Guys who like fat chicks.

May 6, 2011 12:36 PM

The current issue of the Village Voice profiled Fat Admirers, or Dudes who like fat chicks. One of the main guys interviewed was Dan Weiss who runs a blog called ask a guy who likes fat chicks. He has also written a couple of articles for The Hairpin: I Like Fat Chicks, Questions? 1 & 2.
posted by Uncle (118 comments total)

So it's a Q&A thing, like Dan Savage? With big (big boned) questions and meaty, substantial, answers?
posted by orthogonality at 12:45 PM on May 6, 2011

It seems more like a blog that hasn't been updated in almost a year. Maybe he has a PR person now?
posted by jessamyn at 12:51 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is a subject MetaFilter usually handles well!

Seriously, though, I'm about two thirds of the way through the Village Voice article, and it's actually really interesting.
posted by infinitywaltz at 12:53 PM on May 6, 2011

Thank you so much for posting this. It's taken me a really long time -- and I'm still working on it -- to not hate the word "fat." Which is what I am. And I've recently met someone who loves me just as I am, chins and rolls and all. It blows my mind, that he likes my body more than I do. So yay on Dan Weiss -- and my boyfriend -- for talking (and living) so openly about what they like. Maybe, just maybe, one day I'll get over society's screwed up definitions of beauty, and learn to love myself as I am.
posted by flyingsquirrel at 12:56 PM on May 6, 2011 [19 favorites]

As a "fat chick" who has problems attracting men and also has issues with men fetishizing her body type, I find this quite fascinating. (I'd like to think that trying to understand this fetish, or "preference", so that I'm less squicked out by it, might lead me to understand whether a meaningful, fulfilling relationship could lead from it. So, yeah.)
posted by smilingtiger at 12:57 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hey, I went to college with this guy!! We were in creative writing together!! He wrote poems about tongues!
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 1:05 PM on May 6, 2011 [30 favorites]

@smilingtiger: YES! I find myself squicked out by it too, which I think speaks more to my own self-loathing and shame, than anything else. It's as if I just accept it as fact that something is wrong with me, so something must be wrong with men who prefer my body type. Yet hundreds of years ago, my body type was idealized...

But I'm happy to report that yes, a meaningful, fulfilling relationship *can* come from it. Trust me.
posted by flyingsquirrel at 1:05 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

Also, yes, all the girls he dated were both quite large and pretty cute!
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 1:07 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

smilingtiger - there's many things that I, as an FA, like about large women...

curves (and I'm referring to both traditionally beautiful curves, and "rolls" and such)
, shape, what way the body moves, boobs...

That's the basic gist, methinks. can't type much right now, but uh, yeah?
posted by symbioid at 1:09 PM on May 6, 2011

I never thought I was one of these until I ran across it on USENET way back when. So I looked back and realized all the girls I ever dated were "fat chicks", including my wife. But I still don't feel comfortable saying it out loud and I really, really don't like it being called a fetish. It's just a preference.
posted by tommasz at 1:14 PM on May 6, 2011 [6 favorites]

I find myself squicked out by it too, which I think speaks more to my own self-loathing and shame, than anything else. It's as if I just accept it as fact that something is wrong with me, so something must be wrong with men who prefer my body type

Well, I think it depends on whether the guy in question is into the body type purely for the body type itself, or because he sees women with that body type as more marginalized, desperate, or vulnerable because their body type is less well regarded by society at large.

The former is preference or fetish; it's somewhat superficial, but only as much (and obviously there's a range) as "I prefer brunettes" or "I'm into Asian women" is. The latter is predatory.
posted by orthogonality at 1:17 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think it's kind of weird to regard this as a fetish. I mean, maybe I just have a fucked-up definition of fetish, in which case it's my own problem, but it strikes me as marginalizing fat women in the same way that making 'interracial' a porn category is marginalizing.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:21 PM on May 6, 2011 [23 favorites]

Thank you for the article; I found it pretty interesting. At first I was irritated by how flippant everyone sounded about everything, but they all seem to be coming from a really human and simple place and I found the whole thing surprisingly charming.

I think a lot about where preference and objectification intersect, though. It seems to me that when you limit your dating pool to those with a certain set of characteristics, you're necessarily assigning some value to those characteristics when they might not have much to do with the actual person. I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with it; we all have things we like and don't like. But I *was* pretty weirded out when one guy I dated went on to date another Korean girl after we broke up, and then another. And I probably would look askance at someone who proclaimed himself an "Asian Admirer", or, if you want to get away from Orientalist cultural baggage, even a "Short Admirer". Like me, not my fantasy-fulfilling packaging! Complicated.
posted by peachfuzz at 1:22 PM on May 6, 2011 [3 favorites]

ARGH. Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with a man who finds me attractive nor do I think it's weird. I have never viewed them as predatory. I also can't really grok this article or this phenomenon. Most women in America are overweight, more than a third are obese. Yet 95% of American adults are out there having sex. As an African-American woman, the stats are higher and I see fat people coupled up with thinner people all the time. So it's weird to me that it's a fetish, weird to call it unnatural in any way.

I do get that there is a huge stigma against fat women and fat bodies. Quite frankly, having so many headless, shadowed, and obscured shots in this article contributes to that. The facts in the final page of the article are telling: communities where fat people have always been as attractive as anyone else, suddenly in the last few years they are "gross". Not that people stop having sex with them and marrying them. But now they can't say anymore that they find their fat partners attractive.
posted by Danila at 1:25 PM on May 6, 2011 [9 favorites]

The former is preference or fetish; it's somewhat superficial, but only as much (and obviously there's a range) as "I prefer brunettes" or "I'm into Asian women" is.

With my boyfriend, it's not a fetish, it's a preference -- "fetish" has negative, kinky connotations, which I am finally starting to resent when used to describe fat chicks. (What drew him to me was the fact that I make him laugh; my body type was a bonus. In his mind, he got the girl with the good personality AND the hot bod.) I like guys with big shoulders. It's not a fetish, I just like it. As one of the people interviewed in the article says, "People aren’t fetish objects, they’re people. It’s not like having a thing for leather.”
posted by flyingsquirrel at 1:25 PM on May 6, 2011 [5 favorites]

I think it's kind of weird to regard this as a fetish.

Maybe I was misreading it, but doesn't the Voice article specifically address his response to this fetish topic? Or maybe it was one of the other articles. Put simply: if it's the only way you can get off, it may be a fetish. If it's a thing you like strongly among many other things you like, it's a preference. He likes fat women. He's also dated skinnier women. He prefers fat women. He thinks that, among their many other fine characterisics, they are soft. I was all set to go into these articles and get totally annoyed, but I came out unannoyed.
posted by jessamyn at 1:27 PM on May 6, 2011 [6 favorites]

The whole fat preference thing is really difficult. I tried joining some dating sites for fat people, but I found basically two kinds of men on those sites:

1. Men who think fat women are easy because of their own self-image issues and are hoping to take advantage.
2. Men who are really, really into fat. In a very skeevy way.

