Plus-sized, big-boned, stout, solid, thick, buxom, well-padded, plump, mid-sized, chubby: they all mean the same thing. Fat. A word whispered as if it was blasphemy, too taboo to be said too loudly. You refuse to say it as if simply by saying it, it is what you will become. The horror. The horror of existing in a body larger than a size two.
My mind shows a reel of early 2000s movies, where being anything bigger than a size four is a character deficiency. How did we get here? Where in our history did we decide that being fat is the end of the world? History might try to tell us that the only clothes we have left are the smallest ones, but that just isn’t true. Bigger clothes always existed, they are just more fragile because they were loved and changed and mended.
You judge me for something that I can’t control. You make it my fault, my problem. You make it my problem that our bodies look different rather than saying, “Wow, how cool is it that our bodies are capable of looking so many different ways? Aren’t bodies awesome?”
You can say it, fat. The world won’t end. I promise.
