I remember watching a show with these two older female historians.
They mentioned his stomach girth and how disgusting it must of been for his wives to have sex with him. At the time my gut girth was a bit bigger. I am like hey, what the fuck. This was before the cancer known as body positivity came about.
I mean don't get me wrong, I am sure banging fat dudes much be really gross but one after the other they both went on and on about it.
I think the putrid, odiferous syphilis sores and ulcers on his body were a bit off-putting. There's a theory that Henry's personality changed after a concussion following a fall from his horse in early middle age. That's debatable, as it is widely taken that his wife-shopping was an attempt to produce a viable male heir before he died. England had a recent history of endless civil was throughout the late 1400's and coup attempts before and after that.
The theory about body positivity is an interesting one. Men have always - I suspect - projected standards of beauty onto women. One has only to think back to our first surviving "storybook", the Iliad and how Homer extolled the "beauty" of Helen of Troy. It's a hard sell to suggest that women did not also have ideals of male beauty, although those standards - in both sexes - may have been widely divergent from today's ideals.
en.wikipedia.org
Late in life, Henry became
obese, with a waist measurement of 54 inches (140 cm), and had to be moved about with the help of mechanical devices. He was covered with painful,
pus-filled
boils and possibly suffered from
gout. His obesity and other medical problems can be traced to the
jousting accident in 1536 in which he suffered a leg wound. The accident reopened and aggravated an injury he had sustained years earlier, to the extent that his doctors found it difficult to treat. The
chronic wound festered for the remainder of his life and became
ulcerated, preventing him from maintaining the level of physical activity he had previously enjoyed. The jousting accident is also believed to have caused Henry's
mood swings, which may have had a dramatic effect on his personality and temperament.
[145][146]
The theory that Henry suffered from
syphilis has been dismissed by most historians.
[147][148] Historian Susan Maclean Kybett ascribes his demise to
scurvy, which is caused by insufficient
vitamin C most often due to a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables in one's diet.
[149] Alternatively, his wives' pattern of pregnancies and his mental deterioration have led some to suggest that he may have been
Kell positive and suffered from
McLeod syndrome.
[146][150] According to another study, Henry's history and body morphology may have been the result of
traumatic brain injury after his 1536 jousting accident, which in turn led to a
neuroendocrine cause of his obesity. This analysis identifies
growth hormone deficiency (GHD) as the reason for his increased
adiposity but also significant behavioural changes noted in his later years, including his multiple marriages.
[151]