I'm not particularly self-loathing about being fat, but I'd rather be thinner, and I have no interest in having my fatness fetishized. I suspect many super models, asian chicks and redheads feel the same way about the aspects of themselves that get objectified.

It should be possible to find a nice guy who likes me and feels positively about my body shape without it being super creepy, but so far, little luck.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:29 PM on May 6, 2011 [7 favorites]

Maybe I was misreading it, but doesn't the Voice article specifically address his response to this fetish topic?

No, it does, right there on page 3. I was speaking in general terms and not addressing the article itself.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:34 PM on May 6, 2011

Of course, because of this post I'm assuming that this guy does share this information in inappropriate contexts which might not be true.

He was pretty out there about this kind of stuff in college, but who knows, now. I originally stumbled across his blog about a year ago via his facebook and it struck me as a niche sort of thing he was doing (he wasn't all, OMG FAT CHICKS in his feed or anything), but also in keeping with his personality as I knew it.

I think there's a kind of weird tension in our culture, though, in feminist, liberal arenas, wherein we want to have healthy attitudes about sex but we're also worried--perhaps with good reason--about objectification. And maybe a lot of it is because there's such an emphasis on the male gaze aspects of it (and I agree that the headless shots here don't help)

It's objectifying if I say that I have a preference for shortish guys (they're just so much easier to kiss!) but because there's not a history of reducing men to nothing more than their bodies and women's preferences of them, it's just sort of fundamentally different.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 1:37 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

Linked off the main Voice article, don't miss the Q&A with Sir Mix-a-Lot.

And I wouldn't call myself a "fat admirer," but I will say this: There are lots of people who, when you hug them, are all ribs and elbows, you know? Take a look at this chair, and take a look at this chair. Which would you rather sit in?
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:38 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

I guess the thing that makes me squeamish is the degree of importance attributed to the preference (or fetish) for the guy - when it becomes more important to him that I'm fat than that I love to travel, or am really funny in a particular way, or whatever...

Personally, my preferences are pretty minor, so that when I say I like bald guys, or I like tall guys, I don't actively seek them out, to the exclusion of all others. Usually, I prefer bald guys or tall guys because I've met someone with that characteristic and found them attractive. I guess that's how I would differentiate "preference" from "fetish".
posted by smilingtiger at 1:41 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

Take a look at this chair, and take a look at this chair. Which would you rather sit in?

Which chair has a better sense of humor?
posted by shakespeherian at 1:42 PM on May 6, 2011 [36 favorites]

I think it's kind of weird to regard this as a fetish. I mean, maybe I just have a fucked-up definition of fetish,

A fetish is subjective, entirely in the eye of the beholder.

If you must have some factor F in order to be sexually turned on, it's a fetish.

Turned on by fat girls? Not a fetish.

Only turned on by fat girls? Fetish.
posted by orthogonality at 1:43 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

I guess I find it less annoying if I remember that this article and FPP are not about fat women (we're just tangential), it's about the men who like fat women. So other than saying I'm a woman liked as women are and not a fetish or unnatural or weird, my pov is pretty irrelevant. I just hate the way the first half of the article mainly focuses on parts and the pictures of parts and who would do who.

But my body does feel like one big boob a lot of the time, and that's a great feeling I admit.
posted by Danila at 1:44 PM on May 6, 2011

Put simply: if it's the only way you can get off, it may be a fetish.

The fellow identified as Lawrence is introduced this way:

The skinny on Lawrence is that he’s charming, “impossibly smart,” and a “bachelor”—he dates, but he’s keeping his options open. Since, he says, “99 percent of the women you see in magazines, I couldn’t get it up for,

A direct quote, that, though it could be hyperbole. But he shrugs it off as purely a type thing. I'd imagine the truth is somewhere in between, though I can't imagine caring less. People make judgments about who they want to be with on basis that are equally questionable, why not this one?
posted by phearlez at 1:47 PM on May 6, 2011

Take a look at this chair, and take a look at this chair. Which would you rather sit in?

And there's your objectification, right there. I mean I get what you're saying, but still. A chair? Really?
posted by flyingsquirrel at 1:48 PM on May 6, 2011 [20 favorites]

"Fetish" has become a very lazy way to say "aroused by something out of the strict ordinary of what you are 'supposed to' like."
posted by adipocere at 1:52 PM on May 6, 2011 [12 favorites]

Yet 95% of American adults are out there having sex.

yeah, just rub it in.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 1:52 PM on May 6, 2011 [27 favorites]

yeah, just rub it in.

That's what I'm doing too!
posted by shakespeherian at 1:54 PM on May 6, 2011 [23 favorites]

I guess I find it less annoying if I remember that this article and FPP are not about fat women (we're just tangential), it's about the men who like fat women.

I was going to make a joke about this but then I just got depressed by how common it is that the only stories thought worth relating are about men, even if they are stories about women.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:57 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

Oh thank god! At first I thought this was an obit post for legendary pianist Fats Admirer...
posted by Ian A.T. at 2:00 PM on May 6, 2011 [7 favorites]

Turned on by fat girls? Not a fetish.

Only turned on by fat girls? Fetish.

Yeah, I agree with this. It's not a fetish because it's weird or gross to be turned on by me, it's a fetish because if I weren't fat, you wouldn't be turned on by me. And, then, yeah, you seem to be saying that I'm not the same person if I'm not fat.
posted by smilingtiger at 2:02 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

I think that what body type turns us on is largely out of our conscious control. Some people like fat partners, some like "normal" sized partners, and some like ultra-skinny partners. I don't think there's anything particularly admirable or loathsome about any of those preferences. They are what they are.
posted by rocket88 at 2:06 PM on May 6, 2011 [6 favorites]

And, then, yeah, you seem to be saying that I'm not the same person if I'm not fat.

By "you", you mean the Fat Admirer/Fat Fetishist, not me the commnter to whom you're replying, right?
posted by orthogonality at 2:08 PM on May 6, 2011

flyingsquirrel, I'm very sorry I offended you. I never intended to do so, and I hope you'll forgive me.

(It's kind of weird trying to participate in both this thread and the Mister Rogers thread.)
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:09 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

I think that's a strong incentive to have more Mister Rogers threads.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:13 PM on May 6, 2011 [5 favorites]

As a fat woman, I've been Hugely Squicked by guys that just seemed to be into me because I'm fat. There's so much more to me than my fat, and it felt fetishized and objectified.

OTOH, I'm in great relationship with someone who loves my fat body because it's part of who I am, and that has been wonderful beyond imagining.
posted by ldthomps at 2:14 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

Yes, exactly, ortho, I mean "you" as in the imaginary FA.
posted by smilingtiger at 2:15 PM on May 6, 2011

The always-awesome Marianne at The Rotund has some wicked insights.

When people tell me they are skeeved by fat fetishists and they just want someone who wants them for who they are entirely, I’m never quite sure what to do with that. Because, uh, yeah, that’s what most people seem to want. Including people who have genuine, bona fide, psychological fetishes.

