Well this is one acronym we probably could have lived without…
There’s a term that’s been cropping up more and more around the internet during the past few months… and that term is “DUFF”.
“Like the beer from the Simpsons?” I said, when a colleague asked if I’d come across it.
No, not like the beer, I was told.
“The DUFF”, as I have now learned, is an American acronym and it stands for the “designated ugly fat friend.”
Or rather, the friend who people apparently keep around to make themselves look better by comparison.
Like me, 17-year-old high school student Kody Keplinger was unfamiliar with this new and completely unnecessary label, but overheard it in the cafeteria one morning.
“When I first heard it…I thought, ‘That’s hilarious and super clever.’” Keplinger recalls in the New York Post. “Then, I thought — ‘Wait, that’s super mean.’ And then: ‘Oh crap, that’s me! I am the DUFF of my group!’”
Turns out Keplinger wasn’t alone. A quick survey of her peers revealed that many women upon learning about DUFFs assume that they are one.
“I realised that everyone is insecure and thinks they’re the DUFF,” says Keplinger.
That’s when she decided to write a book about it.
Since it’s release in September 2010 that book has become a best seller. It’s also spawned a Hollywood adaptation, set for release in Australia in April. The tagline of the film is “You either know one, you have one or you are one.” Yeah.