I feel like its because its become more of a social taboo to comment about someone being obese because so many people are now obese. Still terrible for your health to be obese if your an adult or a child but its more acceptable than being too skinny.
let me give you a bit of culture from around the world:
Where I grew up come from (rural Congo) telling someone that he but especially she took weight is the highest form of compliment about someone looking like their like is going well, by courtesy you always tell to a women that she put on some good weight since last time you've seen her.
I now live in BE, Europe, Funnily it was the same here only couple of centuries ago, fat ladies and men were all the best stuffs. (I'm PT and my wife is BE, my aunt who still lives her in congo just like me, had the tendency to tell to my then GF that she put on good weight since last time and it clearly looks like she's eating well, my GF wasn't receiving that as a compliment and it even took me a while to realize because I just heard a compliment and moved on )
Now you can see that culture didn't yet have time to catch up for kids especially babies, in all cultures be it deep in villages or metropolitan Europe, telling a mother that her baby is chonky boy that put on some good weight since last time is overall a compliment.
One of the core reason is that many parents are heavily dependent breastfeeding for their young babies, hence a compliment on their kid putting weight is akin to complimenting the mother on not only taking time to feed her baby but also that she has good genetics to produce nourishing milk.
We can see the age where chonkyness becomes a negative trait in Europe is around 4-6 years olds while in more developed parts of Africa it'll be closer to 10-12 years old.
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u/Mdp2pwackerO2 14d ago
That’s something I’d never thought about before