(On preview - this was not meant to be a specific response to ldthomps! Bad timing!)
posted by muddgirl at 2:15 PM on May 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

Thanks for saying that. And of course I forgive you. (My boyfriend also fell for me cos I'm really nice, heh heh.)
posted by flyingsquirrel at 2:15 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

There are as many personality types among the fat as among the non-fat. There are a large supply of fat people, it's not like you have a small subset of choices like some of the more rare fetishes.

Only being aroused by fat people doesn't mean you are automatically not valuing someone as a person, there would be problems if you are only liking someone for looks but that isn't a fat specific issue.

I don't particularly see this sort of thing as a flaw in a person, the nature of sexual arousal one can experience (like orientation) is often something people are just born with.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 2:15 PM on May 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

(Yes the timing demon got me too. Damn MeFi and its intelligent, engaging, courteous, quick-to-comment community!)
posted by flyingsquirrel at 2:19 PM on May 6, 2011

Onward, Fat Girl!
posted by Eideteker at 2:23 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I agree with this. It's not a fetish because it's weird or gross to be turned on by me, it's a fetish because if I weren't fat, you wouldn't be turned on by me.

Personally I don't care if it's called a preference or a fetish or however you want to label it. But there is a strong and in my opinion unfair cultural bias that only being attracted to skinny women is completely normal, whereas being attracted to any of the range beyond skinny (anywhere from chubby to morbidly obese) is some sort of weird fetish. Because overweight women are considered to be by definition unattractive. There's certainly not an expectation for every guy to be able to be attracted to a woman who is 500+ pounds, yet there is an expectation for every guy to be attracted to a woman who weighs less than 160 or whatever.
posted by burnmp3s at 2:31 PM on May 6, 2011 [15 favorites]

"I think that what body type turns us on is largely out of our conscious control. Some people like fat partners, some like "normal" sized partners, and some like ultra-skinny partners. I don't think there's anything particularly admirable or loathsome about any of those preferences. They are what they are."

Right. And some people like "child-sized" partners.... oh wait....
posted by ferdinand.bardamu at 2:35 PM on May 6, 2011

What do you mean by that ferdinand.bardamu?
posted by Uncle at 2:37 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

Things out of conscious control that harm people are not the same as things that don't.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 2:38 PM on May 6, 2011 [3 favorites]

The always-awesome Marianne at The Rotund has some wicked insights.
When people tell me they are skeeved by fat fetishists and they just want someone who wants them for who they are entirely, I’m never quite sure what to do with that. Because, uh, yeah, that’s what most people seem to want. Including people who have genuine, bona fide, psychological fetishes.

Again, I guess I mean that people who are only attracted to fat people seem to be suggesting that they would no longer be attracted to me if I lost weight. And no, that's not a horrible thing, and I'm not judging people who would say that, and if I were interested in a short-term, purely physical relationship, it wouldn't bother me at all. It just doesn't seem like a sound basis for anything more than that.

But I may be wrong. I've never tested my theory.
posted by smilingtiger at 2:39 PM on May 6, 2011

And, then, yeah, you seem to be saying that I'm not the same person if I'm not fat.

This is precisely the reason that I ignore people who wouldn't give size 20 me the time of day but are falling over themselves to flirt with size 6 me.

I get that you can't necessarily help who you're attracted to, but those people wouldn't even acknowledge my existence as a person when I was fat.
posted by elsietheeel at 2:39 PM on May 6, 2011 [15 favorites]

This is precisely the reason that I ignore people who wouldn't give size 20 me the time of day but are falling over themselves to flirt with size 6 me.

Oh, exactly, elsietheeel, it works both ways, and when I'm skinnier I get much more attention from guys, which also bothers me a lot.
posted by smilingtiger at 2:42 PM on May 6, 2011

Again, I guess I mean that people who are only attracted to fat people seem to be suggesting that they would no longer be attracted to me if I lost weight.

I mean, this is going to depend from person to person. Lots of people find their partners less attractive when they gain weight - it comes up quite a bit on AskMe and in relationship columns. Do those people have "skinny fetishes?"

Or is there an underlying assumption that fat people are definitionally unattractive?
posted by muddgirl at 2:46 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

"What do you mean by that ferdinand.bardamu?"

I really do agree with the statement that sexual attraction is an involuntary, unconscious attribute and no one should be persecuted or made to feel inferior for attributes they exert no control over... but then there are certain attractions that present a problem case for this liberal attitude... and I don't know what to do with that...
posted by ferdinand.bardamu at 2:47 PM on May 6, 2011

Anyway, I don't think Marianne was arguing that fat girls should date Fat Admirers, just that they should consider why they aren't. If it skeeves you out then it skeeves you out! I would personally never tell anyone to ignore their inner skeeve-o-meter.
posted by muddgirl at 2:48 PM on May 6, 2011

But there is a strong and in my opinion unfair cultural bias that only being attracted to skinny women is completely normal, whereas being attracted to any of the range beyond skinny (anywhere from chubby to morbidly obese) is some sort of weird fetish.

Yeah, for the majority of human history, these fat-appreciating fellows would be the norm and this guy's perspective would be considered by hunter-gatherer-snarkers to be the banal normality to be rebelled against. Whatever people consider attractive, however that happened in their brain, isn't really a fetish. It can be really superficial, but everyone is superficial in their sexual attraction to some extent. Fetishes involve inanimate objects, or sexuality tied up in ritual, and doesn't (in my informed opinion) relate to the types of bodies people are acculturated to be attracted to. Unless it is a specific attraction to a body part or aspect that is hyper-objectified.

I think it is good to normalize that people can be attracted to many different body types. I also think it would be good to normalize fetishes too.
posted by fuq at 2:49 PM on May 6, 2011 [5 favorites]

Yeah, that's what pisses me off. I mean, I understand that lots of people aren't attracted to me for whatever reason, but don't treat me like a fucking non-person just because I'm fat.

I call it the "don't encourage the fat girl" phenomenon, like fat women are so desperate they'll follow you home if you smile at them.
posted by WorkingMyWayHome at 2:50 PM on May 6, 2011 [10 favorites]

I mean, I understand that lots of people aren't attracted to me for whatever reason, but don't treat me like a fucking non-person just because I'm fat.

But oh yeah, this. With some people, it's like "If I don't want to fuck you, then you are invisible." I think that's a separate issue from fetishes though.

I really enjoy getting hyper-sexual around that type of person (not targeted at that person, just while they can overhear). They can get delightfully uptight.
posted by muddgirl at 2:53 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

I mean, this is going to depend from person to person. Lots of people find their partners less attractive when they gain weight - it comes up quite a bit on AskMe and in relationship columns. Do those people have "skinny fetishes?"

Or is there an underlying assumption that fat people are definitionally unattractive?

I was thinking about exactly those AskMes, too - I don't feel any more comfortable with the attitude of the people who find their partners less attractive if they gain weight, either.

But I guess the problem with the term "fetish" is that it seems to be judgmental and insulting, which is not what I intended.

Anyway, I don't think Marianne was arguing that fat girls should date Fat Admirers, just that they should consider why they aren't. If it skeeves you out then it skeeves you out! I would personally never tell anyone to ignore their inner skeeve-o-meter.

