Why might obesity be seen as attractive in their culture?
So, on the Jungle world of Qualis, the Qualian species evolved from small, tiny lizards to intelligent humanoid who dominated their planet. They built cities, from small towns to large metropolises, and technology advanced. They are social animal, and created complex social orders among themselves.
In Qualian society, I plan for gluttony to be seen as attractive, and the fattest males in their history, like Ehrgun V, to be seen as amazingly smoking hot. But this does not make sense, as Qualian society preaches hard work, and obesity is seen as lazy. So, why might being fat be attractive?
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I actually believe there are real-world Earth cultures you can draw inspiration from here.
So you want a culture where hard work is considered a virtue, but you also want that culture to see being fat as being a good thing.
Given that energy stored = energy input – energy expenditure (by basic thermodynamics, all of the energy has to go somewhere) and that energy stored is (in Earthlings) often fat, there are two ways to have your creatures get fat.
You can decrease energy expenditure. This means working less hard, and since your society values hard work, that's out as a long-term strategy.
You can also increase energy input. Basically, make your creatures eat more or better food.
Being able to eat more and/or better can easily serve as a proxy for being able to command a richer territory, or whichever other terminology your lizard-humanoids might use. That ties directly into the ability to provide for one's offspring, as, all other things being equal, fat individuals are more likely than skinny individuals to be able to provide the food needed for reproduction and the raising of young.
The individuals who have access to the largest amount of easily accessible nutritious food are the ones who are most likely to be able to eat more than they need in order to survive. By seeking out fat mates, your creatures are selecting for an essentially direct, and easily observable, proxy for sustained access to nutritious food. Those who have easy, sustained access to large amounts of nutritious food thus get a double advantage; not only are they able to keep themselves and their families well fed, they also communicate this to potential mates. Therefore, those individuals are the ones who are more likely to get to procreate, passing on whatever qualities they have that led to this situation.
And there you have it: being fat now confers a direct evolutionary advantage over a less fat individual, both working equally hard.
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