That is exactly how I felt when I first saw the acronym BBW. I honestly thought it was something kinky like you would find in Fifty Shades of Grey. I honestly haven’t read the book, but I heard enough chatter about it to know that it dealt with BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism. I mean the letters BBW seem to go with BDSM. However, I couldn’t for the life of me figure what it stood for. When I found out it stood for Big, Beautiful, Woman I was not only shocked, but thrilled. It is exciting to discover that  there is a whole movement within the feminine community that is fighting Hollywood about their images of the perfect woman.

For, example in the late sixties there was Twiggy, then came Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss, Heidi Klum, etc. who were and are stick thin. Whatever happened to voluptuous women like Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren. Those women had curves and the public loved them. No skinny smoothies and carrot tops for them. It was pasta and burgers and fries and the whole works, and still people adored them and imitated their images.

 Let me ask you this. Which looks more enticing Miss Stick Frog or the curves and softness of Marilyn Monroe? For me, Marilyn wins the Miss Good Looking contest over the Twiggy like stick figure. However, the vast majority of American women bought into Hollywood’s new image of thin and thinner.

This has given rise to several eating disorders including bulimia and anorexia. Both of which are based on the need to control their eating so that their body image fits the Hollywood-created female. The invention of the Barbie doll also helped further the body-image crisis that plagues American women. I have to be completely honest and say that it got me too.

I suffered from the body image crisis or to put it another way, the lack of acceptance and really self-loathing of my body for almost all of my life which is over half a century of living. In my mind the words fat and ugly were one word. It was not a compound word or a hyphenated word. It was one simple word that totally consumed my identity and the self-image I held. The word was: fatandugly.  That word “fatandugly” dominated my identity and relationship with the world in which I lived.  I lived in the back corners of the room, I hugged the walls, I never walked down the center aisle and I avoided making contact with new people. It was an excruciatingly painful way to live, and all because I bought into Hollywood’s hype about the perfect female body.

Imagine my surprise when I finally learned it was not only okay to be larger than a twig, but that it was finally acceptable to me and in public as well. I am fully aware that being overly large can cause certain health problems, and I am not promoting that type of weight gain. All I am trying to say is that you can have curves and thighs that are larger than a willow tree and still look feminine, lovely and beautiful . In other words, enjoy being a BBW, I know I am.

After all,as Meghan Trainor says it really is:

All About That Base