Label Me Fat: What’s with all the fluffy terms?

By lunaKM

Chubby, chunky, curvy, rubenesque, round, plump, buxum, zaftig, plus-sized, bbw (big beautiful woman), ssbbw (super-sized big beautiful woman) and many more….

Why is it that when a woman is fat, they all of a sudden have all these descriptive labels they can slap on that fat? I mean, you go to an online forum and describe yourself, which labels do you choose? Are you a chubby? Or perhaps you like rubenesque? Maybe you stick with the more standard bbw? We are a people that thrives on social labels, but how can you define something that means something different to everyone.

For fat people the use of these labels makes sense. Most of the population that is fat is uncomfortable being fat; whether that be from their own poor body image or from the media telling them with every breath that they don’t fit in. So, in an effort to be more comfortable, we’ve made a bunch of terms apply to our bodies that are supposed to do two things: they make us feel better about the amount of fat we have and they disguise our fat by hiding behind a “fluffy term.”

I don’t like the fluffy terms. While I would prefer to use ‘fat’, I commonly use bbw and ssbbw to describe myself to others, it’s because these two terms have a more wide-spread definition and are less offensive. And yet these definitions are crud. BBW is a vague term to define a desirable overweight woman. And ssbbw means there’s a bit more big to the term. It’s still very vague. The other terms aren’t nearly as widely understood. What does chubby mean? Or plump? When can you call yourself curvy versus plus-sized or chunky?

If you go to a popular fetish social network and search for bbw, you’ll find a lot of variation in the bodies of people given. Many of those you may not even think could be considered bbw. And at least weekly someone will ask in the groups, when do they know they are bbw or ssbbw; and what weight makes this determination. So what makes someone a bbw and someone just above average? Simple and not so simple, the answer is personal definitions.

If you have to ask a group of your peers if you should define yourself as bbw or another fat term then you probably don’t fit into it; even if medically you do. Your personal view of yourself will define you. If you look in the mirror and can say, “I’m a BBW” and be comfortable with that, then you are. There’s no scale, no body type chart that helps you decide when you’ve reached bbw or ssbbw. No one is going to disagree with you if you describe yourself as a pump woman with a great ass. No one is going to say that now that you’ve gone from 299 to 300 that you mysteriously become SSbbw. It just doesn’t work that way.

Oh, and don’t be like my mother who insists that the reason I’m fat is because I’m big-boned. Larger skeletal structure has nothing to do with fat. A small percentage of women actually have large frames, myself included, but that means nothing when it comes to weight – the tennis pros – the Williams sisters come to mind. I have a large frame and I’m fat. (Want to know if you have a large frame? — Frame Size Calculator

The number on the scale — or on the tag of those fabulous jeans you’ve been dying to buy — doesn’t matter. What matters is how you see yourself and how you carry yourself whether you are 100, 200, 300 or more pounds. So those fluffy labels you use? If you like them and feel that the really do describe who you are then use them. I’ll be sitting pretty with the terms bbw and fat because that is who I am.

Who are you? How do you describe your body? I’d love to know in the comments.