Those three words might sound like a self-deprecating remark, but to Gen Zers it is simply a sentence they are reclaiming.
Social media is now drenched with young women calling themselves fat and pointing out that doesn’t make them any less hot or attractive.
“I saw the hottest fat girl on vacation,” one creator wrote on TikTok.
Spoiler, but she was talking about herself.
The body acceptance trend has genuinely taken off, resulting in women proudly calling themselves fat.
TikTok is now filled with women showing off their self-proclaimed fat bodies in different outfits, bikinis and from every angle.
One creator captioned a video of her posing in a cow print mini skirt as, “POV: you are hot and fat.”
Another creator shared a video of herself looking cute with the message, “Reminder you can be both hot and fat.”
Meanwhile, one Gen Zer declared: “Hear me out. I am fat, and I am hot. This has been a PSA.”
There’s even more niche content of creators declaring that “fat bodies are also bikini bodies.”
Are you seeing a theme here?
Young women are boldly reclaiming the word and making no apologies for it. The movement has such a chokehold on youth culture that plus-size model and creator Sixtine often captions her videos with #fatpositivity.
If a paid model is calling themselves fat, well, you can’t deny there’s been a shift and fat is actually becoming so cool it is in fashion.
Sixtine creates the bulk of her content around normalising women’s bodies having curves and fat.
She’s also big on pointing out that making fun of someone’s body because it isn’t thin is just laughable in 2023.
Recently she replied to a hater that said she had a pretty face but the “rest” wasn’t as perfect and she hit back in an iconic way.
“Imagine telling a Sports Illustrated model you don’t like their body,” she said laughing.
She then added she didn’t care what trolls thought because ultimately her body made her “money.”
So, clearly she is having the last laugh.
Psychologist Carly Dober said that reclaiming the word fat is an “empowering” move by young women.
“This is absolutely empowering and can be a very positive thing,” she told news.com.au
Dober acknowledged that using the F-word might initially feel “uncomfortable”, but it should be just seen as a “neutral” describing word – like calling someone tall.
“Using the word ‘fat’ might feel a little uncomfortable in your language due to negative connotations society typically has with people in larger bodies,” she said.
“It can be empowering to reject the historical judgments this term has invited. I encourage people to connect to and with the fat activist community if they’re curious and open to learning more about this.”
There’s no denying that there’s been a huge shift and calling someone fat or implying their non-thin body isn’t attractive ironically just doesn’t carry the same weight anymore.
Nayia Moreno, an body positive Instagram influencer, recently told Cosmopolitan that she decided to own the word because … well, why not?
“We’ll be fat whatever we wear, whatever we do. I think we body-positive influencers have been able to take this in our stride and reclaim it as a trait rather than an insult,” she said.