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Loving Large

zuzu

Josh Max has a piece today in Salon about his attraction to larger women (and his 10-year marriage to one) that looks at some of the social forces shaping attraction and the peer pressure that tells men that there’s something wrong with being attracted to fat women. It’s a pretty good piece, albeit a bit self-congratulatory throughout and with a regrettable bit at the end about nagging “concern” for his wife’s health that seems to be attributable to shame and what his family thinks of his wife’s weight more than concern for her health. (And, seriously? Engaged for three years to an average-sized woman prior to seeking out fat women? What was the story there?)

And then there are the letters.

It’s predictable. There are those who insist that this guy has a fetish, and those who start blathering about how she’s going to get diabetes, and of course the ones who are just disgusted at the idea that fat women are allowed out in public, let alone allowed to have love lives and find companions who love them as they are. Check this out from “No Name Given” (who’s quite the Chatty Cathy in this discussion and others about weight):

These are the facts…

Men obtain (cusomarily and usually) the most attractive woman that they can afford (what their income and net worth will attract). Women get the best (income and net worth) man that their looks will allow them to. This is true, most of the time. Sure, there are exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions. This is not sexist, it is true. Factually speaking obesity is choice in most instances and obese people are entitled to NO special consideration due to their girth. If they travel on an airplane they should be required to purchase 2 tickets rather than spill over into the seat of their neighbor. Fat is unhealthy and does lead to health problems. And, NO, most men DO NOT prefer fat women anymore that women prefer fat men.

Ah, yes, the market theory of attraction. And here’s Mr. No Name Given on the subject of fetishes:

Finding fat people overwhelming attractive has a term “chubby chaser”. Curvy and BBW are codewords for obese. Most fat people are fat by choice and make conscious decisions in regards to their lifestyles to be and stay fat. They lack discipline and restraint. There are few things more disgusting than someone who is corpulently obese but they have they have their hair perfect and a wonderful pedicure and manicure, as if that will make a difference and make them more attractive. Most people can change their predicament and get in better shape through modifying their eating habits and engaging in moderate exercise. They chose not to. The article writer is a sick person who is a fetishist. Sorry, fat is not attractive nor desirable.

Just lipstick on a pig there, right, No Name?

The problem is, though, the fetishists are out there, and it can be really fucking tiring dealing with them. I’ve got the added bonus of being really, really busty, so I get the tit fetishists along with the chubby chasers.

Dating when you’re fat is just fraught with little self-esteem landmines. I do much of my dating through online sites, and it was only recently that I ventured into specialized sites for (and, gah, I hate this term) BBWs. Prior to that, I’d been on sites like Nerve (before it changed its format and pricing structure and fell into suckitude) that feature all kinds of people. I went to the BBW sites mostly because I’d been getting so many hits from people who apparently had not read my ad and noticed that I checked “ample” or whatever to describe my body type. Granted, I didn’t have any full-body shots in my ad and my face is not a good indicator of the size of my ass, but you hope that someone who bothers to write a relatively thoughtful message to you referencing stuff that was actually in your ad bothered to read that part. It hurts to go through all that and see the shock and disgust in someone’s eyes when you show up for the meeting.

I figured I’d avoid that problem with the BBW-specific sites, but that just provided a home for the chubby chasers, and it just got exhausting going on dates with guys who swear that it’s a preference, la la, and have them make little comments or smack my ass in a proprietary way and realize that it’s more than a preference.

That’s not to say that every guy was like that, or even the majority, but obviously I didn’t hit it off with those guys, either. But the big question always looms when things just don’t get started with a perfectly normal guy who I just didn’t feel chemistry with: do I feel like sorting through the fetishists to find the next normal guy? And for a while now, the answer has been, hell no.

63 thoughts on Loving Large

  1. I’m lucky. I met The Beau through one of those BBW sites. I wouldn’t consider him a fetishist – he just happens to prefer larger women. Some were very large, some were just a bit chubby, some were in the middle. Such preferences are not enough to sustain a relationship – there has to be something else in common, an emotional/intellectual connection. I don’t think some of the “chubby chasers” realize that.

    And, to be blunt, there are some guys who are “chubby chasers” because they think us fat girls will be so desperate and grateful for any kind of masculine attention that we’ll put up with anything from poor hygiene to cheating.

  2. Yeesh. Who cares about how fat others’ mates are? People get so huffy and weird when you talk about fat people getting any romantic attention. Even if you are the kind of asshole who won’t consider dating a fat chick, why do you care about the size of the person I’m dating?

  3. This is why I stopped reading the comments at Salon!

    Just my own experience: years ago, I signed up with an internet dating site, and I read in so many men’s ads that they would only date women who were thin, but they also wanted women who didn’t care too much about their appearance. So, apparently you have to be born thin, and not realize it or work at it in order to be worthy of affection. Gah!