Yeah, and I don't know if I should be skeeved out, or whether I'm really burning bridges by not joining FA websites or whatever! I guess I'm just trying to figure it out.
posted by smilingtiger at 2:55 PM on May 6, 2011

"Things out of conscious control that harm people are not the same as things that don't."

That's a different problem. We don't just persecute (and prosecute) child rapists, we also persecute anyone we suspect of being sexually aroused by children. If I think such arousal is involuntary and involuntary attributes should not be held against anyone, which I do.... well, that creates a conundrum that, like I said earlier, I don't know what to do with. The facile path is to note that such attraction is considered pathological... but then the DSM is quite a malleable thing and once listed homosexuals as such... so that doesn't help.
posted by ferdinand.bardamu at 2:57 PM on May 6, 2011

Ahem, ... Adipositivity.com (previously on The Blue).
posted by IAmBroom at 2:59 PM on May 6, 2011

The facile path is to note that such attraction is considered pathological... but then the DSM is quite a malleable thing and once listed homosexuals as such... so that doesn't help.

The differences are not superficial, there just isn't a healthy way for this preference to be expressed with a willing partner. There are concrete differences between things like bestiality and pedophilia and things like homosexuality or crossdressing that are considered wrong just for being weird or disgusting.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 3:08 PM on May 6, 2011

we also persecute anyone we suspect of being sexually aroused by children

Hmm? I don't see how this is possible unless some sort of mini-fMRI mind reading technology has been invented. We prosecute for posession of child pornography, or for molesting a child, or for sexually harassing a child. All acts, not thoughts.

The line is pretty clearly drawn. You can get off on childlike adults all you want - there's a whole magazine for guys into "Barely Legal" women if that's your attraction.

Pedophilia is disallowed because it hurts children. Do Fat Admirers hurt fat women?
posted by muddgirl at 3:13 PM on May 6, 2011

If you must have some factor F in order to be sexually turned on, it's a fetish.

Turned on by fat girls? Not a fetish.

Only turned on by fat girls? Fetish.

This seems to collapse at a certain level of generality.

Only turned on by average-size girls: fetish?

Only turned on by women: fetish?
posted by eugenen at 3:18 PM on May 6, 2011 [7 favorites]

Only turned on by women: fetish?

Haha YES. We need to get heterosexuality in the DSM!

This whole conversation came up not-to-long ago when some jerkcircle wrote an article about how some guys are only attracted to older women, and the jerkcircle got all creeped out by it.
posted by muddgirl at 3:20 PM on May 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

"Hmm? I don't see how this is possible unless some sort of mini-fMRI mind reading technology has been invented. We prosecute for posession of child pornography, or for molesting a child, or for sexually harassing a child. All acts, not thoughts."

Prosecute vs. Persecute
posted by ferdinand.bardamu at 3:21 PM on May 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

My point still stands: How can I persecute someone for thinking about children while they jerk off? I cannot read minds.

And besides, FA dudes clearly get "persecuted", too. Not to mention fat women.
posted by muddgirl at 3:24 PM on May 6, 2011

Backing up ferdinand.bardamu's point, I have been in a social situation where it became known that someone was attracted to children (but had never acted on that attraction, and had no interest in doing so). The person was definitely persecuted for this.
posted by idiopath at 3:24 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

"And besides, FA dudes clearly get "persecuted", too."

Only if they're "out" and there is considerable social pressure (AKA persecution) to prevent them from doing so. Only "out" pedophile I've ever heard of is this guy.
posted by ferdinand.bardamu at 3:26 PM on May 6, 2011

we also persecute anyone we suspect of being sexually aroused by children

Hmm? I don't see how this is possible unless some sort of mini-fMRI mind reading technology has been invented. We prosecute for posession of child pornography, or for molesting a child, or for sexually harassing a child. All acts, not thoughts.

Oh, no. We have plenty of ways we persecute adults who don't own child pornography but who exhibit what we consider the signs of being sexually into kids.

What if someone has videotapes of children in bathing suits at public pools or playing sprinklers? It's not pornography. It hasn't harmed any children. But it's taken as a sign.

What about all the cases which seem to be springing up in various court systems where entirely computer-created child porn pictures have been created with no actual children involved? There was no moment when children were involved in any sexual anything in the making of those photos, but we still find that grounds for prosecution/persecution of the people who may have it.

Unless you regard the mere act of gazing upon a child or a child-like image to be the same thing as a sexual act with a child, these are areas where no actual ACTS have taken place, but where people are still regarded as suspect and thus persecuted.
posted by hippybear at 3:27 PM on May 6, 2011

Only if they're "out" and there is considerable social pressure (AKA persecution) to prevent them from doing so. Only "out" pedophile I've ever heard of is this guy.

Oh, ugh. Okay, that takes "skeeved out" to a whole 'nother level.
posted by smilingtiger at 3:29 PM on May 6, 2011

Sorry for the derail, folks.
posted by ferdinand.bardamu at 3:33 PM on May 6, 2011

This whole subject is a bit interesting to me from a bit of a sideways angle... being a gay man who likes the bigger guys, preferably with a bit more body hair than average and full facial hair. The "bears".

There really isn't any parallel for the bears in the heterosexual world, is there?
posted by hippybear at 3:35 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think the Amazon thing is close. Big muscular women, preferably incredibly tall. But yeah, not a real analog.
posted by jessamyn at 3:36 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

There really isn't any parallel for the bears in the heterosexual world, is there?

Women who like big hairy men or men who like big hairy women?
posted by furiousxgeorge at 3:36 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

Anything that is outside the mainstream representation of sexuality is going to be called a "fetish" and is going to gross people out. Too old, too fat, too hairy (once upon a time too thin or too hairless but those are nearly impossible with where the erotic narrative is today). There is this relatively inoffensive mainstream sexuality, which is OK to leer at publicly or show to others, and everything else is offensive or gross. This can even include erotic pictures of an entire gender (this is changing, but it used to be that men just plain were not acceptable targets of the erotic gaze).

It seems like one of the strangest parts about living in a sex negative culture is it pretends it is not sex negative by saturating itself with that very small set of sexualized images that it does not find scandalous.
posted by idiopath at 3:54 PM on May 6, 2011 [12 favorites]

Lots of people find their partners less attractive when they gain weight - it comes up quite a bit on AskMe and in relationship columns. Do those people have "skinny fetishes?"

Maybe they just dislike change.
posted by orthogonality at 3:56 PM on May 6, 2011

It seems like one of the strangest parts about living in a sex negative culture is it pretends it is not sex negative by saturating itself with that very small set of sexualized images that it does not find scandalous.

Botoxed and lifted faces on top of collagen-injected lips and grossly enlarged breasts. Yes. Not scandalous at all.
posted by hippybear at 3:58 PM on May 6, 2011

Yeah, for the majority of human history, these fat-appreciating fellows would be the norm and this guy's perspective would be considered by hunter-gatherer-snarkers to be the banal normality to be rebelled against.

