Men often use sports terminology when talking about their weight, such as “I’m as big as a linebacker” or “I’ve got a wrestler’s body— thick and stocky.” Men also tend to see those self-assessments as factual, even complimentary. Weight Watchers research has found that male-dominated descriptions often go back to childhood, when boys played sports and were encouraged to be “muscular” or “big” or “fast“ or “strong.”
Even though many women also played sports when they were young, the words that are complimentary to guys do not necessarily cross the gender divide. In fact, girls who played sports and were described as big, muscular, or big-boned did not generally take the words as compliments. For many women those words translate as “fat.” So when guys are talking with women about weight, they need to leave the locker-room language behind and be sensitive to the fact that most women do not appreciate being called “a big woman” or
having someone notice that they have “really bulked up” since they began working out. Men would be much better off using language that compliments a woman’s appearance, like “nice curves”or “you look so much more toned since you began working out.”
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