Chubby. Obese. Chunky. Voluminous. Overweight. Plump. Portly. Wobbly.
Look in the dictionary and you’ll find a seemingly never-ending array of words, all of which can be whittled down to that one, unforgiving adjective.
They all mean the same thing.
FAT
‘Having too much flabby tissue’
When did the subject of weight put everyone on tenterhooks? At what time in the history of the world was it decided that calling an obese person ‘fat’ was as offensive as calling a mentally ill person a ‘nutter’? And why is it that the words ‘flabby tissue’ probably made your skin crawl?
The problem with fat is that it’s awkward. Fat is embarrassing – there’s no denying it. Whether it’s post-Christmas flab hidden beneath layers of bulky jumpers or admitting to yourself that yes, you were sucking your stomach in in all of those flattering pictures of you wearing a bikini. Fat just generally does not look nice. It wobbles, sticks out at odd angles and it generally just gets in the way.
Feeling uneasy about describing skin colour, sexual preferences and nationality is sort of understandable. But if you really think about it, there is no reason to tiptoe around the subject of weight
I’m not going to lie to you, I get the same shuddering cringe as the next girl when I hear the word thrown around. Some of us even have our own ‘fat radars’ – we can hear the word spoken miles away and automatically think ‘were they talking about me?!’
But why is it that we are all doing this bizarre dance of political correctness around the issue of weight?! If you’re fat, surely you know that you are fat and know that everyone else knows you’re fat. Calling a 30 stone person ‘cuddly’ just for the sake of being PC about it is about as logical as calling your mother ‘Dad’ so that she doesn’t feel oppressed by her gender (i.e. 0.00 sense whatsoever). What we need to do – particularly us girls – is embrace our fatness. I would like to live in a world where I can openly say ‘I feel all gross and fat today, I’m going to have a salad rather than a sandwich’ without being told that I have ‘body image issues’ and that I am ‘wasting away’. If we could all just answer the question ‘do I look fat in this?’ in an honest, frank and open way, we could save so much time, money and regretful purchases. Saying that someone is a little rotund these days doesn’t mean that they’re Beth Ditto, it just means they aren’t Paris Hilton either. Equally, saying ‘I feel fat’/’I am fat’/’I look really fat in these shorts’ doesn’t mean ‘I am not remotely attractive and am going to kill myself’. It simply indicates the observation of some unwanted podge, and probably means that those shorts were designed with other girls in mind, get back to your burger you fatty.