Hunter-gatherers are not fat. Far from it. Early agriculturalists may have been fat, compared to hunter-gathers, for the same reasons poor people are fat today: cheap, abundant, but low quality food.
posted by orthogonality at 4:00 PM on May 6, 2011 [3 favorites]

jacquilynne:

The whole fat preference thing is really difficult. I tried joining some dating sites for fat people, but I found basically two kinds of men on those sites:

1. Men who think fat women are easy because of their own self-image issues and are hoping to take advantage.

2. Men who are really, really into fat. In a very skeevy way.

That's interesting, because that's pretty much been my impression of the phenomenon. It's exactly why I don't identify with the self-proclaimed "fat admirers", even though I do love me some chubby ladies.

In fact, before I read your comment, I'd already started to write something like: "I don't understand any guy who's solely and exclusively interested in [skinny|fat|Asian|redheaded] women". So, again—just interesting to see my thoughts echoed.

As the article notes, there's no accounting for taste. Our romantic preferences (physical and otherwise) are the product of a million formative experiences—and although they can change over time, we don't seem to have much control over them. If someone can only get off with a partner of a certain physique—as long as he's respectful and honest, and treats her as more than just a body type, and both people are happy with the deal—who am I to judge?

But, yeah, it seems a little objectifying. It seems weird to make body type—whatever body type it is—your first and most important criterion. I'm interested in the person, and a person is a complicated mess of a million different things. Body type is just one part of it.

At any rate, there are definitely non-skeevy guys out there who appreciate larger ladies—as, you know, ladies, who happen to be large. But I'm not surprised that the squicky types predominate on the BBW-specific dating sites.

For something as natural as sex, we humans sure do find a lot of ways to make it complicated and judgey. Can't we all just sleep with whoever we like that likes us back? (Directed at no one in particular; just a general observation.)
posted by ixohoxi at 4:02 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

I'm an FA, if we go by internet words. Jacquilynne's two groups do define a lot of those webgroups, hence why I'm not super-excited about the label. It's kind of like calling yourself a "gamer," as even if you are an player of video games, you might not want to be associated with the stereotypes, attitudes and behaviors associated with that term.

Fetish has a lot of different definitions. IIRC from psychology class, fetish to psychologists traditionally means drawing deep sexual satisfaction from objects or situations, possibly even far as requiring it to be aroused (although this isn't a strict requirement for the DSM's definition of a fetish, based on a Wikipedia search). Body-parts can be fetishized, but not people. By this definition, it doesn't work so well unless you consider fat a body part (it's tissue, so technically yes, although it's not very arousing to me without a person).

On the internet and in popular parlance, though, fetishes seem to have picked up a meaning as basically a requirement different from the norm to have sex. If it's not compelling enough to have sex, it'd be a preference. For me, at least, I can't see having sex successfully with a thin woman, and I'd have trouble, truthfully, with a person who was an average weight for her height. So, in one definition it doesn't fit, and in another it does. Not sure what that means.

The problem with this discussion is that people don't like objectification or being attracted to a person based on their physical traits, but the problem is that those sort of things come up when it comes to sexual attraction. While I agree that it's wrong to ignore a person's personality or humanity while enjoying their body, I'd say there are a lot of people who can't really have decent sex without taking into account physical characteristics to some degree.

Think of it this way. Gender doesn't necessarily limit a personality, and personality probably the bigest factor in finding someone you're compatible with. However, unless you're bisexual, you're very likely to not consider having sex with anyone outside your preferred gender, no matter how great they are to be around or how close a bond you form. It's not because you're prejudiced or anything. It just comes down to physical traits at a certain level.
posted by MuppetNavy at 4:23 PM on May 6, 2011 [6 favorites]

I think the "out" part comes when men who are expected to do "better" than a fat woman have to confront that expectation.
posted by ferdinand.bardamu at 4:30 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, it's also just that people notice if you date the same type all the time, even if it is just blondes or whatever.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 4:33 PM on May 6, 2011

I think it's weird to think that everyone is attracted to everyone. Clearly thats not the case, and most people have a type or types -- you can see this just by looking at a series of partners for a given individual. _Most_ people have a not-overly-narrow set of types, so you see a variety of men/women but with a few characteristics popping up often. Some people have a much more narrowly defined type (this is where people start getting into calling it a "fetish" I think).

IMO, no one should be ashamed of who they are attracted to -- whether that is a "conventional"/media-approved attraction or not. It goes both ways.

Where does the need/desire to share the preference with everyone and their mom come from?

When you're afraid of peer reaction. If you're attracted to something your friends and peers are not, especially when you're younger, you're going to get a lot of shit for it. This is why a lot of people with "unconventional" attractions hide it or are ashamed of it. I know several friends who only started dating the kinds of girls they really liked once they were old/confident enough to be "out" about it. As someone who, frankly, does like more "conventionally" attractive girls, this was not an issue -- and there's a kind of privledge that hides what others are going through.
posted by wildcrdj at 4:35 PM on May 6, 2011

I didn't really treat "outing" myself as a big deal, if you can even call it outing. When I first dated a much heavier woman, and friends seemed curious (they didn't directly ask), I was honest, nothing of note came of it. Granted, I live in the Northeast, and it's pretty socially liberal here, not to say that this is a political issue or anything, but I think there's just a lot of inclusive attitudes that extend towards sexuality. I mean, one of my friends is an outed furry who uses his fursona as a profile pic on Facebook, and nobody gives him any trouble about it. As for why I felt the need to explain at all in the first place, I think it just comes down to the fact that either through culture or nature, most people don't consider obese people attractive. I'm not saying it's right.

The fact websites treat it as a big deal and a huge aspect of one's identity is strange. I feel like sexuality doesn't really do much to define people. I think a lot of the reason we treat homosexuality and coming out as such a big deal comes down to the fact that there's discrimination and prejudice against gay people in a lot of areas. Not nearly as much for just preferring partners who weigh more. And it's also something important for your partner to find out, especially if she has body image issues, so that she realizes you're not dating her in spite of her body, but that you actually enjoy her body. Of course, then you have to also make it clear that you're not just the relationship for her body.

But being as blatant about it as the person in this article/blog is something I've not really seen elsewhere. I mean, I don't mention it on my Facebook or talk about it that often, much less start a single-issue blog about it.
posted by MuppetNavy at 4:44 PM on May 6, 2011

I've been all over the map on this subject, having been rail thin, then built like a football player, then heavy enough that I had to guess my weight by how hard the needle on the scale bounced off the pin at 325, then thin enough that all the women I know couldn't stop telling me how amaaaaazing I looked and all the chubby chasers with whom I've enjoyed a dalliance got all sulky and cross.

Lately, I've been sufficiently busy, sedentary, and unfocused that I've put thirty of the last seventy I took off back on, so a few of the old chasers have sidled up on FB and elsewhere with their little tails snaking around my calves like frisky cats looking for attention. I'm not a huge fan of the fetishiness of it all, because it's so distinct from my self, but I'm not so disgusted with myself that I won't happily counter-objectify their brains out on the odd occasion.

