The Big Beautiful Woman, or BBW for short, is a subversion of Hollywood's usual standards of size and beauty and is accompanied by Beauty Tropes or Attraction Tropes which draw attention to her assets with equal or greater Fanservice or Male Gaze than thinner women in the setting, and without any blatant irony. She's also not used as a Foil to make other characters look more attractive or to act as a Token Minority as in the case of a Pet Homosexual or Bromantic Foil (a raunchy best friend that demonstrates how well-adjusted or advantaged the Protagonist is). Even if not the protagonist herself, she may be part of the Beta Couple or a Breakout Character. Her weight may not even be (and, in most cases of the trope probably won't be) the basis of her beauty or attractiveness note Think about it: even Hollywood Thin women are rarely fetishized for their lack of fat. It's usually due to their head shape, hip-to-waist-ratio, or leg shape along with other feminine features.; attention may instead be drawn to her beautiful eyes, feminine features or, more blatantly, her breasts or posterior—but regardless, she is a knock-out.
When adding examples, avoid ladies who are Hollywood Pudgy. She must be visibly heavy-set for the trope to be in effect. May be part of the Tiny Guy, Huge Girl Pairing. Sometimes paired with Of Corsets Sexy, as a number of full-figured women esteem corsets highly as a way to produce a perfect hourglass figure. Contrast with Brawn Hilda and Amazonian Beauty.
For authors who would like to use this trope, but prefer not to keep the change, a Temporary Bulk Change episode can be used to show off Fetish Fuel.
See also Big Beautiful Man (the Spear Counterpart) and Chubby Chaser (who may admire either of the above, if not both).
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Cattleya from Queen's Blade, is noticeable chubby, muscular, and has gigantic breasts. Like all the other fighters in the series her clothes don't leave much to the imagination. She wears a Naked Apron like dress.
In Invincible Atom Eve gains a lot of weight during her boyfriend Mark's ten month absence. While she's very insecure about her weight, Mark reassures he's not only ok with her body but he likes her new look, the couple still have a very active sex life, and she still wears her very tight fitting superhero costume.
In Empire State, Jimmy's love interest Sara is plus-sized, and she doesn't exactly have trouble getting dates (though she does, initially, have trouble getting dates who measure up to her standards).
Film
Sophie from Anastasia is a beautiful, full-bodied Russian blonde of minor Noble position and great wealth living in Paris and housing the former Ruling family.
Gloria, the hippo in the Madagascar movies. Designed to be sexy. In fact, her large size became a status of attraction to a male hippo named Moto Moto (the name so nice, you say it twice).
And it would seem that hippos as a species find chubbiness attractive, since Moto Moto and Gloria's flirting is made entirely of fat jokes.
Hyacinth Hippo in the Dance of the Hours section of Fantasia. Not only did the alligators end up fighting over her favor, her movements were modeled after footage of a real ballet dancer, then given the appropriate amount of heft.
In Maskerade Agnes Nitt is described as "good-looking, in an expansive sort of way"; all she's missing is the confidence, which her Split Personality Perdita has in spades.
In Soul Music, a Valkyrie is described enthusiastically: "[she was] as much woman as you could get in one place without getting two women."
Lady Sybil Ramkin, who first appears in Guards! Guards! and becomes the wife of Samuel Vimes, is one gifted with the robust figure of a well-to-do lady who runs a shelter for Swamp Dragons. In that novel it is said that "[her] bosom rose and fell like an empire." Later, in The Fifth Elephant, she demonstrates a talent of those who are so gifted by expertly singing an aria from a famous Dwarf opera.
Mary Callahan, later Callahan-Finn of the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series, who's listed at two-fifty and gives Jake a raging hard-on when he first sees her. Zoey is later described as a nine-tenths scale model of Mary, which still puts her at 225. Jake even admits this is his Fetish.
In Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett's Point of Hopes, merchant Iniz Allyns is described as being "as large as any two women, and four times as lovely."
In A Song of Ice and Fire, Roose Bolton eventually comes to feel this way about his third wife, "Fat" Walda Frey, and he even admits to Theon that he's become oddly fond of her. Considering who's saying this it's definitely notable. He also specifically chose her because he was given the pick of women from House Frey and was offered his prospective bride's weight in silver for her dowry. Being a Magnificent Bastard, he picked the fattest one.
