fat.
Mainstream media is too often (still) getting this wrong.
Before I get into the meat of this post, I would like to acknowledge my lens. I am writing both in reference to work(s) that present gender as a binary construct, and from the perspective of a queer woman with white and cisgender privilege and experience. In the scope of this post I have not written specifically about trans* bodies because neither the work that stimulated my post nor my personal lived experience allow me to do so.
I saw an article appear in my news feed recently and clicked the link, interested to read about what the men of reddit who are attracted to “big girls” had to say. My approach was a combination of hope and self-protection. Do I care what a group of 15 random internet dudes think about women who bear some physical likeness to me? Not fundamentally, no. Do I make an effort to avoid consuming toxic messaging about my body from the world? Hell yes. Am I interested in accessing messaging that’s positive and appreciative about my general body type? Absolutely.
The article was… fine. But just as others like it, this article served to uphold the broader social script about women’s bodies, particularly fat bodies, under the guise of documenting appreciation. I spent a bit of time with my thoughts, soothing the places that felt injured by further reinforcement that my body is not acceptable, and then I realized that what I want is to contribute words to this topic that go farther than the piece I had read, and the others out there like it.
Here are some of the damaging messages, half-truths, generalizations, and outright lies that I want conversations about loving fat bodies to disrupt:
Outside of fetishes for fat bodies, the only “big” bodies that are acceptable for “mainstream” men to appreciate are bodies that are smooth and proportioned similarly to socially-sanctioned female bodies.
The first point that hit me in the gut this morning was that almost right away these random redditors were qualifying that while they appreciate the softness and comfort of a “curvy” woman, they draw the line at fat women. It’s a sentiment that was echoed in most of the comments and it’s a slap in the face that many women constantly dodge in the pursuit of self-love. Clothing cut from one design pattern and scaled up, making no accommodation for how bodies are actually shaped nor seeking to create fit and comfort for bodies whose lines and proportions don’t necessarily stay put when they change positions. Plus size models whose shape still conforms to the hourglass ideal without cellulite or stretch marks or anything that hangs. Only ever seeing a real likeness to your body in a “before” picture. The messaging in media’s attempt to be progressive still only takes our Western notion of beautiful and widens the margins. So here’s this article that advertises itself as a vessel of insight into attraction to “big girls” but fat phobic body shaming is still alive and well within its lines.
There are so few sources that discuss attraction to and appreciation for bodies of all configurations including fat bodies, and the sources that do address overtly fat bodies tend to approach the subject through the lens of fetishism. People can and will fetishize pretty much anything that exists on this earth (and if it’s consensual and makes you happy, have at it!), but portraying fat bodies worth loving through the objectified lens of a fetish is incredibly harmful. We need to create sources that discuss the inclusive range of soft bodies if we’re going to share experiences about attraction to people in this group (or, call it what it is and just discuss attraction to a specific and non-inclusive portion of this group).
Fat women know how to indulge in life and are people who enjoy (food) with abandon!
THIS bothers me. I struggle to understand how the world is still so hung up on black and white ideas about body composition. Now I’m not trying to suggest that there is no correlation between calories in/out and body composition. There’s some truth to that in a basic way, but that truth doesn’t comprise a significant enough piece of the whole picture to rest our general statements on. Why are fat people fat? Well for some people it’s because they chronically under-eat, but not enough for their body to waste away. In fact, it’s just enough that their body is in a constant state of stress over food security and stores every precious calorie it can. For some people it’s because their body has a set point that accounts for more body fat than some other people. For some it’s a reflection of a wickedly overworked adrenal system that’s pumping out fat-boosting cortisol over years. For some it’s because food is delicious, a full stomach feels good to them, and they’re perfectly content with the fact that this relationship with food can also mean more body fat. For some it’s a combination of these, and of course countless other reasons in this complex reality living in a human body.
I believe that over-representing this idea that fat women are naturally indulgent people who will joyfully consume to their heart’s content is not only a sweeping generalization (have we learned yet that these aren’t helpful?) but sets many individuals up for stressful interactions when their realities are out of line with others’ expectations of them. The old assumption that fat people must be gluttonous is offensive, of course, but these assumptions can cause real harm for people who deal with disordered relationships with food. A person’s body is not a free look into their lifestyle, eating habits, relationships with food or enjoyment, cleanliness, or any other thing we seem to like to attach to what we see. Stop it, already.
