Well, the number of people claiming Taylor Swift, a person who had an eating disorder, isn't skinny is certainly proving the OP's point. That being said, I think part of this is that the person is using a simplified, slightly cartoon-ish art style, which communicates reality through minimal lines. Our brains interpret reality through exaggerations in drawings like this; if they were to communicate youth in this style, they would probably make the figure's eyes 30-40% bigger than they would be in reality. I think that, the more detail they added, and the closer to photo-realism they got, the less, "plus-sized," she would appear.

Another aspect is the angle of the photo; it's a somewhat candid photo taken while she's walking. She looks significantly thinner in the photo below, where she's posing at a more flattering angle for the camera.

None of this is to invalidate the OP's point, but to offer an explanation for this mentality. If your exposure to women is mostly anime characters drawn with exaggerated proportions and Instagram models posing at optimal angles, you can convince yourself that Taylor Swift isn't skinny by seeing a simplified sketch of her.

I don't think "skinny" is being used correctly here, which seems to be the whole source of conflict.

Taylor Swift isn't skinny. She certainly isn't overweight, but skinny doesn't mean "not overweight", it means thinner than average. It's the opposite extreme of fat, with the norm being somewhere between. Taylor Swift is in the normal range. Emma Stone is skinny.

If you're using "skinny" to mean "not fat", obviously there's going to be some disagreement with those who use "skinny" to mean "thinner than normal".

Same kind of thing here.

If you compare the drawn body to a real body's actual size and proportions, 'full figure' is basically 'somewhere between normal and a healthy skinny'.

'Tall and thin' is in actuality 'starvation/anorexia/muscular dystrophy/something like that'.

The proportions are fundamentally unrealistic, which, on the one hand, duh, but on the other hand, does literally create an unrealistic body size/shape/proportion standard.

I think a contributing factor is the art style.

A simple trace has no shading or depth, which then the widest section of each part is brought to the front, on the same plane of the slimmer parts of that section.

For example, a cyclindar has a gradual taper to the full width. This art style would just flatten it to a rectangle.

Art is about capturing the feeling of a thing, not recording and replaying the actual thing.

A good drawing discards almost all of the unnecessary information from the real scene. Then you exaggerate to bring out the essence - which lines get thicker, which shades get darker, which features are literally enlarged or shrunken.

That's the labor of the artist, to decide what's relevant and what's not.

That is really illustrative.

I've done painting of live models who are objectively attractive to have people (men I'm sure) say nasty things about the model.

Like attractive in real life an attractive in TV/Internet are different and a 10 on person is a 4 on the Internet or whatever.

This is a great illustration of that problem.

That's also not a uniformly right fitting outfit. It's tight on the shoulders and hips, but looser at the middle Drawn clothes don't have to have any thickness or areas to stretch.

I won't deny that this is true, but it's also the case that cartoons tend to have larger heads. The skinny version of swift here is also shorter and has more narrow shoulders / hips. She's not just drawn thinner, but literally smaller to accommodate the proportionally larger head. I think this is kind of exaggerating the effect. If the artist had instead drawn a larger head, it wouldn't be as dramatic.

Isn't that dress covered in fringe? I mean, she's in great shape either way, but fringe all over a dress is bulking.

I always love this type of thread-squabbling.

Obesity has become such a pervasive problem that people do not even understand what it means to be skinny.

I grew up in the '70s when we ate the appropriate amount of food. 50 years later let me tell you my friends, what you think is skinny is NOT skinny.

You can also look back at photos of people in the 70s from various cultures. We’ve become fatter overall because of processed food and reduced exercise.

Oh I love this!