Fat Jokes: Why in the world would anyone send me one?

Maybe you’ve seen this email floating around, it was titled “The Michelin baby’s mother”. The email consisted of a picture of an obese woman floating in a pool in a bathing suit. The caption said something about the woman being the Michelin baby’s mother because of her rolls of fat floating in the pool. Of course I can’t find the email, I deleted it quickly, otherwise I would include it here.

So I am wondering, why in the world do people think that this is funny to anyone no matter what their size, or more importantly that I, an obese person would think it was funny? I didn’t think it was anything but gross. I’m not offended or hurt, and I would never dream of confronting her about it, but just curious. The person that sent it to me is not mean or malicious, in fact very rarely forwards things to me and we have a fine working relationship. If I worked with a Jewish person, I wouldn’t make it a practice to send them jokes that made fun of the Holocaust. If I worked with a person that was learning disabled, I wouldn’t send them jokes about being dumb. I just really find it interesting that she would send it to me.
Maybe she doesn’t consider me that obese or since she knows how hard I have been working on myself thought that I would think it had no connection to the way I envision myself.

What do you think? Have you ever been the recipient of such a tasteless joke?