It's a tricky thing.

I've got a fat fetish, in a manner of speaking. As a kid with a swiftly emerging sexuality, I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood, where the guys slouched around in half-shirts, drinking the cheapest canned beer they could find, and they came in all shapes and sizes, but there was just something about a guy with a gut, particularly when it was a gut with a nice furry treasure trail like a prime meridian leading to...oh my. Maybe it was the fact that I just liked those guys best, back then, and liked their exuberance and their delight in a bit of excess. Maybe it was the old tribal thing, the sort of Falstaffian lust for the signifiers of a prosperous man. There are cultures in the world that connect chunkacity with being boisterously male, just like the ones that associate curvaceous ampleness in the ladies with lush abundance.

If it's not the be-all-end-all in a relationship, I'm not sure why it's a problem. I mean, there's the fact that we're a cultural of prudish self-appointed concern trolls, who are just desperate to save us fatties from ourselves (never mind my perfect cholesterol and blood pressure—the facts say I'm destined to die young!), which makes it all a huge pain in the ass, but I guess I've got a head start at dealing with prudish self-appointed assholes in being a fag. We're good at such things.

For women, on the other hand, who've been told one dumb thing after another for centuries, I can only imagine how it is, though I've got a lovely friend at work who weighs in about a hundred pounds more than me, and we've had some long, interesting talks about the way of the world. Men are getting their comeuppance, though, with increasing numbers of dudes with eating disorders and gorgeous chunky Olympic athletes with bountiful backsides that could set the angels a'singin' being airbrushed into compliance by sports magazines (NSFW, but oh my.).

So I wonder. I love a nicely-packaged fat dude with a hearty soul, and I love fat girls, but it's all about the intersection of how men and women with the kinds of personalities, interests, and fixations often come packaged in XL bodies. Does the body lead the soul, or vice versa? Are they really completely independent?

All I know is that I've been having a lousy month. I've been in a bleak, overworked, overwhelmed, headachey sort of mood for weeks, and I was on my way into work the other morning, heading west on Main Street and in a cross frame of mind for having to drive the stupid car to work instead of taking the lovely train. As I approached a crosswalk in the soft rain, I watched a beautiful woman holding a tiny yellow umbrella, almost as small as the one Wile E. Coyote carries for those over-the-cliff moments, standing there, with the traffic completely ignoring the law. She was just gorgeous, a sort of warm hybrid of Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'Nique, and when I stopped, she seemed completely caught off guard. Even the traffic coming the other way, guilted into following the rules, stopped.

She looked over and smiled, and what a smile. With perfect poise, almost like a tightrope artist, she glided across the street, holding that tiny yellow umbrella high and smiling alternately at me and the car on the other side of the street, almost like a model at a Montgomery Ward Fashion Fair, and some of the clouds lifted in my heart.

I really need to start dating women, I thought for a moment, but that's a whole other complication. That smile and that poise just lit up the world for me, and since then, when the moods have dug in, making my temples knot up in frustrated tension, I just pull those straining sinews as tight as ropes, let myself pause, and send that woman striding across the tightrope of my nerves, smiling all the way.

Was it her size? The tiny yellow umbrella? The carriage and grace? Who knows.

We worry about all the wrong things.
posted by sonascope at 4:59 PM on May 6, 2011 [50 favorites]

When you're afraid of peer reaction. If you're attracted to something your friends and peers are not, especially when you're younger, you're going to get a lot of shit for it. This is why a lot of people with "unconventional" attractions hide it or are ashamed of it.

Even simpler: assortive matching.

If you rank members of a group's desirability (say by asking everyone else to rank them, and taking the average), in monogamous pairings generally the highest ranked male will pair off with the highest ranked female, the 2nd ranked male with the second ranked female, etc.

If you're dating someone almost everyone else puts in the fifth quintile, it's as good as admitting you're in the fifth quintile too.

(And coming out as Fat Positive or as a Fat Admirer does no good, because people will assume it's a post hoc rationalization.)
posted by orthogonality at 5:24 PM on May 6, 2011 [3 favorites]

Just to build on what some of the others have said:

For me, the difference between an acceptable guy who is into fat chicks and a skeevy guy who is into fat chicks is that the former will approach me as a fat person, rather than as fat. When you talk to men on non-fat-centric dating sites, they don't tend to lead out with sexual preferences, leering suggestions or blatant invitations for a quickie. Similarly when meeting men in public -- men who start with conversation and express an interest in me as a person are okay, even if they turn out to be primarily into fat chicks. Men who lead off with their desire to bury their face in my tits, not so much.

I used to describe my desire as 'wanting a man who'll love me despite the fat, rather than because of it', but I've moved on from there to a point where I don't need him to grudgingly accept that I am fat in order to be around my sparkling personality¹, it's fine if he likes the fact that I am fat, but that can't be the only thing he likes, and just like "normal" non-fat women, if you lead with some horndog "hey, baby let's fuck" come-on, I'm going to think you're an asshole.

I don't know if the skeevy dudes have just decided that their desires are already so far outside the mainstream that their behaviours may as well be, too. Or perhaps fat-liking and being an asshole share some common genetic factors that only a few well-meaning fat-liking guys manage to escape? Or maybe there's just not enough well-meaning fat-liking guys to go around and my fat sisters are not sharing the wealth. I don't know what the reason is, but it's a tough dating world out there for fat chicks.

^{1. Personality not guaranteed to actually sparkle.}
posted by jacquilynne at 5:25 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

a few of the old chasers have sidled up on FB and elsewhere with their little tails snaking around my calves like frisky cats looking for attention.

Thanks for ruining what until now was a highlight of my day.
posted by orthogonality at 5:27 PM on May 6, 2011

When you talk to men on non-fat-centric dating sites, they don't tend to lead out with sexual preferences, leering suggestions or blatant invitations for a quickie

Is that true? Honestly I've heard many women complain about exactly these kinds of messages on general dating sites (OKCupid, etc). Maybe it's a percentages thing -- obviously not all messages on those sites are that way.
posted by wildcrdj at 5:30 PM on May 6, 2011

Do you really have to come "out" as liking fat women, though? I mean, can't you just...date fat women? I have an ex who just married another fat woman. He didn't have to announce it to his parents. It was just "hey, here's my girlfriend".