Fat women are amazing in bed.
Ok, so considering all the negativity fat women have directed at them, this may not sound like such a bad one at first glance. However, both overt and implied, the messaging behind this is that “big girls” are great lovers because they’ve had to work for it. Excuse me?! Because obviously not very many people would want to get into bed with us, right? So if we’re lucky enough to get someone there, we’d better blow their ever-lovin’ minds! … Bite me. This offensive notion that fat women repay their lovers for the ‘favour’ of their attention with the gift of generous and carefully-honed sexual performance has got to go. No matter what your body composition, humans of any identity and description have enough bullshit about sex thrust upon them to last 10 lifetimes. Like any other sexual stereotype, this is going to hurt people. It also sets fat women up for one more reason to downplay consent violations and sexual abuse — if you’re supposed to be grateful that someone even wants to get with you, you’re hardly entitled to complain if things aren’t going exactly your way, right? Amazing lovers and mediocre lovers not only come in any physical form but someone’s quality as a lover is highly subjective.
The people who should be polled about attraction to “big girls” are, obviously, white men.
Something I can’t help but notice when I’ve read pieces about appreciating fat women, is that the articles are supposed to be about appreciating / being attracted to fat women but are usually actually about what white men think about their attraction to fat women. Why do I say white men in particular? (Let me take a moment to remind you that in North America, unless specifically otherwise crafted, most things come from the perspective of white men.) I say white men because there is often a reference in there somewhere about “other cultures” — how black and Latin men prefer curvy women, or how in other parts of the world fat women are upheld as the standard of beauty. The ‘othering’ of these perspectives boils it down to the all-too-familiar white narrative. I wish this would stop. Not only should we not be speaking for entire cultures of people regarding their individual preferences, I wish that articles would deliberately seek to collect as many perspectives as possible because with people of different origins and experiences writing about one subject, the product is likely to be much more interesting and well-rounded. I would love to read words from perspectives that span cultures and which draw from the experience of queer and trans* people. In fact, as a queer woman who has long been a fan of soft-bodied women as lovers, I would be thrilled if my perspective were solicited alongside the perspectives of men.
Definitely use every word under the sun other than “fat” when talking about fat women.
Curvy. Big girls. Plus Size. Big Boned. Fluffy. Squishy. Zaftig. Plump. Portly. Rotund. Chubby. Fleshy. Heavy. Larger. …Ok, ok. I really do feel that people should be able to identify themselves with any adjective they feel good about. There are many many writings dedicated to deconstructing the negative power we’ve bestowed upon this particular ‘F’ word so I’m not going to get too far into that here. But really, it’s just another adjective. I’m sad and tired of seeing this word reserved for negative descriptions. In reading the piece this morning, I almost didn’t make it to the end when contributor after contributor clarified that they “draw the line at fat”. ‘Fat’ does not denote a different species of human. Of course, we all take the implied meaning from that assertion: ‘lightly padded women are sexy to me, heavily padded women are not.’ Nonetheless, I’d like to see more people reclaiming this adjective, much as we did with ‘queer’, and take some of that undeserved negative power away.
So what’s my bottom line here?
It comes down to the fact that I would love to see this whole conversation open up. It’s fantastic that there are non-fetishized discussions about attraction to fat bodies. That’s a step. What these discussions need to do though is ditch the ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ act of claiming body positive space that supports exclusion of highly marginalized people.
In grade three, at eight years old, a boy in my class named Rafael was the first person to make me realize that my body wasn’t quite right according to the world around me. I have fought and lost and won and lost again and won again in the battle for my bodily self-worth. I can only barely remember a time in my life until well into my 30’s when I didn’t feel like a deformed version of a woman. It has taken so much for me to come to the point I’m at now, where an article that sneakily shames my body type is thought- and word-provoking rather than a cause of long-lasting suffering. It has taken decades of relationships to buy the fact that my partners actually enjoy my body and for me to allow them to touch it freely. When you get talking with people who are attracted to fat bodies, it’s inspiring and uplifting. I want people to have access to that. I want the sources to reflect what I hear in those conversations and I want people writing and reading those sources to be aware of the toxicity of the points I just spent my time picking apart. Yes, I’m planning on trying my hand at creating a collection of these perspectives which I hope to share widely. In the meantime, let’s all chip away at this shall we?
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