"Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)" is the fourth single from the debut album Life in Cartoon Motion of singer Mika. It reached number 9 in the UK charts after it was released on 23 July 2007. It was inspired by, and written for the Butterfly Lounge, the first Size Acceptance nightclub in Orange County, California. The club is mentioned specifically in the lyrics "Get yourself to the Butterfly Lounge. Find yourself a big lady", and is now their theme song. A B-side of the single is "Standing in the Way of Control".

The song was met with mixed reviews from music critics. The song peaked at number 9 in the United Kingdom (his third top 10 hit in that country), and reached the top ten in Ireland, Finland, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Many people speculate that Mika wrote the song as a tribute to Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls", but in promotional materials for Life In Cartoon Motion, he states that this is not the case at all:

"I was flying to Los Angeles the next day and I can never sleep because I hate flying so much. So I was watching trashy television, it was two o'clock in the morning, a Victoria Wood documentary on Channel 4. It was about fat people in the United States and she visited a club called The Butterfly Lounge, which was the first place of its kind, a club for larger women to hang out in. Skinny women were not being allowed in. The women were amazing and I absolutely felt as if I had to write about them. I muted the television and wrote it straight away. I never expected it on the album, but a few weeks later we recorded it and it's now there. So it is one of my favourite tracks and brilliant to play live. Everyone sings along!"

The song features Afro-pop-inspired guitars and harmonies.

The song received mostly mixed reviews from music critics. Beth Johnson from Entertainment Weekly referred to the song as "an update of Queen's 'Fat Bottomed Girls'." Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine agreed, writing that the song " is nothing if not a disco-fied exaltation to Queen's 'Fat Bottomed Girls'." John Murphy from musicOMH wrote a negative review, saying that the song is "an ode to the delights of the larger lady, wraps up its laudable message inside a tune that grates in the worst possible way." Graham Griffith from About.com wrote that "the disco-lite 'Big Girl (You Are Beautiful),' which includes an admirable sentiment, fails to distinguish itself otherwise." Liz Colville from Pitchfork Media said that it is "a pumping, chorus-infested jam session complete with gospel backup singers that tragically feels the need to reassure big girls they can be beautiful."

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Wikipedia