Big Beautiful Woman
woman with plus-size figure
"Big Beautiful Woman" (BBW) is a positive (non-pejorative) term for an overweight woman.
Meaning and usage
The terms "Big Beautiful Women" and "BBW" were coined by Carole Shaw in 1979, when she launched BBW Magazine, a fashion and lifestyle magazine for "plus-size" women. BBW Magazine trademarked the term "Big Beautiful Woman", which was later transferred to Dimensions Magazine. The term was also the name of Drake's 2026 song, BBW.
The term is also commonly used as a positive euphemism by those involved with the fat acceptance movement.
The term has several near-synonyms with varying shades of meaning, such as "full-figured", "voluptuous", "zaftig", and "Rubenesque", the latter term referring to the art of Peter Paul Rubens, best known for portraying full-bodied women.
Variants
The acronym BBBW stands for Big Beautiful Black Woman. Another variant is SSBBW, which stands for Supersized Big Beautiful Woman. There is no formal definition which explains the exact difference between BBW and SSBBW. Some BBWs or SSBBWs consider themselves to be feedees. Dimensions Magazine considers a woman over 350 pounds (160 kg) to be an SSBBW.
USSBBW may also be used, for "ultra supersized big beautiful woman". Again, there is no formal definition, however BBWWiki suggests women over 600 pounds (270 kg) to be considered USSBBWs, but acknowledges that "opinions vary."
See also
Fat acceptance movement
Fat fetishism
Female body shape
Venus figurine
Bear (gay culture)
Obesity
References
External links
BBW Magazine site
Free site of Dimensions Magazine, previously associated with NAAFA, a "size-positive" lifestyle magazine with resources and forums.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Big Beautiful Woman” is woman with plus-size figure. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Beautiful, Woman and woman, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1397890. The first chronological checks are 1979 and 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “Big Beautiful Woman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.