Queen Neferishu in The Chronicles of Magravandias, in contrast with the willowy standards of beauty of the Mewtish people. Prince Bayard, who usually sleeps with anything with a pulse, has apparently said "she's the only weighty woman he'd ever consider taking to bed."
Lula in the Stephanie Plum books is a former prostitute and quite a large woman. It is mentioned by the main character that being big works well for Lula.
According to most of the cast of Cherie Bennett's Life in the Fat Lane, the protagonist is one. She disagrees.
Live Action Television
Penelope Garcia of Criminal Minds is notably bigger than the other women of the BAU, but that doesn't seem to stop her and Morgan from constantly exchanging cheerily flirty banter. Nor does it stop her from actively dating and having sex.
Amber of Huge, is one of the campers in a summer weight-loss camp, though she's the least fat girl in the camp. She's fawned after by the entire male population of the camp, this even includes a handsome camp counselor named George.
In an alternate reality episode of Friends where Monica had never lost weight, she's still quite attractive with a doctor for a boyfriend and Chandler even still falls for her.
Carla of Dancing On The Edge is a beautiful jazz singer and Dierdre is the owner of an underground club; both get sincere compliments on their beauty over the course of the series.
Music
Get on your bikes and ride! (and the song also has suggestive lines such as "Heap big woman you gonna make a big man out of me!")
Perfect 10 by the Beautiful South. "She's a perfect 10/But she wears a 12" Unusually, it's a duet, and both the male and female singers comment favourably on the size of their partner - although Wikipedia says that's not the kind of size the woman is talking about.
"The Spicy McHaggis Jig": "[Spicy was] Always looking for chicks over four hundred pounds / One night at the pub a girl caught his eye / big as a house, just the right size / the broad was enormous, stacked to the hilt / Spicy soon noticed a bulge in his kilt!"
Double subverted in a music video by 90's R&B singer Kelly Price where she leaves a man who won't accept her for her size, only for a stud to drive up and ask "What does it take to make a big beautiful woman like you happy?"
"She's got big red lips, and big brown eyes. She's everything my mama has, it's king sized. Oh well, Two Ton Tessie! Two Ton Tessie! Well, she's big and round and I love every pound!"
Cherry from the animated band Studio Killers is a perfect example of this trope. She's beautiful, sexy, flirty, and adores other women of all shapes and sizes.
Hoagy Carmichael's "Huggin' and Chalkin'":
I got a gal who's mighty sweet Big blue eyes and tiny feet Her name is Rosabelle Magee And she tips the scales at three-oh-three
Sinergia's song "Mujer robusta" ("Heavyset Woman") is all about a dude who's literally crazy for his BBW girlfriend.
German Hip Hop group "Fettes Brot" uses this trope in the party song "Erdbeben" (earthquake), where they celebrate girls shaking their huge (and beautiful) asses, while thin girls envy them for their asses' "shakability".
The plus-size burlesque group The Glamazons (especially Caramella.)
She was a big girl, she was big. I mean she was big, she was fucking huge! Enormous! Needed a sign overhead! You could have sailed the Hindenburg between her legs and not even have landing permission!
Theater
Seraghina from Nine is supposed to be a large woman who is beautiful and sexually confident, and teaches the protagonist about romance and sexuality in his childhood (the film adaptation had a decidedly Hollywood Pudgy Seraghina).
Burlesque star Miss Dirty Martini. Quite a buit bigger than your average burlesque performer, but wears just as few clothes.
Video Games
In Fable III, there are posters around Bowerstone for a plus-sized dancing girl named "Big Bess."
A female PC in either Fable II or Fable III could be one; while fatness normally detracts from attractiveness (except in the case of "fat-loving" NPCs found on Knothole Island in II), one could overcome this with the right hair, make-up, and outfits.
Polly in Skies Of Arcadia. Her long-lost husband notes that she's gotten a little bigger since he saw her last. He certainly doesn't seem to mind though, seeing as they end up having ten more children in the game's epilogue.
Justine in Shadows Of The Damned was an odd example before her death; a glamorous opera singer, the public saw her as beautiful despite being fat, but from her own perspective her weight made her ugly and undesirable.
In the second Dragon's Lair game, whilst traveling through the Garden Of Eden we meet (and are chased by) Eve, who can easily be described with the four Bs; big, blonde, busty and beautiful. Despite Dirk's attempts to escape her, she's shamelessly displayed in an outfit even skimpier than Daphne's.
