In the last decade we have seen a number of plus size clothing brands come out in the market. Their marketing spiel is that they make clothing choices available to those who are obese and may not fit into designer versions of regular ware. Their popularity not only shows that it is a good marketing technique, it also underlines the very real problem of obesity prevalent in our society today.

A study was conducted jointly by researchers at the University of East Anglia, UK and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria. It was found that demographically speaking people of a lower education level were more likely to think of their extra weight as normal rather than being overweight.

This misconception was further fed by the availability of plus sized clothing in the market. These clothes allow the population a choice of simply switching to bigger clothing rather than trying to work on improving their health by reducing the extra weight that they carried. Most people who are overweight, didn’t even think of themselves as unhealthy.

The scientific study has been an eye opener to show how retail marketing can contribute to the normalization of body shapes that would medically be considered unfit.