  4. Bitchmag wrote about a similar trend towards hot skinny women (because fat wasn’t sexy) who ate really big meals (because deprivation wasn’t sexy). The author’s take on it was basically, “Okay…extreme thinness…plus constant bingeing…carry the two…bulimia! We’re not supposed to be anorexic anymore! We’re supposed to be bulimic!”

  5. Most fat people are fat by choice and make conscious decisions in regards to their lifestyles to be and stay fat. They lack discipline and restraint.

    Sorry guy, but “they make conscious decisions” and “they lack discipline and restraint” are contradictory statements. Do they or do they not make the choice? (Answer: He’s an asshole, so fuck him.)

  6. I don’t see how liking fat girls is any different than liking thin girls or girls with big boobs or redheads, or for that matter, guys with a nice butt. Everyone has different taste in what they find attractive.

    Bitchmag sounds like they are hating on thin people. It is possible to eat 3 healthy meals per day and still be thin without puking it back up. It really irks me when people think they can diagnose a mental disorder on sight.

  7. Bitchmag sounds like they are hating on thin people. It is possible to eat 3 healthy meals per day and still be thin without puking it back up. It really irks me when people think they can diagnose a mental disorder on sight.

    No, the article was about an emerging cultural fetish for extremely skinny women–celebrities, mostly–who ate really big meals. I know it’s possible for some people to do that, because they have hummingbird metabolisms. It’s not possible for most people–and I would argue that “most people” includes “most celebrities”; that’s why some of them purge.

  8. I’m also not a fan of the term BBW either zuzu. I can’t put my finger on why, but I think it might be the word Big. I already know I am a beautiful woman.

  9. I’m with frumious b on this one — different people find different things attractive. I happen to like a bit of plush because hell, the person carrying it is more fun to cuddle.

    And while I’ll admit to not having read the article, bitchmag’s overlooking people like a good girlfriend of mine who can eat huge meals all day, NOT purge them, and still stay slim and trim at just barely over 100 lbs. They do exist :p

  10. And while I’ll admit to not having read the article, bitchmag’s overlooking people like a good girlfriend of mine who can eat huge meals all day, NOT purge them, and still stay slim and trim at just barely over 100 lbs. They do exist :p

    Of course they do! So do skinny women in general. So do women who just can’t give enough hummer. Is that a good reason for pop culture to tell women that they should all look like that and eat like that? No. That was the problem the author had with this trend that attempted to define what was and was not attractive to everyone.

  11. Re BBW: It sounds condescending, that’s what bugs me about it. Like saying someone’s “Eighty years young today!” Fuck that. If I live eighty years I’m entitled to call myself old and dammit, that’s a good thing. When I look at BBW the word that bugs me isn’t “big”, it’s “beautiful.” One wonders why the point needs to be made, and therefore it’s almost as if there’s an implied “but” between Big and Beautiful. And like I said above, fuck that. (And that’s without getting into the more basic question of why women must always aspire to beauty anyway.) I think merely “BW” wouldn’t bother me nearly as much.

  12. And, to be blunt, there are some guys who are “chubby chasers” because they think us fat girls will be so desperate and grateful for any kind of masculine attention that we’ll put up with anything from poor hygiene to cheating.

    It’s interesting how this can also be employed, in another way, to disparage men who happen to date large women. Most of the women I’ve dated have been on the larger side of “average”, whatever that means, and not for any particular reason other than we hit it off. Yet I’ve heard (secondhand) that the reason for dating whom I’ve dated was because I was too skinny (men can’t be too fat or too skinny, mind you) to get someone more attractive. It wasn’t because I had a fetish, but because I wasn’t “good enough” for other women.

  13. What about the BBMs who only want thin women? These sorts of double standards make me angry.

    (I actually have to be honest, I’d never heard the term BBW before — what an icky term.)

  14. I can’t, I won’t, I REFUSE to read the comments following anything fat positive in mainstream culture. It’s too predictable, always, without exception, somebody’s gotta pop up with the “health issue” and all the disgust that can be mustered along with it. Uh uh, nope, had enough of that hatred to last me my entire life.

  15. What is it about people who claim false, uncited and unprovable* ideas as “facts”?

    * because they’re wrong! or, at best, they’re some spurious claim of causation that’s actually a long string of associations, each of which itself is of dubious validity.

  16. Remember Robert Rimmer, an author who dedicated all his writing to the idea that sex was normal, clean healthy fun — and that many partners were the best thing in the world?

    The day I stopped even looking at his books was when he did one in the late 1970’s that stated that fat people should just plain be cut off from partnering. Made all hs philosophizing into a pack of lies. It’s no fun at *all* to look normal — creeps like Robert Rimmer’s characters consider you as “a piece of *that*!”

  17. The day I stopped even looking at his books was when he did one in the late 1970’s that stated that fat people should just plain be cut off from partnering. Made all hs philosophizing into a pack of lies. It’s no fun at *all* to look normal — creeps like Robert Rimmer’s characters consider you as “a piece of *that*!”

