People living in Florida near a beach may be more body conscious. Here in middle America, not so much.

True. Commented to my son the other day that back when I was in school (80s/90s), there would be 1 or 2 "fat kids." Now, most of them are obese. It's really sad.

Years ago (~24) I spent a few days in San Antonio for work. I swear, I only saw 2 thin/normal sized folks the whole time that I was there and they were both in the airport. It was the fattest city I'd ever seen.

I've been to NYC a few times (mostly Manhattan/financial area) and that seemed like the thinnest area that I've seen in MANY years.

Most of the time there's a mix of thin/heavy folks. These days the ratio of thin:heavy is tending towards heavy, where when I was younger, it tended the other way.

That's fantastic, Rick....your Mom was/is very beautiful! Thanks for posting - you must be very proud! SmileWavy

Regarding the thread subject......it really should come as no surprise that as a whole our society has slipped away from the standards we used to hold so important. How we carry ourselves - our standard of excellence.

They still exist but as a whole it's not what it used to be, IMHO.

When I first read the article I had a Monty Python style vision of the interviewer announcing "Now I need to check to see if you are wearing underware". :o
When some of the posts mentioned braless it made a little more sense.

~2002, in San Diego, a high school dance occurred where they did underwear checks...

So potential airline employees are showing up not dressed up for an interview - which mimics the airline passengers these days that half seem to wear t-shirts and shorts - or PJs.
Seems it might not be a coincidence.

Here in good old upstate NY, fatties abound in both sexes. I went shopping for summer shorts at Kohls and Boscov’s,(Macy’s bailed out of the area years ago). I’m kinda skinny, 32-33 inch waist. Men’s shorts were sizes 38-42 inch waist! WTF. I asked the store clerk why such big sizes, and he said the store is catering to the larger sized men and women who shop there. Even the men’s slacks and jackets were all large sixes. Boscov’s has a section in the store for large/tall sized men. It’s as large as their normal sized section in the store. Seems like everywhere you go, Americans are getting fatter. And the women, we’ll I won’t go there..200 pounders wearing yoga pants or stretch pants thinking they’re attractive. Ugh…

I must admit I once turned up for an interview inappropriately attired.
It was one of those days. The wife reported her car had a flat tire. When I went to change it, the spare was also flat. She took my car to work and I called the tire store 2 miles away to be sure they had two tires I needed. With the two flats strapped to a backpack frame, I made it to the store, waited until they had one mounted and took it home. Once I got that on the car, I drove to the tire store and got the second wheel installed.
I brought along an envelope with an application I wanted to drop off at another location in the brief time before I had to go to work, but when I tried to pass the application to one of the staff, I was told the boss wanted to see me. Understand I had been changing wheels and had hiked four miles with a loaded backpack and had not taken the time to clean up or change out of my filthy clothes.
It turned out the boss didn't really care about that. I guess he appreciated the fact that I did what it took to get the job done. He later confessed his biggest concern was whether a person with a university degree would be content driving a truck. That was indeed a large portion of the job as it was presented, but my duties within the company certainly changed over 25 years.

Best
Les