From 2011. This poem is making the rounds in the blogosphere today and it inspired me to repost this old piece.
The title is godawful, but this Village Voice article is both interesting and important: Guys Who Like Fat Chicks.
Men who are sexually attracted to heavy women are more numerous than we’re led to believe, Camile Dodero writes, and that has important implications both for our understanding of male sexuality and for our ongoing conversation about weight and desire. The title of the piece, however, frames the attraction to fat women as an unusual fetish, an odd quirk that only a few men share. That’s unfortunate, because the article is more nuanced than that, exploring the ways in which fat has been stigmatized and heavier women have been both exploited and desexualized. The familiar myths (such as fat women’s much-hyped desperation for a relationship) are debunked. And though the article still centers men’s attraction to heavier women rather than women themselves, it’s a useful conversation starter.
In 2006, I wrote a post called Men, Women, Homosociality and Weight. So much of men’s focus on thin women, I pointed out, is wrapped up in the desire to gain status in the eyes of other men. One of the most basic tasks for heterosexual men is a simple one: learning to separate what it is that they personally find desirable from their desire to impress others. Our ruthlessly fat-phobic culture doesn’t give fat people “trophy” status, even if (as the article suggests) many men are sexually drawn to heavier women. I wrote five years ago:
Men are taught to find “hot” what other men find “hot.” The whole notion of a “trophy girlfriend” is based on the reality that a great many men use female desireability to establish status with other men. And in our current cultural climate where thinness is idealized, a slender partner is almost always going to be worth more than a heavy one. For men who have not yet extricated themselves from homosocial competition, their own self-esteem and sense of intra-male status may decline in direct proportion to their girlfriend’s weight gain.
Let me stress that this is absolutely not women’s problem to solve! My goal is not to make women who gain weight feel bad; protecting a fragile male ego is not a woman’s responsibility. The key thing men need to do is get honest about their own desire to use female desireability to establish status in the eyes of other men. And here’s where pro-feminist men can do a terrific service by challenging one another and holding each other accountable for the ways in which we are tempted to use our wives and girlfriends as trophies.
When I linked to the Village Voice piece on my Facebook yesterday, a friend asked if I had ever dated a “fat chick.” It reminded me that when my 2006 post appeared, one of my colleagues, a very heavy woman with whom I am very close, remarked “I could never see you with a fat girlfriend.”
I wasn’t surprised by the comment. When it comes to relationships, we expect a disconnect between what people say and what they do. Many heavy women do have painful stories of men who were quite happy to fuck them in private but refuse to date them in public.
And as someone who has worked as a male feminist ally for a long time, I’ve been keenly aware of how some folks saw the kind of women I dated as a reflection on the depth of my commitment to the feminist cause. A small minority have made those sorts of comments over the years; one small-time feminist blogger wrote years ago that my wife (who worked as a model in her teen years and was a soccer star turned kickboxer) was something to the effect of a “disappointingly attractive choice” for me to have made.
I’ve never had a “type.” Though I’ve been drawn to an unusual number of short-hair brunettes, I’ve dated, lived with, and married women from across the ethnic, class, and body-size spectrum. I’ve had girlfriends (not just lovers) who were dangerously emaciated by anorexia and girlfriends who outweighed me by seventy pounds or more. The tallest was 6’2″, the shortest 4’11″. My first wife was half-Chinese, half-Filipina; my second and third wives were WASPs, my fourth wife is African-Colombian-Croatian. With a very few exceptions, the one consistency I’ve had is in dating/marrying women who were very close to my own age.
I learned early on that I could be sexually attracted to a great many different body types. (People who could only fall for one sort of person or could only be turned on by a particular physique have always struck me as odd.) But as fluid as my libido turned out to be, I also learned early on that I didn’t make my sexual and romantic choices in a vacuum. Having dated and wed women who were at widely divergent points on the rigid and cruel “beauty spectrum”, I’ve always been keenly aware that others measured my status based on the perceived desirability of the woman I was with at any given time. To be honest, few things fueled my feminism as much.
The heaviest woman I ever dated was someone I met online back in the early days of cyber-romance at the end of the last century. “Dana” and I connected on matchmaker.com, and we saw each other for about three months. We broke up when her job took her to D.C. Dana was, in her own words, at least 100 pounds overweight. She was also incredibly sexy and charming, gifted with the verbal dexterity I always found irresistible. It was a passionate relationship, one that might have endured had she not moved away permanently.
I’ll never forget, however, how Dana’s confidence wavered the first time she met my father, who had come down to Pasadena for a visit. “What will your Dad say to you when he sees me”, she asked. I could hear the quiver in her voice. I reassured her that my father wouldn’t care a wit about her size. Dana looked at me, fighting back tears and said, “I guess I’ll have to believe you.” I was heartsick — not because she didn’t trust me or my Papa, but because of the legacy of pain that led her to be so mistrustful.
Dana knew she was charming, funny, and whip-smart. We had amazing sexual chemistry. But she didn’t know — and hadn’t been given reason to know — that a partner could be proud of her, eager to have her meet his friends and family. I hope in our brief time together I was able to show her how happy I was to be with her in both public and private.