Well... if it were my parents... there would be little tiny comments. Nothing really overt when taken individually, but completely outrageous when taken as a sum. They're both really good at expressing their displeasure with someone else's choices (whether it's their child's or someone in their social circle) while making sure none of the moments ever cross any lines of Presbyterian propriety. But if you had a super-cut of all of their comments in sequence, you'd find yourself wanting to be violent toward them by the time it was done.
posted by hippybear at 5:36 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

There are some guys on every dating site that lead off with that bullshit. OKCupid possibly moreso than most, just because people on OKCupid are far more likely to let their freak flag fly when it comes to any kind of non-normative sexual preferences. But on the two different fat dating sites I tried, skeevy come-ons were basically 100% of the contacts I received -- they were split about 50-50 between ones that I perceived to be skeevy fat festishists and ones that I perceived to be opportunistic assholes. On OKCupid, they represent maybe a third or so.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:36 PM on May 6, 2011

skeevy come-ons were basically 100% of the contacts I received

Details, details!
posted by orthogonality at 5:46 PM on May 6, 2011

I'm a dude who prefers his women on the chubby side (although I also simply like pretty women, period). It's not because I'm noble and give a shit about sizism or whatever. I simply like lots of flesh and think it's sexy and fun to play with. So BBWA's are like myself are motivated by plain old male lust and are unapologetic about it.
posted by jonmc at 5:47 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

Oooh, Sonacope, when I read "I really need to start dating women" in your post, I wondered if I could fly you down here to Florida for an exquisite romantic dinner.....and then I remembered I'm a newlywed.
No matter! I've been cultivating a crush on you in my sweet rail-thin hubby through your words and videos. So yeah.....offer still stands. :)
/blushing derail

My hubby and I are in one of those fatGirl/thinGuy relationships, though not extremely so. When we first started dating, he would whisper in my ear in bed late at night "I love your body type" followed by a quiet "...not to the exclusion of other body types." Er...thanks? No, really, thanks.

As for me, I was always attracted what I would call the "Brian Dennehy barrel-chested type" ...someone I could leap on from across the room without causing him to break. (Though, from now on, I will describe it as probably a "Falstaffian lust for the signifiers of a prosperous man" (cf. Sonascope with my everlasting gratitude).) And then I fell in love with my now-husband, who winces if I lean on his thin frame too hard.

Thin guys still don't catch my eye like the husky dudes. To me, it seems like my brunette preference; blonds with light complexion barely register for me. But it's so complicated when it comes to women since being fat takes on whole 'nother level of societal bullshit in the form of morality and health in addition to attractiveness. Desire "because of" teh fatness is as off-putting as desire "in spite of" teh fatness is condescending.
posted by Jezebella at 5:53 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

Wow, I am amazed (and encouraged) that there are actually as many guys attracted to fat women as have commented in this thread! Given my own experience, I definitely expected it to be a much less common preference.
posted by smilingtiger at 5:53 PM on May 6, 2011

Everyone is normal until someone tells us we're not. Don't listen to them.
posted by tommasz at 6:07 PM on May 6, 2011 [3 favorites]

As a strong, fit, smart, curvy, tall, well-fed gal, size issues will always bug me, because for the life of me, I can't figure out why I'm not at at the top of everybody's taste preference hierarchy. There's one element of orthogonality's ranking system that's WAY out of whack when I get dirty ugly old stupid men acting like they'll pityfuck me at bars and I'll love it because I'm fat. Boy, is that hard to respond to politely.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 6:11 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

Maybe the internet just collects us, like a sort of Lagrange point of chubby chasers? Or perhaps people are just more open when they're semi-anonymous? Either way, count me in.
posted by indubitable at 6:12 PM on May 6, 2011

I wish all the dirty ugly stupid old men were more like you, jonmc! ;P
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 6:14 PM on May 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

I like the term zaftig
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 6:18 PM on May 6, 2011 [2 favorites]

This'll make me sound like a mefi-supremacist, but honestly, I think mefites are smarter than the average bear, which is why I so love to get tangled up in the blue. Smart people are often smart about sexuality, and people who are smart about sexuality know that it takes all kinds to make a world, no matter the shape or size, and know how to revel in la difference.

I will say that mefi occasionally suffers from the usual progressive-leaning fatophobia, which I'm surprised to see has not really emerged in this conversation, but even still, there's a whole lot of civil and smart around here.
posted by sonascope at 6:24 PM on May 6, 2011 [4 favorites]

We all have an imprint. When that imprint is what society calls "normal" nobody calls it anything. When that imprint is what society calls "weird" we call it a "fetish."

Everybody has an imprint. It's the thing that makes you hard if you're a man or all soft inside if you're a woman without warning. It might be a curve or a posture or a shape. Or, if you're me, it might be something more abstract.

We all start with the imprint. We have no control over it and it can't be fixed. It selects a subset of the population for us from whom we will look for a companion. It's not that the imprint owner objectifies others; it's that nature has created us with a design goal. You can argue (and people do, interminably) over where the imprint comes from; I'm loading that argument by suggesting we get it the same way birds do, by images collected at critical formative moments. But it doesn't really matter. It's there, it guides us, we do not get to pick it and it can't be changed.

Chubby chasers (as they were called back in my youth) have it easy. You don't have to get to know the person and reveal yourself to find out if they match your imprint as you do if you have an imprint whose complement is a bit more rare and less obvious.

If you're chubby and you're being chased, you should not be squicked by the idea that your chubbiness is the most important thing about you. Something like that will of course be a leading selection factor, and that's true of every single one of us male and female. You don't want to mate with someone who isn't imprinted on something about you. But it's not like there is any shortage of chubby people around, and those with chubby imprints have a lot of room to sharpen their selection.

My own imprint is decidedly more problematical. Pat Califia tried but I don't think there's any way to make sadism politically correct.

When I met my now wife in the early 1980's we had long talks about topics like John Norman and Story of O and over a period of months revealed ourselves to each other. And we realized that whatever our other differences were, if we were ever to realize certain dreams we would have to deal with them because in those pre-Internet days if we did not feel like flying to San Francisco and joining an S&M club it might be long years before we encountered anyone else so compatible. And so we did; and the result is strangely marvelous, because we are two very different people whose original interests intersected in a relatively small area, but being forced together by our mutual fetish has enriched both of us in ways we could never have imagined.

Take it from someone who is politically liberal but who has never felt quite so alive as with a whip in my hand: You do not get to pick your sexual orientation, fetish, imprint, or whatever else you want to call it. And if you don't match the imprint of the person you're schmoozing, it's hopeless. Sorry, but that's the way it seems to work. They are not being judgemental, they're stuck. You can be the smartest, funniest, and most charming person of your sex in the world, but if you have the wrong hair color or body type or skin color or you're not interested in certain acts it's just hopeless.

That's not a comment on you or people of your incompatible type. It's just, unfortunately, the way it works for humans.
posted by localroger at 6:27 PM on May 6, 2011 [14 favorites]

@ eugenen yup, monosexuality fetishists who can only get it off for either one set of distinct sexual characteristics or another
ad infinitum
posted by MidSouthern Mouth at 7:22 PM on May 6, 2011

Jezebella: "I was always attracted what I would call the "Brian Dennehy barrel-chested type"

Wow. "Brian Dennehy barrel-chested type" is exactly how I describe my type of guy, too. Now I'm wondering if that makes Brian Dennehy an archetype, or a fetish?
posted by Room 641-A at 10:02 PM on May 6, 2011

I find this whole type-attraction discussion really interesting because while I'm not a fat-guy chaser, I have a very strong type and it's "big" (not chubby, big) and "very tall." As in, my ex-husband is 6'1" and he brings the average height of guys I've dated down significantly. It's not something I think about much, I'm just mostly attracted to really tall guys. Nobody gives me much shit about it because extra height is frequently a bonus in American society: taller guys do better financially and statuswise at work, frex. Also, I'm a relatively tall woman myself, so it's not particularly unbalanced-looking when I stand next to a guy who's 6'4"+. But it is something of a running gag that I'm generally only attracted to really big guys. (Brian Dennehy: perfect!)

