Were fat women considered as the norm of beauty in the past?

Question

I have often heard that only recently slim women were considered as more attractive in western society. It is referenced a few time in this Slashdot thread: Government Should Ban Skinny Models To Curb Anorexia, Say Researchers. There is also this webpage by the some municipality that wants to show that the new trend started in the 1900's while in the 1890's:

Actress Lillian Russell at 200 lbs. or 91 kg. is the most celebrated beauty of the time.

They of course don't have any reliable source and I don't consider 90kg as 'that' fat (she may be 6'6"). So anyway, is there any evidence that before the 1900's, or for some specific time, fat was considered as the norm of beauty?

Answer 1

Examples from the past

There's plenty of examples, but I think the most famous ones are the sculptures of mother goddesses from our distant past:

^{Source: Wikipedia}

Closer to home, you need to look no further than Botticelli. His Venus is way plumper than today's top models:

^{Source: Wikipedia}

Why is it so?

One known factor correlating male mating preferences with female body size is hunger, as hungrier man prefer plumper women. This is likely an evolutionary adaptation:

Using this revised methodology, we found that operationalized intra-individual resource scarcity affects preferences for body weight: 30 hungry male participants preferred figures with a higher body weight and rated as more attractive heavier figures than 31 satiated male participants. Hungrier men were also less likely to be influenced by cues for body shape, supporting extant cross-cultural studies on female physical attractiveness.

Answer 2

Beauty is often associated with that which is hard to attain. In impoverished countries today fat is beautiful because only those who can afford to eat are fat.

In the modern Western society where food is cheap and fast food even cheaper, it is cheap to become fat but expensive / requiring large amounts of will power to remain thin.

In the past, if food was scarce and thin was the norm, fat would indicate wealth and therefore attractiveness.