Column: I am overweight. But I am not fat.

The way I see it, overweight is something your regular doctor can define for you. There's a clinical system for it, and you can calculate and chart it. It's about numbers and scales. Defining what makes someone “fat” is not quite as simple. 

It may be that a young man struggling with anorexia nervosa is fat. (This is not unheard of, and according to mirror-mirror.org, 10 percent of all anorexia patients are male.) A non-curvy woman at ideal body weight who can't make it into the modeling world is fat. A slightly overweight person who has tried every diet in the book to no avail, in the eyes of his or her athletic parents, is considered to be fat.

Still, being clinically over your ideal weight...that makes you fat, right?

If you say so. I guess.

While it can be coming from a harsh source like an industry or a disorder, “fat” is more than an extreme, personally-targeted perception.  If a person is a certain size and has certain factors, someone who doesn't know them well is likely to subconsciously and casually categorize them as that label we love to throw around. Following close behind in words we love to throw around is “skinny.” If a girl has no signs of extra fat on her body, she's “bony.”  The accusatory term “skinny” stems from a radical insecurity surrounding the more popular throw-around word. It's a mentality of “if you're not fat like me, you must be anorexic.”  Most of this is born from self-loathing.