I Was Told No One Wants Fat Girls

January 13, 2024 12:52 AM

As fat women, we may be a cheap, tasty snack, not a proper meal, then: the sexual equivalent of junk food. They’ll throw away the wrapper and brush away the crumbs, sated but vaguely disgusted — with both us and themselves — when they are done with us. Our bodies may be desired but deemed low-status, then, rendering us disposable. Fat women are regarded by some men as fuckable but not loveable.
posted by Francies (13 comments total)

Jesus.

I’ve experienced milder versions of the things she describes. The difference I think is that I wasn’t relentlessly bullied as a teenager (just one particularly difficult episode). So I was able to cope better with stuff as an adult. But still my self esteem about my body is entirely built on the belief that my husband finds my body attractive. I don’t think I mind whether that’s because I am fat or despite it being fat. And one of my fears is that he only finds me attractive for my mind/personality.

Fatphobia is insidiously dangerous.
posted by plonkee at 2:42 AM on January 13 [10 favorites]

I was once told, by a man who had already said he was in love with me, that my stomach “disgusted” him.

That was 19 years ago. I have not forgotten it. I have carried the weight of those words into every new relationship. I am sure he doesn’t even remember saying them.

Schoolyard rhymes be damned; words cut far deeper than blows.
posted by corb at 4:33 AM on January 13 [24 favorites]

All of the ads I see on that page are weight-loss related.
posted by vernondalhart at 4:34 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]

This is a powerful article and I appreciate that it was linked here.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:03 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]

This is terrible. This is the tip of the iceberg. I would tell you that the worst of it happened during childhood, but it persists. A dude at an event recently told me that “the reason why you’re able to have so many friends who are men is because you don’t have to worry about them hitting on you.” Or the concerned looking woman, mid-Covid who approached my car, as I loaded groceries (masked) into the trunk and told me I should really be more responsible and stay home and out of the public because my obesity meant that I would likely die if I got Covid.

And not that it matters, but like the author of this piece, I am, as we say, “small fat.” It is incomprehensible the degree to which this bullshit is deemed acceptable
posted by thivaia at 6:12 AM on January 13 [28 favorites]

Shout out to your fat friend Aubrey Gordon; her movie is very good.
posted by whatevernot at 7:42 AM on January 13 [14 favorites]

Our collective lack of empathy has never been more apparent.
posted by tommasz at 7:49 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]

A lot of this was very familiar to me. I was fat pretty much my whole life -- I ended up having bariatric surgery about 2 years ago, solely because I need to have a knee replaced and the orthopedist refused to consider it unless I lost weight. There's an extra mind-fuck (on top of a LOT of complicated and often very difficult and painful feelings about having had this surgery) in how much nicer people are to me now. The worst is how people who have known me for years, people I work with, treat me differently now. I'm the same person I was. My body changed, yes, but... I'm still me. I was not less of a person when my body was larger.
posted by maryellenreads at 8:46 AM on January 13 [37 favorites]

So familiar. I wish I could burn the "such a pretty face (but...)" backhanded compliment in a fire. The story of my childhood, right there.
posted by TwoStride at 9:19 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]

From Kate Manne's interview with Virginia Sole-Smith on figuring out a better framework than body positivity or body neutrality:

My body is for me. And that’s the idea that I call body reflexivity. This idea that my perspective on my body is the only one that matters. It’s very much linked with a kind of radical politics of autonomy. But it’s also the idea that my attitude towards my body doesn’t have to be any one thing, it doesn’t have to be a rating or a ranking any more than I go around ranking or rating sunsets. I can appreciate sunsets without thinking, oh, that one was a 7 out of 10.

posted by spamandkimchi at 11:29 AM on January 13 [17 favorites]

Ah, yes, the OKCupid date who, on seeing me in person, stated "Ya know, I don't really mind fat girls".
posted by shiny blue object at 12:01 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]

Thank you for sharing this, Francies.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:28 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]

That mind fuck of better treatment is so awful. I've talked about it before but it really impacts me still. Not in the "I wish I was skinny" way but my response to losing weight is to panic and do maladaptive things (I have no gallbladder, a large amount of chocolate makes me feel like shit but if someone tells me I look good, or skinnier, that's my response).

I'm currently working out again. Safely, slowly, getting back to lifting and I'm developing muscle definition. A fat woman, in my 40s, no history of fitness beyond failed attempts at lifting that injured me, developing these tiny little bits of definition in my calves, my hands and feet, arms, pectorals, butt, and I'm delighted and proud. And then someone remarks on it in a way that makes it seem like I'm more acceptable and I remember all those years I couldn't recognise myself in mirrors and photos.

I'm lucky enough to have a personal trainer who gets it. Not because he is or was fat, but because he has lived with that oppressive bullshit about bodies, and has gone through the serious hard work of recovery after serious malfunctions. We work around my crooked spine, my PTSD accented freeze response, my disassociation from my body and lack of proprioception. And never mentions weight beyond what I'm lifting (a bit over half my body weight now).

I don't have as much of my sexual identity caught up in being fat - except that I know I fear being more mainstream attractive to the point I make myself sick to keep this nice layer of safety. I don't lack sexual options, never really have. I've just lacked trust.

As Manne says when your effigy is your body, you burn along with it. I'm rebuilding, again, out of the ash. But Christ it's hard.
posted by geek anachronism at 11:36 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]