There is a taxonomy for the unruly, overweight human body, and that taxonomy becomes even more specific for the unruly overweight woman’s body. As a fat woman, I have become intimately familiar with this taxonomy because this is the vernacular with which far too many people discuss my body and its parts.
In the culture at large, fat women can be many things in polite company—BBW (a big beautiful woman) or a SSBBW (super-sized big beautiful woman). She can be round, curvy, chubby, rotund, pleasantly plump, “healthy,” heavy, heavyset, stout, husky, or thick. In impolite company a fat woman can be a pig, fat pig, cow, snow cow, fatty, blimp, blob, lard ass, tub of lard, fat ass, hog, beast, fatso, buffalo, whale, elephant, two tons of fun, and a slew of names I don’t have the heart to share.
When it comes to our clothing, we have plus-sized clothing or extended sizes or queen sizes or “women’s” wear.
Specific body parts, “problem areas,” also get labels—fupa, gunt, cankles, thunder thighs, Hi Susans, wings, cottage cheese thighs, hail damage, muffin tops, side boob, back fat, love handles, saddlebags, spare tires, double chins, gocks, man boobs, beer bellies.
These terms—the clinical, the casual, the slang, the insulting—are all designed to remind fat people that our bodies are not normal. Our bodies are so problematic as to have specific designations. It’s a hell of a thing to have our bodies so ruthlessly, publicly dissected, defined, and denigrated.