I heard something last night, the effect that these words e.g. fat, might be used to bully children in the playground. I think they proposed to replace fat with enormous. How naive. Children who would use words like fat to bully, will simply move onto using enormous. It might improve their vocabulary, exchanging a three letter word for an eight letter word.
I do hate it when authors slate each other. Hilary Mantel did the same with J. K. Rowlingās books.
Strangely, I like neither Hilary Mantelās books, nor Philip Pullmanās books, so perhaps they should go out of print.
Fortunately the publishers have more sense.