    Doesn’t Les Toil do the same thing? Fat is bee-yoo-tee-full and perfectly healthy…until your weight is higher than his fetish. If you’re too heavy, you’re magically transformed into a disgusting pig seconds away from a ketoacidosis coma.

  19. Men obtain (cusomarily and usually) the most attractive woman that they can afford (what their income and net worth will attract).”

    Man, not sure who should be more offended, the women who are “bought” by the size of man’s wallet or the men who are only a wallet to women.

    But then that kind of shallowness can be applied to weight, social ability, breast size, etc.

    Unfortunately too many people really feel this way.

  20. I gotta tell you. Dating as a fat woman is seriously difficult. At least it has been in my experience. I have kind of decided to take a good long break from it for a while.

  21. It’s really funny how wanting a fat woman is framed as a ‘fetish’, but wanting a thin woman is ‘normal’. Either both are fetishes, or neither are.

  22. Men obtain (cusomarily and usually) the most attractive woman that they can afford (what their income and net worth will attract).

    Where is the marketplace where men can purchase women? Are we on rotating window displays like showroom cars?

  23. As for the fetish thing, it’s interesting that going for fat women has this fetish aura about it when men who are obsessed with skinniness get a pass. Having someone police your weight or reduce you to it, no matter what your size, is fucking creepy.

  24. Where is the marketplace where men can purchase women? Are we on rotating window displays like showroom cars?

    I am so, so sick of this commodification-or-death ethos. So sick of it. Sick and tired.

  25. Bitchmag sounds like they are hating on thin people. It is possible to eat 3 healthy meals per day and still be thin without puking it back up. It really irks me when people think they can diagnose a mental disorder on sight.

    Just fwiw, I’m skinny-ish with a healthy appetite, and I didn’t read the summary as hating on thin people or diagnosing a mental disorder on sight. More that the pressure on everyone to be like what are frankly outliers in the world of size is a big contributing factor towards people developing bulimia.

  26. Men obtain (cusomarily and usually) the most attractive woman that they can afford (what their income and net worth will attract).”

    Man, not sure who should be more offended, the women who are “bought” by the size of man’s wallet or the men who are only a wallet to women.

    But then that kind of shallowness can be applied to weight, social ability, breast size, etc.

    Unfortunately too many people really feel this way.

    Honestly, the dude sounds like he has a typical “no fat chicks” complex, and can’t get the kind of women he feels God owes him. Which he blames on his modest financial means. He has combined them into a complex web of bullshit.

  27. Who cares about how fat others’ mates are?

    It’s just a guess, but I suspect that No Name is a bit of a fat fetishist himself or at least is generally attracted to women above the weight generally considered “desirable” (which is not, BTW, the same as the weight that is most healthy, but that’s another post.) However, he may be so obsessed with status that he only dates or has married a thin woman, ie “the best his wallet can afford”. He isn’t attracted to her, maybe doesn’t even like her, she’s just a status symbol. If other men don’t play this game then a) he gets jealous because they’re getting lots of sex with women who they find attractive and b) the value of his trophy wife/girlfriend goes down. Since he’s probably worked quite hard to woo her and she has no value to him except as a status symbol, people acting in ways that decrease her “market value” (ie men admitting that they are attracted to heavier than model women) are probably quite annoying to him.

  28. Factually speaking obesity is choice in most instances

    Everyone here probably knows this already, but…Factually speaking, he’s full of male bovine excrement. Most people who are overweight or obese don’t actually eat more than thinner people, dieting almost always fails in the long run, and even when diets succeed, the weight loss is usually modest. Yes, I know everyone has an anecdote of someone they know that lost 100 lb and kept it off, etc, but the typical experience is minor weight loss with return to baseline within a year or two.

  29. That makes sense, Dianne. Reminds me of an article that ran in Bust magazine eons ago by a guy who talked about how difficult it was to overcome anti-fat pressure and date a woman heavier than his friends would tolerate. He describes their reactions to his girlfriend as a combination of anger at him and a weird sort of jealousy that he actually put his desires ahead of social pressure.

  30. “There are few things more disgusting than someone who is corpulently obese but they have they have their hair perfect and a wonderful pedicure and manicure, as if that will make a difference and make them more attractive.”

    I’m sorry, but this part of the No Name letter really bugs me. So if you’re fat, you should always go out dressed like a slob, because even if you try no one will ever forget you’re fat? Then please explain to me why all these uber-thin celebrities walk around like slobs — aren’t they cutting in on a fat girl’s dress code?

    I’m trying to raise larger than average daughters in a culture where assholes like this will make them feel like shit. They already realize that it is the skinny girls who get chosen by the men, and all others are sloppy seconds. I know it sounds terribly cliche, but I’m trying to raise my daughters to be strong, powerful, independent-thinking women, not ones who worry about whether or not they can fit into a pair of skinny jeans. And yes, being overweight can lend to certain health problems, but there is no guarantee that you’re going to live to be 100 if you keep your weight down either.

