It is hardly news to observe that North Americans are getting fatter.

Thanks to our infatuation with junk food and a cushy lifestyle, so expanded are we now around the middle that even epidemiologists are starting to refer to the rise in obesity rates as “epidemic.” What's fascinating about this from a style perspective is that, while fashion has always preferred its models razor thin, and design keeps shaving its MacBook Airs ever thinner, at the mass-market level of the North American style frontier, the latest objects that surround us are starting to look as if they've put on a few extra pounds, too.

Walk into a Pottery Barn, for instance, and virtually everything on the floor is almost grotesquely enlarged. The sheer bulk of the hulking Leviathans of couches, their overstuffed and blimped out seats presumably designed to support ever wider bottoms, seems to occupy more visual space on every visit. Surfaces of puffy upholstered ottomans are glutted with unnecessary accessories and tabletops are heavily appointed with giant goblets and a fairy-tale ogre's utensils. Throw pillows, which once might have been a demure 12-by-12, are now a whopping, sloppy 26-by-26. Perhaps if the Great White serving platters weren't approximately the size of a Great White, or the “vintage” table top Paddle servers did not resemble tennis racquets, contemporary American interiors too wouldn't look like they should really sign up with Jenny Craig.

Am I the only person in car-loving North America who finds the over-nourished silhouette of such newer models as the Nissan Murano, the Cadillac Escalade or even the BMWX5 unappealing? And of course these living rooms on wheels with massive cup holders for holding Big Gulp lattes aren't only obscenely oversized, they're part of the problem.

Think of it: Mattresses are thicker, bigger and pillow-topped today, just like the bodies of those who will sleep on them. According to my worn copy of Interior Graphic and Design Standards — itself the standard reference for sizes and proportions — the classic seat depth of a typical North American sofa is 34 inches. And yet, in the Brobdingnagian excess of this season's Restoration Hardware catalogue, the lard-assed Carlyle leather sofa (in “vintage cigar leather” with yummy-yum “coffee velvet”) has a seat girth of 43 inches. And the frighteningly bloated looking Churchill reading chair, “an updated classic . . . contoured to the body,” which should according to my standards guide have a seat approximately 27 inches deep, weighs in at a hefty 41 inches.

Of course all of this furniture for giants isn't only made that way to accommodate our widening frames, but also to fill in the vast emptiness of increasingly popular and tastelessly overindulgent 7,500 square-foot McMansions — with huge cathedral ceilings, naturally, the size of Gothic churches, and heated driveways so none of us fatties would ever have to actually bend over and shovel the snow. Is it possible that we are losing all sense of proportion the larger we get? This is chubby not only as a lifestyle choice but as a style statement: An entire esthetic that could be dubbed “bloated contemporary.”

From a style perspective, it's all empty calories. How much do we need of all this overfed puffery? And just how big and quilted and ultra-comfy and over-the-top does it all have to be? Surely it's time, in this Style Czar's opinion, not just to ask oneself whether one really needs that second serving of dessert, but whether one's couch, and car, and house had better start cutting down on the carbs, too.

Karen von Hahn is a Toronto-based writer, trend observer and style commentator. See more at karenvonhahn.com and contact her at kvh@karenvonhahn.com.