maratha Empire, Ottoman Empire, Ethiopian Empire, and the like. By 1750 this schism had resulted in a marked dichotomy between the sizes of the women holding these titles (WHW being Barbara of Portugal- wife of Ferdinand VI of Spain- at 479 lbs, and HMW being Empress Elizabeth of Russia at 461 lbs), and subjects of countries continuing to subscribe to the traditional philosophy were reaching a boiling point of unrest at what they viewed as misplaced priorities and excessive frivolity among their rulers.

The American Revolution kicked off the broader Age of Revolution; though British subjects and thus long free of the class-based weight tiers (though vestiges of the system remained, exemplified by Charlotte, wife of George III, holding the WHW title for a little over two decades), the Americans’ willingness to rebel due to a lack of representation struck a chord with citizens of many nations who felt they were under similar circumstances. Though the institutions of the feminine beauty ideal were only a part of this sentiment (with the overall impetus being a desire to establish representative/constitutional governments), those yoked by both the class-based weight tiers and WHW philosophy were the first to incite revolution. Notably, the French Revolution led to the execution of the last holder of the classical WHW title: Marie Antoinette, who peaked at 495 lbs, was guillotined in 1793 following a year of imprisonment. A contemporary source joked that it was lucky she had spent a year atrophying away in prison, “else the pillory would not have fit round her fat neck.”

The values espoused by the French throughout the revolutionary period defined many of the fundamental principles of liberal democracy moving forward; in addition, changes in philosophy rippling outward from this event resulted in a wholesale redefinition of the feminine beauty standard. The unequivocal abolishment of class-based weight restrictions went in tandem with a general dismantling of the French noble class as a whole, and the French revolutionaries’ commitment to egalitarianism led to a new perspective on the “heaviest” dichotomy- “heaviest woman” was obviously out (as worth continued to be tied to ability to contribute to the community, rather than committing to immobility as a figurehead), but “heaviest mobile woman” was reframed as a goal available to the masses. In other words, while the ability to pursue the title of HMW was previously restricted to the highest echelon of a state’s nobility, it would now represent the aptitude of any given woman (or her family/community) to best encompass both her earned affluence and continued ability to give back to society.

Revolutions continued to cascade across the globe (ironically in large part due to Napoleon’s takeover of the French republican government and his subsequent conflicts with many countries while attempting to conquer Europe) due to both the loss of imperial control over overseas territories and domestic unrest in the homelands of said empires following the attempted reestablishment of monarchies after the 1815 Congress of Vienna. In a similar vein, the Industrial Revolution was also causing major societal changes; the economy began to shift its basis from human manual labor to mechanized industry and manufacturing. This would lead to new ways to accrue wealth (with women associated with this newly wealthy class coming to define the limits of the feminine beauty ideal over the coming century) as well as a consistent increase in standard of living for the general population, but also began to create a growing divide between the upper-class industrialists and lower-class laborers.

By the late 1800s, the HMW title had been widely reestablished as something freely sought by any citizen of a country rather than just its ruling class, and weight tiers had been almost entirely phased out, with only the core ideal remaining (namely, feminine beauty correlating with fatness). However, the continued restrictions of the era meant that only marginal increases in the HMW record could be made, as there were few widely-proven and effective methods for staving off immobility, and even so these were still largely restricted to the classically wealthy. As such, through 1900 the HMW remained a noble (Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, who at her peak weighed 485 lbs). Multiple writers and historians of the time began to cite 500 lbs as the absolute limit for female mobility, though there was little scientific evidence as to why this would be the case; perhaps inspired by this, scientific inquiry into the areas of nutrition and physiology would see a rise around the turn of the 20th century.