    Bottomline – love is love.

  31. JAP: That was one of the passages that convinced me that No Name was a closet case fat lover. It sounds to me remarkably like a closeted gay homophobe talking about the evils of attractive gays.

  32. He describes their reactions to his girlfriend as a combination of anger at him and a weird sort of jealousy that he actually put his desires ahead of social pressure.

    Precisely. How fucking dare people be happy despite social pressure otherwise? I went to high-school in a small hick town in Northern Alberta, and my parents have just in this last year moved away. Peoples’ reactions to it were a bizarre cocktail of passive-aggressive indignance. Mom also left a very poisonous work environment at the time. People were almost offended that she would quit a job that had become intolerable and leave a shit town for the life she wanted in a place where she’d wanted to live for decades.

    My diagnosis: they haven’t examined their desires and wants and so on, and get uncomfortable when other people have and have come to socially atypical conclusions. And people get defensive and snippy when they get uncomfortable.

  33. I love people who talk constantly about how “unhealthy” fat is, then date anorexics and bulimics. Because being underweight is so very healthy. Better yet, be like a girl I know, go from obese to average in a year and have lost so much weight that your gall bladder fails!

    I’m frustrated by people with “fetishes” for people because while I recognize that it’s just a more extreme view of who you’re attracted to, there’s nothing worse than finding out that it’s not your personality that’s appealing, it’s your race/breast size/religion. And frankly, I’ve met far more men in my life with an unadmitted “fetish” for skinny, big breasted women (and will not date anything but, or will constantly complain that their girlfriend is not skinny with huge boobs) than I have men who go for “big” girls.

  34. unadmitted “fetish” for skinny, big breasted women

    My friend in high-school called that the “pornstar build”.

  35. Good analysis, Dianne; I was wondering WHY this guy was so pissed at omebody elses dating choices. I mean, if we follow logically from this (Which is obviously shite but lets pretend it’s not for a moment):

    Men obtain (cusomarily and usually) the most attractive woman that they can afford (what their income and net worth will attract). Women get the best (income and net worth) man that their looks will allow them to.

    Then both the fat woman and the chubby chaser have found valid niches in the dating ecology; Because fat women have a lower market price, by being attracted to them he is able to succeed with less effort on his part. The same is true from her point of view; she can spend less effort on appearence and still end up with a larger income then she could get from a non chubby chaser.

    Essentially a secondary dating market is formed, with rules that benefit its members more then the primary market. It seems like everybody wins.

    It’s weird that a guy can go on and on about why fat women aren’t attractive to him,,and never really explain why HIS preferences should matter in the least to anybody else.

  36. I feel like I should comment on this but I just get so exhausted reading the reactions to any size-positive article anywhere, whether on my blog or here or whatever, just because of the sheer predictability.

    My boyfriend prefers larger womens’ bodies just like I prefer dark-haired, Italian-looking guys, and he has great taste in women (me), so I got really lucky. I don’t even have to think about assholes like “No Name” most of the time.

    They’re all SO entitled, aren’t they?

  37. IME, guys get called fat fetishists and chubby chasers even if they have no particular preference for larger sex partners, merely for being indifferent to size. It makes me laugh when I don’t get mad.

  38. Seem to be a number false dichotomies at work here, first of all not all overweight people are suffer from genetic or metabolism disorders that cause them to be overweight, it literally is a simple act of food in energy out or else stomach stapling would never work. There are some people who do have disorders that make it impossible to eat what otherwise would be a normal or even less then normal amount of calories without weight gain. I don’t know what the %’s are here but there is an undeniable increase in the overall weight of Americans as our lifestyles get more sedentary and our diets are increasingly crappy processed food.

    Also not all people who talk about obese people being unhealthy are only attracted to unhealthy “anorexics and bulimics”, some are actually attracted to normal healthy women who are neither obese or anorexics. So while the straw man of someone who dates a smoking, crack-pipe sucking, anorexic while decrying the unhealthy lifestyle of an obese woman exists its hardly relevant in this discussion. There are many women and men, who are healthy, not obese by any stretch, but are big, bulky and don’t compare favorably to the norm that is carved out by the culture.

    Fact is it is hard to navigate the social landscape being too far off the norm in any sense. There are men who are shy and are not wired as well to accept rejection who become the 40-year-old virgin types, who have a terrible time creating relationships and are ridiculed by being told they need to “grow a pair”. There are people whose personalities are odd or out of step with the culture at large who are encouraged to take drugs to normalize these personalities least someone who is “normal” have to put up with them. I’m sorry, the reaction of some “large women” smacks of the same kind of reactions as the so-called “nice guys” who feel that that they are owed something simply because they are well behaved.

