My friend looks at women and says that woman is fat.
I’m not attracted to her.
In my opinion, saying that woman is fat is immediately associated with a negative connotation and a derogatory word. I said, ok, so you aren’t attracted to larger women, why not say you don’t find bbws attractive. I think this is better because you acknowledge a woman’s beauty but you also don’t leave a negative hurtful word.
He said this is not correct. He is simply describing someone and says the Oxford dictionary says fat is a word used for larger than normal mass people and should be used.
Who is right here?
15 comments
he sounds tedious
Personally, I call fat people fat (because they’re fat). You don’t have to call them fat, you can call them whatever you want to call them.
“Fat” is context-sensitive. Compare it to “males and females” versus “men and females”; it depends on by whom the word is used and whether it’s supposed to be loaded.
“Wow, I got fat after the pandemic” strongly differs from: “Fat women are unworthy of love” or: “You’ve become fat and ugly”. When in doubt, say “overweight”, because that’s a more neutral term.
The words “disgusting” and “ugly” are also pretty clear in the dictionary, but definitely not words you’d want to be used to describe yourself
BBW is a fetishizing term. Just leave women alone. If you or your friend or whatever don’t want to date certain women for whatever reason, they aren’t holding a gun to your head and forcing you to be with them. So just keep them out of your mouths and mind your business.
It’s also a cultural thing.
In some places people say fat more easily than in other places.
Fat is correct, people may take offense to it if they want. There are alot of not so nice words, like loser, and yet people call people that all the time. It may not be pleasant or polite, but the use says just as much about the user of the words and not just the subject of them.
>**In my opinion**, saying that woman is fat is immediately associated with a negative connotation and a derogatory word.
In your opinion. Obviously, in your friend’s opinion, it’s not. Personally, I find the word “fat” to be pejorative, but the context does matter.
In the early days when I was learning English, I called a tall woman “big”. Technically correct, but boy, did that not go down well.
Changing the name of a condition doesn’t change the condition.
Fat is not a bad word. Signed, a fat person
Fat is just a word, your friend and you both added the judgment.
It’s like saying: “he’s short, I’m not attracted to him”… which is fair. guys like girls for how they look physically. If a guy compromises that and settles for a physically unattractive girl, he’s got a bigger problem to address…
Fat is just a description.
It feels negative because it can be used as an insult – and frequently has been – but so can any description of someone if that’s a person’s intent.
“He’s *short*.”
“She’s so *pale*.”
“He looks *Asian*.”
Any of these can double as a regular description of their appearance, or as an insult, depending on how the person means it.
Fat is not beautiful. It is a sign of malnutrition and is rather sad. Instead of trying to fight for better health we choose to embrace others that are destroying their body. But to be fair, for most it is not their fault. We have been let down by the ADA and others in their crusade against the fat and protein based diet of the past in exchange for nutrient deficient crops and other industrial toxins. No time in human history has the world’s population been so fat. Rather than question it we put on blinders and are told to embrace it and that it is beautiful.
This really depends on your culture. I lived in a country in Africa where it was just a normal way to describe someone. It wasn’t mean or nice. In the US yes I think people think it is offensive because Americans are sensitive to words.