Back when fat men were called portly


I was talking to my top history adventurer today (who prefers to remain anonymous), and the subject strayed to certain terms that have been used to politely describe someone who is fat. I recall seeing the word "husky" in the Sears catalogs for boys jeans (not that I was ever husky, I was scrawny!), and nowadays the preferred word is "big". If someone says "Go talk to that big man over there", I don't look for someone tall and built like a football player, I look for a fat man. What used to be called "portly".

You don't hear the word "portly" anymore, and I wouldn't be surprised if some young people had never heard it. I obviously knew what it meant, and that it wasn't a very nice term to use, back in the 1980s at a men's store in Los Angeles, when I overheard a woman ask in a very loud voice where the "Portly Short" suits were. Yes, I guess it was a recognized size. I wonder if it is anymore? Probably not, even though men's suits tend to be very traditional about everything.

So out of curiosity tonight I Googled the term "portly" and found that in addition to "heavy or rotund of body: stout" it also means "Dignified, Stately". So it must have been a polite term back in the day. But I'd never heard that definition. I suppose that's the way the language works - something is a polite euphemism, then everyone learns what it really means, and then it's not so polite anymore.

I suppose that Arizona Governor George Hunt, the portly one in the photo, would not have minded the term being applied to him. Certainly he was stately, and dignified. In 1912, men who were shaped liked him showed off wealth, and status. Skinny, scrawny, men certainly weren't portly!

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