    Fact is that there are some in life who hit the genetic jack-pot and have a life that is easier and more fulfilling in some ways and there are the rest of us who have to deal with what we have to work with. I agree with Zuzu (it is Zuzu) about the moronic tone set by the Salon writer and I also am in complete solidarity with her on the bizarre reaction of people about the choices other people make in mates or the objectification of someone due to their physical traits.

    What I don’t understand is the idea that anyone who feels that many obese people are living an unhealthy lifestyle are uninformed, bigoted and so forth. I’m sorry, there are mean, intolerant and bigoted people in the world … so what? This is news? There are also too many people who cry a river about genes and metabolism who simply can’t pass up a double whopper. I was up to 225 at one point and it was all due to lack of activity and eating crap food. I am now about 175 and have very little trouble keeping it off. There are also people whose bodies simply don’t match up with the “ideas” who are aren’t at all fat or obese in any scientific sense, who can run marathons and would kick my ass in any cardio based competition but “look” fat by the absurd standards of the day. Again, so what? I guess your nothing until you have a militant support group for your specific physical or mental imperfection.

    My point is that the world is full of fucked up people and by elevating your personal hardships above all the others, you are being a bit self-serving and indulgent. Fat bias? Sure, you betcha, does it cause individuals a unique set of challenges? Absolutely. Would you rather be a quadriplegic or have a skin disease that makes chunks of flesh fall off you body? I mean it is one things to raise general awareness of the real health issues involved in obesity rather then the popular bigotry, it’s another to assume that any concern for negative weight related issues are simply evidence of that bigotry.

  39. I honestly believe these anti-fat people are neo-puritans. It’s no longer vogue to condemn people for moral failings, so we hide that condescension behind puritanical health regimes. If you’re fat, you’re damned to hell and they get to feel superior. Nevermind that we fat women could be eating better and exercising more than them due to a quirk of metabolism, that’s not the point to them.

    Admittedly, I lost about seventy pounds over the course of a year and a half (no drastic measures, I think it was just ready to come off). I didn’t restrict my diet so much as I eliminated the toxic people from my life and ate for me rather than the myriad reasons I was eating before. People who want to make us scapegoats would never dream of recommending tea time, massages, godiva truffles, good sex, and otherwise treating ourselves right. They’re not interested in our well-being, and once I realized that I determined to ignore them. Sadly, when you’re thinner, they think that you’re one of them and expect you to join in their nastiness. If you become thinner than them, watch out, they’ll lash out at you. What a petty thing to be so worked up about!

  40. Men obtain (cusomarily and usually) the most attractive woman that they can afford (what their income and net worth will attract).

    Man, not sure who should be more offended, the women who are “bought” by the size of man’s wallet or the men who are only a wallet to women.

    But then that kind of shallowness can be applied to weight, social ability, breast size, etc.

    Unfortunately too many people really feel this way.

    Anyone been watching the World Cup? Have you seen any of the footballers’ wives? Not a flat-chested, overweight, unattractive woman in the bunch, though some of the players are less than stellar-looking. Why do you think that is?

  41. Piny- do you have a link to that article? Going off only your summary, I see the author assuming that the skinny women with a big appetite are binging based on their figure and eating habits alone. Did the author witness any of these women puking? Then why bring up bulemia? Not all bulemics are skinny. The chubby girl eating the salad is just as likely to be bulemic as the skinny girl eating the hero. You can’t tell just by looking.

  42. Admittedly, I lost about seventy pounds over the course of a year and a half (no drastic measures, I think it was just ready to come off). I didn’t restrict my diet so much as I eliminated the toxic people from my life and ate for me rather than the myriad reasons I was eating before.

    I lost about 5 pounds by making the rule that I would only eat for one of two reasons: 1. I was hungry (duh). 2. For the sheer, decadent pleasure of eating something really, really good.

    That having been said, though, getting the calories in

  43. I went to high-school in a small hick town in Northern Alberta, and my parents have just in this last year moved away. Peoples’ reactions to it were a bizarre cocktail of passive-aggressive indignance.

    KnifeGhost if your parents were quitting a gang, they would have been “jumped out”. The people of your small hick town feel betrayed, this is just their more civilized version of beating the shit out of people who no longer wish to belong and conform.

    The human race is so stupendously arrogant.

  44. When I was single, I used internet personals pretty exclusively (since my social circle didn’t appear to have any eligible men in it). I put basically the same ad on both standard and BBW dating sites, but for the non-specialty site, I was very clear about my size in many ways. My user name was “happyfatgirl” (to make it clear I was positive about my size), I had a full body shot for my photo, and I put my real weight when asked for it. While the rest of my ad was all about my personality and interests, I also started it off with a disclaimer that I liked my body and would only date someone who liked it as well – I wanted to make it really clear that I wasn’t going to date someone who thought I’d be an easy mark just because I was fat.

    As you can imagine, I didn’t get many responses to that ad at all, but the last one I got (almost a year after I put it up) was from the man who’s now been my partner for almost three years. I would phrase it like chicklet – he doesn’t have a fetish, just a preference. And that preference was important to me – I wanted a partnership with someone where we both had a genuine sexual attraction to each other. Our relationship has worked out really well because we have much more in common than just the physical attraction, but that sexual element was just as necessary.

