Fat Activists Hijacked The Word “Curvy”

Global bombshell Sophia Loren once said in reference to her seductive, curvaceous body, “Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.” Standing at 5’9”, at the peak of her career, Loren’s measurements were 38C, 24W, 38H. By today’s clothing standards, she’d wear a size 8 or 10, but knowing today’s fast fashion garment quality, she’d likely need the waist gathered in just about every article of clothing. 

She and fellow curvy phenom Marilyn Monroe shared similar body shape traits. Since Monroe’s measurements were at one point 36C, 23W, and 36H, those two both exhibited dramatic waist-to-hip ratios. Iconic ratios, dare I say.

Loren and Monroe carved out a niche among female celebrities that proved how sex sells. A more dramatic waist-to-hip ratio appeals to the masses on an evolutionary level, as a greater concentration of fat around a woman’s chest and hips can correlate to higher fertility levels, after all. And, like it or not, humans are born to reproduce.

Though in recent years, waist-to-hip ratio standards grew to unrealistic and, frankly, comedic levels thanks to the proliferation of Brazillian Butt Lifts (BBLs) or Sculpra, men have long been lusting for a more “breedable” body. Standing around 5’6”, Beyoncé’s measurements were once recorded as 35C, 26W, and 39H. 

Are you starting to see the pattern here? The lust-worthy waist-to-hip ratio is much like a bell curve…and I use my words carefully.

Curvy: From Enviable Attribute to Defense Mechanism

Bell curve. The word curve used to mean something, but then society lost the plot.

Curvy didn’t have to mean teeny-tiny waist matched up with BBL booty – rather, it described a woman of a healthy weight who just so happened to have a fuller, rounder figure. Her bust and hip proportions gave her a bit of an hourglass appearance or perhaps even a pear shape.

If she put on jeans, she’d probably struggle with too big waistbands that gape at the back. If she tried to wear oversized garments or boyfriend-fit clothes, she’d probably look two clothing sizes larger than her true size.

Would you call women like Monica Bellucci, Kate Winslet, Salma Hayek, Kate Upton, or Sofia Vergara “plus-sized”? No, you’d call them curvy because they’ve clearly got healthy bodies that happen to have curves. Where the term once embodied “curves in all the right places,” it now seems to mean “curves in all of the places,” and that’s just a shame.

Curvy isn’t a politically correct way to say “fat” or “obese.” There’s no need to have a “modern-day curvy body type” when we all know what that subversive language really means. Some fat women can be curvy if their waist-to-hip ratio is more defined, but not all fat women are curvy – end of story. Curvy has been co-opted to excuse obesity.

Back in 2017, HanesBrands introduced Maidenform Curvy shapewear and Playtex Love My Curves intimates. A move like this no doubt stemmed from the social pressure thrust upon the global garment giant by the body positivity movement.

“Body positive women are embracing their curves and have become a force in the intimate apparel category,” said Hanes Brands’ president and general manager for intimates at the time, Jay Turner. “They want to enhance their curves, not hide them. They want to be respected, not dismissed as an afterthought by product offerings that are a mere line extension of average-figure apparel that doesn’t meet their needs. And they have power in numbers.”

Hanes Brands released some statistical insights to back up those new apparel lines, citing that 42% of millennials preferred the term “curvy” to “plus size” and that – at the time – the average American woman wore a US size 16 or 18. 

Now, there’s no telling how the more recent semaglutide craze could turn the tide for Americans’ ever-increasing waistlines, but back in 2021, your average 30-year-old woman was around 175lbs. More recent, self-reported studies suggest that 20% of American women are over 200lbs; three decades ago, that figure was merely 5%.

“Body positivity,” more aptly understood as the widespread acceptance – and sometimes outright glorification – of fatness, has been steadily on the rise, not so unlike our average body sizes. It’s built upon some genuinely righteous principles among some less savory ones.

All people deserve to be clothed. All people should have a chance to feel good and put their best foot forward. So, the fashion industry took a more inclusive approach to sizing – not only to capitalize on a growing sector, but because many brands also understood that bigger women (and men too!) wanted a chance to wear cute clothes.

But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In this case, good intentions are easily hijacked by grifters and radical activists. Tess Holiday and Natalie Craig aren’t curvy – they’re objectively obese. Their clothing size is plus-size, and it shouldn’t be candy-coated with sugary sweetness to soften the blow.

Soft Language Conceals Reality at a Grave Cost

Body shapes are anything but linear, both literally and metaphorically, but we can’t keep softening language in such a way that makes us “take the life out of life.” That quote can be attributed to George Carlin, a well-missed comedian who railed about the concept of soft language and how people weaponize it to conceal reality.

Carlin explained that indirect language gets adopted by the masses to spare people from uncomfortable truths. For example, curvy gets subbed in for plus-sized or obese. Sure, euphemistic language softens the blow on language that may feel like an insult, but there are trade-offs when doing so. 

This is an argument based on principle – with zero intention to needlessly demean someone based on their body size. As someone who studied communication in college, I couldn’t escape the ire of my professors, who tried to drain every last ounce of poetic language from my prose. Highly metaphorical, flowery language feels fun to type and looks pretty on a page, but it doesn’t do justice to the masses. In other words, euphemistic language feels good but confuses the general public.

Back in 2009, a columnist for The Guardian demanded the fashion industry stop calling plus-sized women “curvy” and wrote: “Bring back the F-word.” 

“It seems little less than misogynist code for ‘not only are we calling you fat, we're presuming you're too stupid to notice or too cowed to flag it up,’” she wrote. “Call a woman ‘curvy’ and one can pretend that it's meant admiringly or supportively.”

Should I put it in Gen Z terms? Curvy got co-opted by fat activists, and now all the truly curvy girls are stuck scouring the internet for “slim thick” options since all the “curvy” apparel has been lumped in with plus-sized pickings.

“No brand in the world makes clothes for ‘slim thick,’” a Redditor on r/unpopularopinion once bemoaned. “It’s hard to search on the internet for clothing brands that make clothes for that body type because every time you look up ‘curvy’ you have to sort through millions of plus sized clothing brands. I get that they see curvy as a more body positive word, but that was our word. Now I can’t even find a nice fitting T-shirt.”

What we’re ultimately talking about here is facts versus feelings. Modern culture is obsessed with labels. So, you’d think that with the increased attention on labels, people would take great pains to make sure they’re using the right one, but it appears they’d rather use the label that makes them feel warm fuzzies inside instead of addressing the tough-to-swallow truth.

Fat people aren’t undeserving of love or the ability to clothe themselves in chic fits. But, fat people also can’t be shielded from the potential consequences of their actions. Body positivity promotes objectively unhealthy behaviors. Over 40% of Americans are clinically obese, meaning they’ve all got an increased risk for cardiovascular diseases like heart disease and stroke, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, and many more complications that can cause disability or premature death. 

Closing Thoughts

The word curvy needs to stop being applied in situations where it’s covering up for obesity. I get the desire to be compassionate toward obese women, but what would really be compassionate is telling them the unfiltered truth about their body size and increasing awareness of what curvy truly means. 

Metabolically healthy women often carry some cute curves indicative of their fertility – which means that the toxic skinny standard formerly known as heroin chic, and now revived by Ozempic and Wegovy, misses the mark too. Women with sporty, naturally slim, and straight body shapes can certainly be just as fertile as their curvy counterparts. But in any case, curvy has to make a comeback as a healthy alternative for overweight women to aspire to.

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