Webcomics
Samantha Lovi from The Zombie Hunters. Her heavyset figure can actually make her seem more attractive than the other female cast.
Carol from Between Failures. Her 'ample figure' is attractive to at least two other cast members.
Karen of Penny and Aggie is no lightweight, even post-makeover, but has "learned how to work it." Also subverted a bit in that the confidence is an act; she remembers her pre-makeover days and fears that people (especially her boyfriend) will "realize" she's not pretty.
Web Original
The woman in Dodudindon is tall and thick in contrast to the thin and small bird-like people all around her, even when her hoop dress is peeled off... especially the tiny guy that follows her around whom she teases endlessly.
Germaine of the Neurotically Yours videos decided to get fat, believing that it would stop people from treating her as a sex-object. Unfortunately, most of her fat simply added to her hourglass figure and drew even more attention from fat admirers.
Clara from The Guild is a full figured Manic Pixie Dreamgirl who got married and had kids, but never grew out of her wild tendencies. The skinny, spineless Codex spent a whole season pining for the hot stuntman Wade. Clara ended up making out with him shortly after she met him.
There are whole site dedicated to either galleries of photographs of plump/chubby/fat girlfriends/friends/neighbours, and erotic fiction about women who fatten up, intentionally or not, to become BBWs. There is also a lot of fanfiction with the same idea, but based around favorite characters.
Writing.Com has an enormous number of "Choose Your Own Adventure" stories that the reader can add to. The majority of them are Weight Gain stories or Fanfiction, or Weight Gain Fanfiction.
The Judgment of Paris is a huge resource focusing on plus-size fashion models (who are by definition required to be both curvy and to be viewed as attractive in their milieu), with endless images & videos and plentiful discussions of the whole concept of plus-size female beauty.
This work-safe "thickspiration" video juxtaposes present-day BBWs with classical art. (Originally available here, but YouTube has flagged it.)
"Lard Biscuit Enterprises" has a whole section on "Hot Chicks" which, as the name of the site suggests, is full of fuller figured femme fatales.
Curvage Forum started out as "Fat Celebs" and was dedicated to pictures of fat/fattened celebrities. Its expanded focus includes Celebrities, Friends and Girlfriends, as well as including sections for art/fiction, lifestyle discussion, other-topic chat and weight gaining tips.
There are other forums dedicated to similar topics.
DeviantArt has many, many people on the site solely for the weight gain BBW pictures and stories. About twenty percent of them are Furry art as well.
MySpace is absolutely full of people whose profile seems to be no more than a hosting page for their gallery. Those galleries are full of folders and each folder is a collection of picture of a topic related to BBWs, such as BBWs In Tight Clothes, BBWs Eating or Before & After They Became BBWs. In fact, a lot of women post folders full of pictures of themselves as they go from being skinny to being a BBW.
Youtube, similarly has a lot of users dedicating their entire video gallery to nothing but videos of large women eating a lot, wearing clothes that used to fit (often trying to pop off the buttons), playing with their belly rolls and even comparing early, slimmer, videos to those from months or years later when they have potentially doubled in weight or more.
The erotic cosplayer known as Luu, who released an album called "Real Debu" (debu being Japanese for "fatty" or "chubby") sometimes poses with desserts, and is one of the few cosplayers out there who can truly pull off Cattleya.
Surreal computer animator Wendy Vainity considers herself one, and loves animating characters with huge wobbling masses of flab.
Flame Princess from Adventure Time qualifies. She's short and chubby, but Finn thinks that the princess is the most beautiful creature he's ever seen. Storyboard artist Rebecca Sugar describes Susan Strong as one, though Susan is muscular rather than fat.
An episode of Futurama had Fry and Bender stranded on the moon. A farmer offers them shelter with the stipulation that they stay away from his three beautiful robot daughters: two Daisy Duke types and The Crushinator, a pink combine / tank. Later, we see Bender fleeing from an irate, shotgun-wielding farmer.
Fry: Oh, Bender. You didn't touch the Crushinator, did you? Bender: Of course not! A lady that fine, you have to romance first.
Also in 300 Big Boys, the reveal that the professor's new girlfriend was one of these who had been using stem cells to hide her true appearance, just like he had. They both smile and resume the torrid kissing.