    That all said, it took a long time and it was hard work to weed through the fetishists and assholes to find a normal guy, and I don’t miss dating one bit. It was frustrating to have to take all of those protective measures just to put myself out there in the dating world.

  45. My point about the anorexics and bulimics was that the whole “but it’s so unhealthy” point is rather bunk. No one really spends their time telling their friends not to date smokers or people with crappy diets. They don’t caution their friends about the dangers of dating anorexics or bulimics. They don’t run around telling their best pal not to date that girl, he suspects she’s a vegetarian, and might suffer a protein deficiency.

    People who criticize the overweight aren’t doing so because it’s unhealthy. The health aspect is a justification for their dislike of the appearance of those who are overweight. Some people are more up front about it, and will insist on telling you about every girl they’ve ever seen who wore clothing a size too small, or a belly shirt while overweight, or how thongs are a privilege reserved for the skinny. Others recognize that criticizing strangers on the basis of their appearance isn’t terribly acceptable in a polite society, so they justify it by talking about health.

    As for the overweight or obese who only date those sinificantly skinnier than themselves, yes, this type of hypocrisy is fairly common. Most of my self esteem was worn away by constant “puttin on some weight, eh?” comments from my mother, who scores signficantly higher on the BMI than myself.

  46. There are few things more disgusting than someone who is corpulently obese but they have they have their hair perfect and a wonderful pedicure and manicure, as if that will make a difference and make them more attractive.

    I kinda get a kick out of the idea that somewhere, my fat ass could be offending someone’s dainty aesthetic sensibilities by merely having my nails done. It’s more power than I really need, but — oh, sure, I’ll take it. Why not?

    Dear Sir (or Ma’am): for the record, I also own corsets and vinyl. Think on that and tremble, baby.

  47. When I was a girl I was thin and trim but since puberty have had to limit my food intake in order to not pack on the pounds. Of course also, was the ambivalence about growing boobs and hips and looking sexual and all that comes with that.

    Ten years ago I had the experience of gaining over fifty pounds in one month due to the prescription of an anti-depressant. It was prescribed during a very stress-filled period in my life and I begged the doc (who ignored me) to please not give me meds that would cause me to gain weight.

    I have the metabolism of a hibernating bear and I am sure that when/if the holocaust comes, if any food sources exist, I will be able to ration at a rate of one ounce per day and assist in the rebuilding with endless energy.

    I have lived for ten years as ‘large’, since I had to take the meds for a few months, lest I be branded a bad, shallow and uncaring mother.

    I stopped the meds shortly after and got control of my life, but the weight has been a struggle. What has been worse though has been the shock of being ignored, belittled, insulted, dismissed, blamed, hated and whatever else because I am ‘fat’ and therefore a lazy, selfish, gluttonous bitch.

    I have been loosing the weight recently for a variety of reasons and one of those is a dramatic decrease in my food intake (extreme budget cutback needed) due to some serious financial difficulties I’ve had to deal with.

    We are a food obsessed society there is no doubt about that, but I can tell you that even when I get back down to size, I will NEVER EVER hate on a large person, nor assume that their size was due to ignorance, stupidity or lack of ‘discipline’. All is bullshit.

    Of course, let’s not ignore the fact that fat men are portrayed in our society as loving, funny and snuggly and are considered people who have the right to be treated as full humans despite their faults.

    Women aren’t people, they are servants who must continuously show their subservience to the patriarchy in ways that allow for quick and easy observation by those who hold the strings.

    Those who dare to fall out of conformance are ostracized with impunity.

    I also think that the obsession with extreme thinness and hating on fat women in particular has a lot to do with some serious social problems we wish to ignore: 1. American guilt over our abundance and gluttony overall. 2. The patriarchy’s need to confirm its power (in light of advances made by women) over women by demanding they be willing to undergo cruel and painful self-denial to gain male approval. 3. Persistent classism and the American Calvinistic need to differentiate between the blessed and the wicked and dole out resources and praise accordingly.

    Might I add also, that I have been denied jobs and opportunties that I knew I was well qualified for, that I would have been offered without asking when I was thinner.

  48. Seems to me, the people getting the most press to opine are the het men exposed to the present fashion runway standards of feminine pulchritude blaring at them 24/7 from high tech marketing ground zero. Being the bold non-conformists they are, most guys will never admit to a fantasy/preference outside the touted icon for fear of backlash from the pack mentality. Who profits from the homosociability of verbally crapping on certain women for not being fuckable enough?

    For that matter, who set the present feminine allure icon standards? They do and have changed over the centuries, even decades of the last century. Who profits by the present standards?

