I'm aware that you have said just use fat instead of terms like obesity and overweight and I understand why, however, how do you recommend referring to weight when you don't know what the person would prefer?

Asked by

litnerds

We’ve answered this one before, although I can’t find it now. I can’t promise this will be perfectly consistent with that, but I’ll give it my best shot.

Why do you need to refer to this person’s size? (And it is size, not weight; a heavily-muscled person can weigh just as much but be much smaller, and not come in for most of the discrimination fat people face, even that which is supposedly based on specific weight or BMI.) A lot of times, the context itself can give you your answer. Are you talking about clothes? “Wears plus-sizes” is actually appropriate in that case (not plus-size as a noun for the person, but as a description of what they wear). Is it about them flying on a commercial airlines? The seats aren’t big enough for them. In general, you can find a way to describe what effect society’s bias has rather than the person.

If, on the other hand, you’re just giving a physical description of the person for the purposes of identification… All I can say is that when I lose the nerve to say “fat,” my usual choice is some variant on “big.” “Kinda big,” “bigger than me,” “really big,” like that. Not real happy with that solution, but that’s what I do when I fudge it. There’s no good answer to this one, though. Mostly, try to avoid it.

-MG