Chubby Bubbles Girl

About

Chubby Bubbles Girl is a photoshopping trend inspired by a photograph of a girl running through a yard with a bubble maker in her hand. This exploitable series is similar in form to Disaster Girl, Crasher Squirrel and Thundersnow Ice Cream Cone Guy.

Origin

The identities of the girl in the photo and the photographer still remain unknown, but the original image first appeared online via imageboard community 4chan^[1] in a /b/ (random) thread posted on August 22nd, 2009.

On 4chan, images containing an exploitable of the girl have been also referred to as “Bubbles Girl” or simply “Chubbles.” Somewhat similar to the use of Disaster Girl and Strutting Leo, Chubby Bubbles Girl is usually photoshopped into scenes of disasters or chase-and-run scenarios.

Spread

In between August 22nd and 23rd, 2009, Chubby Bubbles Girl emerged as a popular subject of photoshop-related threads^[2] on 4chan imageboards and quickly made its way over to the micro-blogging service Tumblr]

On September 12th, BuzzFeed^[4] editor Scott Lamb, then a power user on the site, created the post titled “What is Bubbles Girl Running From?” challenging readers to create their own photoshopped versions with an exploitable cutout:

She’s got her bubbles, but she’s definitely on the run from something. Use our photo editor or grab the image transparency to help us find out!

By September 23rd, users on 4chan^[5] celebrated its newly reached memetic status in a /b/ (random) thread with repetitive chants of “NEW MEME NEW MEME NEW MEME.” Later in the same month, MemeGenerator^[6] launched an image macro application for “Chubby Bubbles Girl,” spawning a modest collection of 200 derivatives in the span of two months. There is also a Facebook fan page^[7] dedicated to Chubby Bubbles Girl with just over 600 likes.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

According to Google Insights, search queries for “Bubbles Girl” yielded its highest spike in July 2009 following the introduction of photoshopping threads on 4chan’s /b/. Despite the large volume of
derivatives generated by 4chan and Buzzfeed, the overall interest in “Chubby Bubbles Girl” has waned since peaking in 2009.

External References

^[1] 4chanarchive – August 22nd, 2009 Chubby Bubbles Girl Thread (NSFW)

^[2] 4chanarchive – August 23rd, 2009 Chubby Bubbles Girl (NSFW)

^[3] Tumblr – Tagged Results for Chubby Bubbles Girl

^[4] BuzzFeed – What is Bubbles Girl Running From?

^[5] 4chanarchive – /b/ thread 154654064

^[6] Memegenerator – Chubby Bubbles Girl

^[7] Facebook – Chubby Bubbles Girl