    Meantime, het men and queer women who like the plushy curves look go on about their way, receiving no press because they couldn’t be bothered to waste air on the subject. Anyone who derides well dressed, self caring, healthy, witty women for not conforming to his/her personal taste needs a blow up doll and a tape recording on ego stroking loop, because I can’t see any woman of any size ever really being respected by such an attitude. There’d always be something to gleefully find fault on.

  49. The problem with the term “BBW” is both descriptive and normative.

    The descriptive problem is that it makes no distinction between women who are large and attractive and women who are large and unattractive. I think the point that people want to make is that it is possible for an overweight woman to still be attractive, which is quite true. However, if you describe the CATEGORY of large women as “beautiful”, then beautiful has no meaning at all. It is like “80 years young”, as was said in another comment.

    There’s also a normative problem. “BBW” is quite defensive. If the goal is fat acceptance (something I must admit I only have a partial sympathy for), I really don’t think that goal is served by throwing in a “yes, but I’m beautiful” everytime one describe’s oneself as “big”. Seems to me the proper posture for fat acceptance is for someone to say “yes. I’m fat. Got a problem with that?”. “BBW” says the polar opposite.

  50. Well, if guys like No Name are mad at me for fucking with the formula by loving a (self-described) BBW . . . I’m mad at him, them, and the whole media machine which pushes increasingly unattractive, unfeminine stick-women in our faces.

    Having said that — and maybe lynne knows what I’m talking about — there is something frightening about having a fat partner, sometimes. If you plan to spend your life with her, as I do, and you realize . . . it’s not that she’s 250 pounds (or whatever), it’s that she’s 250 and gaining. I’m sorry — wait, no I’m not — but I do worry about her health (Selfishly, yes: I fear her being disabled at 50, I fear outliving her when I’m eleven years older, and so on.)

    It puts me in a tricky position. For example, when we’re both having pretty much the same thing for dinner — say, spaghetti, but she’s having half a can of parmesan cheese on it, and I’m not. Do I say something about it? Do I put myself in the position of becoming a weight nag?? Seems like a bad idea — but then, maybe if I don’t I’m “enabling” her.

    You can have this preference/fetish, and still realize . . . You’d like her to lose weight, even if that made her LESS attractive to you, for the sake of her heath and your planned lives together.

    It isn’t easy. It isn’t just another body “type”. So if guys like me tend to get self-congratulatory at times, please, try and give us a pass.

  51. Have you seen any of the footballers’ wives? Not a flat-chested, overweight, unattractive woman in the bunch, though some of the players are less than stellar-looking. Why do you think that is?

    Because they can. I mean sure they may all be examples of women who have both hit the genetic lottery and also have the time, money, and will to maintain and enhance those natural assets. That doesn’t mean they are all empty-headed bubble brained gold-diggers (I men some might be but who’s to say?).

    As for the footballers I mean they are with these women, I imagine, for the exact opposite reasons I don’t get to date Halley Berry, because they are successful, high-profile, and world class achievers in their chosen profession. It stands to reason that they would choose as their partner a woman with a lot of sex appeal. The fact that they might not all look like Brad Pitt is irrelevant, I mean they are in shape, less the steller is not ugly in any sense, and they exhibit qualities that many women find attractive in a guy.

    I don’t make the rules, if I did then average looking guys with back hair and crooked noses would be every woman’s ideal of drop dead gorgeous. I don’t get the point of this observation.

  52. Men obtain (cusomarily and usually) the most attractive woman that they can afford (what their income and net worth will attract). Women get the best (income and net worth) man that their looks will allow them to.

    Oh, this simplifies things so. All women are prostitutes! If you are rich, you will have beautiful 18 year olds begging to sleep with you, even if you’re 89 years old, smelly, incontinent, and have the personality of a boll weevil. Beautiful young men, especially muscular athletic ones, never get laid unless they pay the women a lot of money first.

    I always suspect that this comment is made by men who’ve never actually had sex without paying for it.

  53. Men obtain (cusomarily and usually) the most attractive woman that they can afford (what their income and net worth will attract). Women get the best (income and net worth) man that their looks will allow them to.

    I always suspect that this comment is made by men who’ve never actually had sex without paying for it.

    . . . exactly. He’s never been intimate enough to learn that (straight) women like men because . . . they like to have sex with men. I still remember the “click” in my brain when I suddenly realized that women get horny too. It was like a whole new world opening up to me. Like, whoa.

    I hope No Name can experience that moment someday.

  54. I don’t make the rules, if I did then average looking guys with back hair and crooked noses would be every woman’s ideal of drop dead gorgeous. I don’t get the point of this observation.

    If I made the rules, the only job available to you would be mopping chicken guts in a poultry packing plant. You can prefer whatever you want, but stop trying to elevate your preferences into some furniture-of-the-universe objective standard. The history of standards of appearance tell us that they are cultural and change according to time and place.

  55. I’m with Paul Campos on this one: “If science knew how to make people thin, people would be thin.” Same with male pattern baldness–if we really knew how to restore hair, nobody would be bald.

