About

Chubby Bubbles Girl, also known as Bubbles Girl or Chubbles, is a Photoshop meme based on a photograph of a young girl running through a yard wearing a yellow jacket with a bubble maker in her hand. This exploitable series is similar in form to the Disaster Girl, Crasher Squirrel and Thundersnow Ice Cream Cone Guy memes. The meme first appeared on 4chan in August 2009, with creators typically editing the child into other scenes as if she's running away from something, and primarily spread online in late 2009 and the early 2010s. The identity of the girl is unknown.

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 cutout of the girl have also been 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.^[3]

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.

Possible Identification

The identity of the kid depicted in the Chubby Bubbles Girl meme has never been confirmed. However, on September 30th, 2024, a Redditor by the name of TapSubstantial134 commented on a 13-year-old Reddit post on the /r/memes^[8] subreddit titled "True Internet Story: Chubby Bubbles Girl," writing, "hehe thats me."

Prior to this, on July 31st, 2024, TapSubstantial134 posted a thread on the /r/AskForHelp^[9] subreddit titled "If I am a meme that was popular in 2009, can I still get money for copyrights?" However, the post did not receive any engagement or replies, and the Reddit account did not make any further posts as of April 2026.

On March 11th, 2025, the YouTube^[10] channel Internet Supreme Court uploaded a video titled "Little Girl Running Away Meme: Where Are They Now" in which they claimed they reached out to the Redditor and asked if she was really the girl in the meme, with the user stating they were.

In the video, Internet Supreme Court claims the Redditor said she was shown the picture by her brother, who told her she was a popular meme, with TapSubstantial134 then asking their mom if it was really her, which she confirmed. According to the story, the image was taken at a christening for her cousin, adding that she wasn't running from anything and was just having fun.

The video includes other photos and angles of the girl in the same outfit with the bubbles from that day, as well as a more recent image of her with dark hair and glasses, which the YouTuber said came from her Instagram.

Various 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