Yeah, that is really sad, and I wonder if it's partially generational or an attitude an overweight person might have more so than someone of an "accepted" size. I know Sass has said she's older than a lot of us on here, and I want to say this:
If I see someone who's larger at the beach in a revealing bathing suit, I think "It's so nice to see someone so confident" and that maybe soon enough 90% of the people confident enough to show off their bodies won't be people within the exact range of measurements on the billboards. I think a lot of my friends feel the same way. I'm starting to see it on tumblr, facebook, instagram....pictures of larger women or very small breasted women or women with scars with tons of comments or notes or likes or whatever and people saying they admire his/her confidence and the person is gorgeous, whatever. It's definitely not the majority view, and you see still disturbing notes bashing overweight people, etc...but until the past year or so, I had never seen people standing up for the rights of the overweight, or hearing about thin-privelege (which, quite frankly, if you say doesn't exist, I'm going to take you about seriously as if you tell me you think Satan invented evolution to trick us).
If the older generation of my family sees someone overweight on the beach in a bikini, they say things like "ewwww" "DOES SHE OWN A MIRROR?!?" "that should be illegal" "is she trying to make people sick?" etc. Their reactions are 100 times more disgusting and disturbing than anyone who is overweight or even obese's body will ever be to me.
Maybe the people my age who I go out with don't make comments like that entirely because I try to refrain from having complete douchebags as friends. But maybe they don't because people are starting to understand that beauty is cultivated by society (or more, the fashion/marketing industry) and discriminating against fat people is pretty much in the same boat as being a racist or homophobe. I'm not naive enough to say that most people my age have progressive and fair ideas about weight and body size...but I also think a lot more do than 10 years ago. And hopefully the news that this Abercrombie CEO is getting will make even more people aware of the issues.