    There have always been sedentary people, but using high fructose corn syrup and eating fast food loaded with transfats are relatively new phenomena. Who knows what the ultimate culprit is? We do know that people are literally killing themselves to get thin–doing things much more extreme than the behaviors that supposedly got them to fatness–and overwhelmingly, diets fail them. Studies have also shown that it’s hard to make people *gain* weight even by force-feeding them and limiting their physical movement, so where does that leave us?

    Scientists at the time claimed the Dust Bowl of the 1930s was due to bad weather, having no concept of ecology at the time. Similarly, we are just discovering that the endocrine system is quite complex. 1 in 10 women has PCOS, which makes losing weight extremely hard to lose (though of course that’s the #1 piece of advice you’ll get). And in a recent NY Times article, it was reported that how many calories your body extracts from a food may be more dependent on the bacteria living in your gut than anything else. So maybe it’s not our fat genes that we pass on to our children, but our intestinal pH.

    Anyway, there’s clearly a lot more going on than people suddenly adamantly refusing to live a healthy lifestyle. We seem to get heavy in all kinds of ways, but seem to get thin in almost no kinds of ways. Judging people on whatever behavior you *imagine* is causing their problem is irrelevant, foolish, and arrogant.

  56. Mopping chicken guts in a poultry packing plant? I wouldn’t go that far. I’m sure, at least, Rick thinks he’s being reasonable. But I LOVED “some furniture-of-the-universe objective standard.” May I borrow that?

    The history of standards of appearance tell us that they are cultural and change according to time and place.

    Particularly for females. Novelist Robert Rodi observed, “how little the concept of male beauty had changed over the millenia, as opposed to female beauty, which boomeranged from Nefertiti to Titian to Kate Moss and all points in between.”

    . . . So, yeah. I don’t think Rick’s being a dickhead — not intentionally, at least — but he’s displaying a pretty limited view.

  57. As for the overweight or obese who only date those sinificantly skinnier than themselves, yes, this type of hypocrisy is fairly common.

    You know, I really don’t get this. At all. Preferences are preferences, and if a fat person prefers thin people, why should she have to “settle” for a fat person just because she herself is fat? By the same token, why should a thin person who prefers fat people have to “settle” for thin people just because they themselves are thin?

    The problem is not the preference, it’s the lack of societal support for preferences outside the norm or outside one’s “league.”

    I don’t expect everyone to find me attractive. To use the market metaphor, I’m a specialty product. What I do expect is that the men who do find me attractive not be ashamed of that or ashamed to be seen with me because they’re getting social pressure to date someone thinner. I also expect them not to fetishize me, or break their arms patting themselves on the back congratulating themselves about how open-minded they are.

  58. I

    ““how little the concept of male beauty had changed over the millenia, as opposed to female beauty, which boomeranged from Nefertiti to Titian to Kate Moss and all points in between.”

    No mystery there, last I knew, over the millenia, with few documentable exceptions, patriarchy has ruled. Men did the choosing, women had little to no say on the matter. I’d even go so far as to say that even today, many women do not take even nearly as seriously a man’s looks as a man does a woman’s. Physical attributes still matter less than earning capacity, social standing within their group and ability to protect.

    I hate it, but I’d have to be blind to deny it.

  59. This ought to hearten the heavier women (and those that love them) out there – I am a size 4 and most men find me physically unattractive.

  60. This ought to hearten the full-figured women (and those who love them) out there – I am a size 4 and virtually all men find me physically unappealing. Many of those men would undoubtedly find women who are heavier than me much more attractive. I have several other physical features considered so “desirable” by some women that they get plastic surgery, but those haven’t done me much good in my life either.
    From personal experience then, beauty, physical/sexual attractiveness and allure cannot be boiled down to features and attributes alone.

  61. Thanks, all of you, for reading my article and all your comments here–I really enjoyed them. I am amazed by the nuances they’ve provided me with, too, for future reference and more ammunition to use on people who bust a blood vessel when I tell them I love large women.

    I loved Jap’s comment: “So if you’re fat, you should always go out dressed like a slob, because even if you try no one will ever forget you’re fat? Then please explain to me why all these uber-thin celebrities walk around like slobs — aren’t they cutting in on a fat girl’s dress code?”

    Thanks again…JM 🙂

  62. It’s hypocritical to simultaneously demand that society be weight-blind and judge thin people for being thin. Criticizing thin people (and an attraction to thin people) does not make society more welcoming of heavier people.

  63. Who’s criticizing thin people, Adrienne?

    All anyone’s saying is that when someone is attracted to thin people exclusively, it’s considered normal. When someone’s attracted to fat people exclusively, it’s considered a fetish. So why is that? Why isn’t an exclusive attraction to thin people considered just as fetishistic as an exclusive attraction to fat people?

    You know, one of those taking-things-out-to-their-absurd-conclusion-to-make-people-examine-their -assumptions things.

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