This is not a problem for men as mens clothing waistline are directly measured in inches (e.g. size "30" waistline). My waistline has not changed since college either, even though I am in my 40's.

weight is marginally lower at higher elevations

Pretty sure that the lost buoyancy from the thinning atmosphere is at least a couple orders magnitude bigger than the weight lost due to increased distance from the center of the earth - at least as long as you're in the troposphere. Klimb Kilimanjaro and you get ~1/10g less gravitational pull, but you also lose ~50g of buoyancy...

mens clothing waistline are directly measured in inches

Mens everything is directly measured in an indexed unit. Salary, height, notch count, you name it. (Dollars can change over time, but when comparing yourself against other guys, it's at the same time).

Female brains are too fragile to bear the truth.

I notice this post is labeled as psychology. Have you done some on genetics and obesity before 2009?

You always see fat families or thin families so it seems it has to be somewhat heritable. Does it appear that a set of genes are emerging as likely suspects?

FTO. a lot of the heritability of fatitude is probably the correlation between heritable psychological traits and food consumption styles.

Michelle Cottle is not unattractive. I'm surprised she hasn't been on TV more frequently.

For females, clothes sizing has been a problem for at least a half century (That's how long I've been shopping and making clothes.)

It's not at all unusual for a healthy weight female to wear a size 12 for the bust, a size 8 for the waist, and a size 14 for the butt.

I had one daughter who could wear a size 12 off the rack from most stores. The other couldn't find anything that fit. Neither were overweight for their height.

Our curves screw up the sizing.

During the 8 years I made costumes for our local ballet company, I acquired a decent database of "normal" female measurements (including height and weight) for ages 10 to 20. The variety was staggering.

I imagine that males body shapes and sizes vary just as much, but male fashions do not generally require as much "fit" as female fashions do.

I took a minimum of 12 measurements for each dancer. I wonder how many measurements are taken for custom male clothing. I doubt there's a lot of difference, but I'll to look that up.

When I was in high school one particularly dumb classmate was very excited to learn that one's weight is marginally lower at higher elevations.

I do wonder, though, why doctors and other medical professionals still continue to use weight and mass interchangeably.

I know people that work in physical science have to care about the distinction obviously, but at least standardize it across the sciences!

Maybe you'd like to give an example where the distinction between weight and mass would be relevant to a doctor or other medical professional?
Also, being a doctor has little to do with science. Convincing old people to take their pills has vastly more job relevance than the kind of logical diagnostic exercises you see on TV...

In the biological/medical sciences, the distinction would be important in areas that involve biophysics (ie. kinesiology).

(I think I often hear say, biologists (non medical) such as a zoologist refer to the mass of an animal, while doctors refer to the weight of a person, but I don't know if this awareness is even a relevant point).

A point may be weighty without being massive.