The politics of fat are complex. (For people looking for some great writing on the subject, I always recommend starting with the incomparable Kate Harding.) Our censoriousness about “health” so often covers up our own anxieties about status and public desirability; too often, the “fat American” becomes a symbol of a kind of grotesque, unthinking colonialist consumer. No one is denying that for some, there can be health consequences to being significantly overweight. But there are countless other risk factors that are much less stigmatized, and much less likely to be used to rob people of their dignity and their sexuality.
And when it comes to our sexual and romantic choices, we need to separate our craven status-seeking from our authentic desires. Fat-shaming is too often about the former.
Beautifully written. Nothing to add except that one measure of a man is his ability to ignore (or best, not be conscious of) what the popular mindset is on beauty, health and weight or what his “buddies” think.
Im not sure a man should completely ignore what his buddies think except in his actions. He should be mindful of what is expected of him from society and his peers.
Strange, but you are also told by black women that black men prefer them to be heavy. See your post from May 10 of this year. I suppose with them every sentence in this post can be reversed. “Many thin [black] women do have painful stories of men who were quite happy to fuck them in private but refuse to date them in public.”
I’m tall and curvy, probably not what would be considered obese but definitely not thin. Last year I had a professor who used an entire class period to lecture at length about men who are attracted to fat women. Despite his obvious notions of being inclusive and compassionate, I felt disgusted and humiliated by the end of his diatribe. I walked out of the lecture hall trying to make myself as small as possible. He was trying to make a point about our rigid and exclusive beauty curve, but he ended up making me feel that a man must have a “fat girl fetish” to be attracted to me.
The next time my husband tried to initiate intimacy, I turned away and cried, and it took a while before I was comfortable with him again. He has never intimated that he’s either bothered by my body or specifically attracted to me because of my weight. But after that lecture I felt ashamed FOR HIM, because it had honestly never occurred to me that someone might look at our relationship that way.
As usual, a great piece. It hurts men just as much as women when we “fetishize” women who don’t look like rail-thin models. Being attracted to an overweight woman is not something to be ashamed of, nor is it limited to few men.
It reminds me of past partners who have enjoyed squeezing my tummy fat, or called me “gorda,” a term of endearment in Spanish that also means “fat.” In the beginning, I hated how they drew attention to my curvy body, and didn’t just pretend–like I did–that I had no rolls, no curves, nothing outside the norm. Since then, I have dated men who were obsessed with my ass, something I would lose if I were to lose the weight I wish I could. I find that men are ever so much less concerned about those few extra pounds that taunt me in the mirror. In fact, I wonder if they even see them.
This sounds like a good lesson on body-image for women as well.
Thank you for such a thoughtful post. As a fat woman, who has lost and gained 100 lbs multiple times, I have internalized a lot of fat phobia and shame as my proof of my inferiority. While I am dismantling the past and acknowledging the ways I too have devalued fat woman and myself, I find it’s a hard to fight because so many people hold on to the health debate- basically that fat equals unhealthy. Health At Every Size (HAES) and other such advocacy groups are wonderful outlets to help mitigate the loneliness I sometimes feel at having to defend my body while also choosing when to do so and when to let others’ assumptions be just that. Reading articles like these helps me remember that fat is not only acceptable to some, but beautiful. Being fat can be isolating, and perhaps that’s one of the insidious ways we (individually and socially) “punish” what is not acceptable. I know that in my own profession, counseling and clinical psychology, I find many therapists, professors, and colleagues can use their own opinions and biases as ways to “help” their clients and patients. Of course the danger in this is only increased by the power differential that is inherent to the counseling relationship. There are many people who are not as myopic and do not promote the one size fits all way to be mentally healthy. I could go on and on, but I mainly want to express my gratitude for this piece. Thank you.
This hypothesizes that men find thin women attractive because it’s what they think other men find attractive. Reading the last article again, this isn’t even stated as a hypothesis; it appears assumed as fact. It would very well be equally likely that men gain homeosocial status landing thin women because that’s what more men find attractive and men have to compete more over women. The most attractive women that the most men vie for get to choose from a huge selection. Well of course it’s going to be a status symbol; you had the ability to get what everyone was trying for! While I don’t want to say it’s “easy” to land someone who isn’t conventionally attractive, the greatly diminished competition makes it a hell of a lot easyER.
Actually, I reject Hugo’s hypothesis because if this were the case, there wouldn’t BE many men attracted to fat women. The reasons why thin may be the ideal now is not a can of worms worth opening, but those are my thoughts.
This is sort of a pattern all over– the people who adhere the most closely to cultural norms of attractiveness are the biggest status boosters! A lot of employers think that way, too; believing the conventionally attractive do the best job of marketing the company and bringing in money.
This problem seems to be inherent to unregulated capitalism. Not regulating capitalism, therefore, seems to guarantee that it will eventually follow “the law of the jungle”– an economy where everyone has to play to basest instincts to survive.
Going with what’s comfortable pretty much guarantees we’ll take the path of least resistance. Going against the pull of cultural norms– either romantically or professionally– really does take work. And thought.
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Let’s not be so intolerant of those who think in terms of status. Please remember that until the acceptance and encouragements of sentimentalism in the mid-1800s, marriage was exclusively a social/economic institution for the entirety of human existence. Even when intra-personal love became a staple of the aristocratic class, this was expected to be found outside the socially-approved marital alliance. There was, sadly, less opportunity for women to find such fulfillment than for men. However, I would hope that we are sufficiently enlightened in this time that we wouldn’t begrudge a person who indulges a personal desire but needs to divide it from the public persona.