There’s a fine line between being “big and beautiful” and being fat. And I’ll admit that I don’t know where to draw that line.

We throw around the word “fat” so much that it’s lost it’s meaning. I’ll admit that I have “fat days,” but I try not to ever mention this to anyone ever, because I hate it when I hear people smaller than me with the same complaint.

I have a size 4 co-worker (who probably has a 26-inch waist) who routinely groans about her weight while munching on cookies, potato chips, chocolate or whatever else is in sight.

I have another co-worker who runs marathons counts calories religiously and yet deals with the reality of maintaining a toned plus-size form.

I come from a family of extra-large women, so I know the pain and struggle of weight loss and pain and embarrassment of watching strangers stare. I don’t make light of it.

I also know that being fat is relative.

Many of you (and many more men, I’d hazard to say) will call the woman on the cover of the book jacket to the right, “fat.” She’s clearly not your standard model size.

This last fact is something that many women will applaud.

The second picture is the same model. Her name is Crystal Renn. She is 23 years old now, but she was discovered by a model scout when she was a fresh faced 14-year-old. She describes her appearance then as being a “chubby cheerleader.”

She was encouraged to lose 50 pounds to model (about 40 percent of her body weight at the time). She was constantly hungry, consistently exhausted and her hair fell out in clumps. That’s her former self pictured at left.

Soon she rebelled and decided to settle into a comfortable, healthy weight. She landed at a size 12. And her modeling career thrives. She tells her story in the aptly titled “Hungry: A Young Model’s Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves” (due to be released Sept. 8 from Simon & Schuster, $25).

The last time I posted a revealing picture of a size 12, plus-sized girl from a Glamour magazine story on “feeling comfortable in your own skin,” many of the comments were appalling. The level of disgust and idiocy shocked me.

I had to police that blog post all day, because apparently there is a surplus of men with six-pack abs who are offended by any girl with a double-digit dress size.

And, yes, there is a point at which excess weight is unhealthy. And as much as I want people to feel confident and happy no matter what size they are right now, I want them to work on being healthy too.

But when people bring out the pitchforks for a girl who’s a size 12, I just get angry. No wonder girls have the highest rates of eating disorders and self-esteem issues.

But here’s the kicker. There are more overweight men than women.

A few years ago a global study revealed that 40 percent of men and 30 percent of women are overweight, while 24 percent of men and 27 percent of women are obese, according to research reported in a journal of the American Heart Association.

And right now, 66 percent of adults over 20 are considered overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

So why are so many people so mad? Is there really a raging, pompous, condescending 34 percent of the population making all the noise about weight control?

Newsweek recently published a report on “America’s War on the Overweight: Anti-fat rhetoric is getting nastier than ever. Why our overweight nation hates overweight people.”

Some of the answers from the article were pretty interesting. The article explains that much of this aggravated hot-air is coming from self-haters, who struggle with weight but consider their missteps to be legitimate excuses, while the missteps of others are foul acts against will power and discipline.

The article also explains:

“People actually enjoy feeling angry,” says Ryan Martin, associate professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, who cites studies done on people’s emotions. “It makes them feel powerful, it makes them feel greater control, and they appreciate it for that reason.” And with fat people designated as acceptable targets of rage-and with the prevalence of fat people in our lives, both in the malls and on the news-it’s easy to find a target for some soul-clearing, ego-boosting ranting.

And here’s a final note from the article: Yelling at people to stop being fat doesn’t help.

Anyone with a brain will tell you that for one thing — it’s rude! And for the second thing, when did humiliating and belittling anyone ever make a situation better.

So we have to learn to live with each other for thinner or fatter. I can only hope that familiarity will breed a new acceptance without tipping the scales in favor of our nation’s other favorite past time: verbally abusing the skinny.

The Glamour feature attracted so much attention and controversy that according to the New York Post, the magazine will “feature a slew of large, nude models in the November issue.”

This time Lizzie Miller, who sparked a mix of accolades and vitriol, will be joined by “fellow full-figured femmes”: Kate Dillon, Jennie Runk, Amy Lemons, Crystal Renn (above), Ashley Graham and Anansa Sims. Apparently all the girls were photographed nude by Matthias Vriens.

I’m sure plenty of folks will be sharpening their pitchforks over that, but I can only hope that one or two will realize that demonizing fat isn’t part of the solution. It’s part of the problem.

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