I must have been having a sensitive day that day. To be perfectly honest, some cheeky bastard in a chat referred to me that way (in our first chat, within 5 minutes), and it set me off, because while I'm a strapping girl, pretty cute, and in fact female, I wouldn't have applied it to myself, and it really put me off to be labeled by a stranger.
The BBW label something I have avoided, and will continue to avoid, in my references to myself, and by now, everyone at Pixies has a pretty good idea of what they're going to see when they open my pics, so I don't know that I need to advertise my curvaliciousness in that manner. But the label may not be the downfall of Western Civilization as we know it.
I don't mind being referred to as "chubby" even, as Aqua mentions. It's an adjective, rather than a label. What's the difference? Is it just semantic? I don't think so. I guess an adjective is just that. But a label is, oh I don't know, ascribing a whole bunch of other stuff. Chubby is chubby. No more, no less. But BBW seems like a lifestyle, and it isn't. I can see the men's point--it allows them to find what they're looking for, and that's valid.