Framing effects would dominate. What if you said, "wide variance women" instead of "fat women"? Or "men that are underserved in the high end shoe market" instead of wide-footed men?

Let me tentatively suggest that in that circumstance framing would not dominate. In the first case many people would after hearing "wide-variance" be thinking "oh, he means fat ladies" or something similar and would only not say that explicitly out of politeness, whereas even if you said the second one without the framing, most people would ignore it.

But not the relevant distinction. If I show up at that cocktail party, all people know is that I have crappy shoes. And no, I can't just say to them, "Oh, discount this aspect of me: I have crappy shoes because they don't make them in my size; really, I totally get that nice shoes are important, I just can't find any that fit."

Is this the relevant distinction? It seemed like the topic of discussion was why there wasn't any clothing of specific forms. That's not the same question as whether or not status hits occur to the people in question. (And even then, if one is talking about say just online conversation, a status hit from being a fat woman is going to be much larger than "I've got wide feet.").

Again, the only real difference is that fat women have made self-pity into an art form, while wide-footed men haven't.

Let me tentatively suggest that the level of status issues here is so different that the difference of degree really does become a difference in kind. Indeed, our earlier discussion sort of highlights this. Even in situations like academia, where looks don't matter that much, being a fat woman seems to have some status hit associated with it.