What It's Like to Watch Porn When Your Body Is a Niche Category

Go to any mainstream porn site like PornHub and you'll see videos divided into different categories. While some describe specific sex acts, the majority are based on a description of the star's appearance — and most often with the exception of gay male porn, these descriptions are focused on the lead female star. These porn niches place performers into categories based on their race, age, hair color, physical attributes, and body size. Yes, I'm talking about the "BBW" category: often the only place in porn where fat bodies can be seen.

For fat women (raises hand), this categorization can make interacting with porn complicated, to say the least. When you click over to the "BBW" category, you might see a stunning woman who has a similar body type to yours having great sex with a hot partner. Or you might see a video with a male performer using demeaning language towards his costar and with camera angles zooming in on her stomach rolls. And if that second type of video is not exactly what you're seeking out, it can leave you feeling worse than before you opened that incognito window.

"When I actually thought about the term BBW, I realized it might be one of the most nuanced conversations in this particular space," says Megan, aka @MsGigggles, a fat activist, content creator, and self-described "sexual wellness geek." She tells PS, "I don't inherently love the term because it feels like a term that exists through fetishization. But there is also something to be said about categorizing things so that you can find those performers or those people easily."

Think about the term "plus-size," for example: some people find the term to have a negative connotation, but personally, I just want to know if a store carries clothes in my size or not.

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Tamara Pincus, LICSW, is certified sex therapist specializing in kinky, polyamorous, and LGBTQ+ clients.

While the term can make it easier to find plus-size performers, it can also bring up a lot of baggage. "With BBW, I feel like it's just another representation of capitalist society, racism, bigotry, putting us into very neat shiny boxes and not allowing us to really flourish outside of those specific identifications," Megan says. "But then I had to reflect on being on the internet and creating fat-positive and sex-positive content for the past 10 years. And when I thought about the comments that I've received about my body or my existence, I don't know if I've ever received the comment BBW as a negative connotation. And I will say that that phrase itself, although people might be using it in a fetishization framework, is meant to be a positive description in a space that usually doesn't have a lot of positive descriptions."

For fat women who want to feel connected to their bodies sexually, some might find it empowering to watch BBW porn, while some might find it distressing. "I like the idea that people are finding fatness attractive and that there's a space for that," says sex therapist Tamara Pincus, LICSW. "But I think that a lot of bigger femme people, particularly women, have this challenge of feeling really objectified around their fatness." When it comes to BBW porn, she says, "I don't really tend to tell people either to embrace it or to avoid it. I tend to let people be led by what works for them."

Interestingly, the term "BBW" wasn't initially used as a porn term. The phrase was invented by Carole Shaw when she launched "BBW" magazine, a fashion and lifestyle magazine for plus-size women, in 1979. In an October 2024 episode of the podcast "Wait For It," which Shaw guest-hosted, story editor Sarah Dealey went deep into the history of the magazine.

"Carole says that she came up with the term because she was told as a fat woman that she was fat and ugly. And those two things really stuck together for her: fat and ugly. So she was like, 'I'm not fat and ugly. I'm big and beautiful.' And that's how she started it. Big, beautiful woman was something she said, and she shortened it to BBW because it fit on the cover of the magazine better," Dealey explains.

Although it's not clear how "BBW" became a porn term, it might have to do with the personal ads that BBW magazine began publishing: soon, the term jumped to personal ads published elsewhere, whether for people self-describing their body or for people seeking a fat partner.

"BBW" magazine went out of print in the late '90s and it hardly has any online presence today. To see old articles from the magazine, you'd have to sift through library archives. The magazine was out of print by the time the internet (and internet porn) was really taking off, "so there was just a gap in knowledge," Dealey says. And what ended up happening was that, at least for people in my generation, the porn term is the thing BBW is known as."

Porn performers have complicated feelings about the term, too. "Before I started working in the industry, that word was very offensive to me. But since being an adult entertainer for so long, that's changed a lot," says Marilyn Mayson, a content creator and adult film star. "I get paid a lot of money for my body. So it's really funny to me when people are like, 'Oh, you're fat.' I'm like, 'Do you understand how that's paid my bills for a decade-plus?' Because that'll make you change your tune real quick when you realize."

For fat performers, the BBW categorization is hard to avoid in the adult entertainment industry. "If you shoot for companies, they're going to label you, unfortunately," Mayson explains. "They do that in a lot of ways — like, they'll throw a 'MILF' in there. I do think if you're an independent creator, you can avoid using the term BBW, but if you're working with professional companies, you don't have as much say."

While there's money to be made in the BBW niche, Mayson adds that there are much fewer studios that will work with BBW performers than will work with straight-size performers: "They have a certain glossy, typical porn star look that they themselves just don't want to deviate from, but they haven't even tried to take a chance. If you look up the statistics on PornHub or whatever, we are one of the top searches."

Miss Mei, a sex worker and the co-founder of the sex-worker-led organization Decrim 305, also has complicated feelings about the term. "As an adult entertainer, I need to use the term in order to monetize myself and market myself," they tell PS. "But I also recognize that capitalism and racism have played into each other, and it's been able to create this system in which we monetize being fetishized, and that fetishization leads to stigma and violence and all these other things, which can certainly be negative."

This happens to plus-size people, but not only plus-size people: "In the state of Florida, the most-searched-for porn category is 'trans,'" Miss Mei says. "And as we've seen in Florida, we do not have trans rights. And so the people that are voting against trans folks' rights are the same people who are searching this term and wanking off, and they're doing the same thing to every other category, BBW included."

Still, if you want to make money as a plus-size porn performer, you're probably going to have to use the term BBW, Mei says. "You do have agency over what labels you use to market yourself if you're an independent adult entertainer, but you might not make money." Mei adds, "I certainly do cash in way more when I categorize myself under BBW, there's no denying that. I'm Chinese Cuban, and I categorize myself as mixed race Asian Latina, and I know for a fact that I make more money because of that. Is it good? I don't know, but I make more money."

Erika W. Smith (she/her) is a freelance writer and editor who covers astrology, sex, relationships, lifestyle, and more. Her book series Astrosex was published in 2021.