I think after reading the Voice article I'm mostly just grateful that my type/imprint (as localroger says) is something socially acceptable. It would be a bummer to have to dump my crappy friends because they thought the people I was dating was dragging down their social standing somehow. The only upside I can see to that kind of thing is that people who insist you need to dump your SO because they're a millstone socially aren't really your friends, but that's an awful hard way to learn that.
posted by immlass at 10:15 PM on May 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

You know, I'm kinda glad this sort of thing gets more attention these days. Even if it's often an excuse for skeeviness. Because people are really diverse in their tastes, and we need to be reminded of it.

I'm a plus size woman, but I've been pretty much right on the border between plus and "normal" size for most of my life. I'm extremely curvy and my ass and thighs just aren't getting any smaller. But though I'm certainly not free of body issues, I have to say I've always been fairly pleased with the way men react to my body. Maybe the majority of guys aren't particularly interested, but enough guys have always been appreciative and some very much so, that I've been able to always feel sexy. I think the real problem comes when you're isolated from others or the right kind of people. When you're 12 or 14 and all you have to go on is what magazines show or what the few stupid people around you say.

But I need to go to sleep and stop rambling on the internet.
posted by threeturtles at 11:32 PM on May 6, 2011

A friend of mine likes bigger women. He told me this, like 16 years ago. Married to one now.

Nothing out of the ordinary in different people liking different body types in partners.
posted by Ironmouth at 7:43 AM on May 7, 2011

Jezebella, I'll fight you for sonascope. And I live in DC! Plus I also own a cool umbrella :)

/we now return you to your regularly scheduled, interesting, thoughtful thread. I've stayed away from FA dating sites for just the reasons mentioned here. It's fascinating to see there's such a range of non-skeevetastic opinion and preference out there!
posted by speedlime at 7:46 AM on May 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is precisely the reason that I ignore people who wouldn't give size 20 me the time of day but are falling over themselves to flirt with size 6 me.>>

Sadly, that's most men. At a size 12-14, I'm largely ignored. A few sizes down, I suddenly come into men's visible spectrum again. So that's what I have to do.
posted by FlyByDay at 12:25 PM on May 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

A woman is like a chair, man. Don't you SEE
posted by tehloki at 2:30 AM on May 8, 2011

Well, this blows the skinny girl theory "men don't hit on me because they're intimidated by how beautiful I am" out of the water. Actually--they don't all find you beautiful. Suck it!
posted by vitabellosi at 6:22 AM on May 8, 2011

I meant to get back to this thread to elaborate and expand on what I was going for a little sooner, but I was struggling to tap out my first comment with blunt fingers on a stupid iPhone on a jiggly train, and I didn't have time to get to it yesterday because I had to dress up as a nun and ride around Baltimore on a Vespa all day Saturday.

It's such a complex, interesting subject in a country where "obesity epidemic" is the new drug scare, and we raise girls to maintain a constant state of revulsion about their bodies—about fat, about hair, about scents and noises and the other things the machine gets up to—and raise boys to be dutiful enforcers. As we emerge from that, even as it seems like it's getting worse, the counter-revolution is bound to be a little strident and awkwardly earnest. If you look at the literature and media coming from evolving movements, you get a lot of "gay is good," "black is beautiful," "fat is fabulous" sort of fist-pumping, and that's a wonderful thing that will all be a bit dated down the road, but it's not easy, unwinding a hundred years of cultural idiocy. Look at how far we have to go just on race, which should be so patently simple to unravel, and still, everyone's mincing around, pinching the air as they try to figure out how to just talk about this.

The thing for me about any sort of interest that's got the buzz of a fetish about it is that it should be part of an ecosystem of interests, rather than the be-all-end-all. We don't want to admit that we're object-fixated animals, but we are. It's what makes us work, as a species, with the tools and architecture and toaster ovens and such, but we get iffy when it comes to mate selection if we happen to have an interest that strays from the mainstream axis.

I get a sparkle in my eyes over a sturdy frame with a bit of a gut, a smile that brings out a well-cracked set of crow's feet, a little tuft of fur where a tramp stamp might go, and armpit hair that makes a little point under a raised arm, to give a few examples, but there aren't be-all-end-alls. In fact, my fondnesses and fixations rise and fall over time. A late-teenage streak of chasing after blondes baked in the sun until they end up with invisible mustaches and eyebrows fades in favor of a love of the blue cast of eye-talian 5 o'clock shadow. There are six billion people in the world, and six billion body types, so why pin it down? I suspect I'm a bit polymorphous perverse in being generally interested in all sorts of physical distinction, so maybe I'm not the best example.

Still, I couldn't really complain when I ended up in the sights of someone with an overriding fancy for some characteristic that I happened to possess. I have an obnoxiously busy life, for reasons I can't always comprehend beyond the fact that being sort of a jack-of-all-trades makes me feel compelled to use as many of those trades at once, so dating is rough for me (I'm also mercurial, have high demands for daily solitude, and am "difficult," to quote my exes and family, which doesn't help). As a result, I spent a bit of time as the object in an object fetish, and the overall returns were mixed.

There were the atrocities, to be sure. I was flattered as hell to be the target of lust by a well-turned out amateur bodybuilder until he said, "man, what's so sexy about you is how undisciplined and out of control you are."

"What?"

"You know, you're just, like, so natural and gross."

"I'm gross?"

"Well, you're just all blue-collar and floppy, like you were in shape in high school and let yourself go. That's just so refreshing."

"Get out."

"What?"

"Get your finger out of my bellybutton and get out."

There were worse ones, too. British aerospace engineers with a lust for American slovenliness (though I will admit I do generally dress in virtual sackcloth and ashes, but never sweatpants), a slightly built North Carolinan who could sing exactly like Billie Holiday (not that one) with a love of the infantile comfort of sleeping with a beer gut for a pillow, and a shunned Amish dude who'd headed west and become an IT professional with a interest in...well, I'll leave some things unsaid. I'm a smart, well-read guy, so I get some of the fetishes, which are a lust for the forbidden and the transcendent, but the pleasure of being the subject of narrowly focused feature worship doesn't last long. I'm a narcissist, in my own way, but not enough of one for all that.

The worst ones were the good guys that couldn't correctly answer the question "If I lost weight, would it put you off me?" and were thus unceremoniously shown the sign at the ride's entrance that says "You must be THIS diverse in your sexual fixations to ride" and sent off down the embarrassing stairs. I'm just fine with being a stout fella, but my ankles hurt and they'll stop hurting if I go from 280 to 250. It's sad, in a way, when you find you're not fat enough to hold their attention, just like you can be not thin enough to catch other guys' eyes.

It sucks, too, because I dated a guy or two who was pretty much into all the same things I was, who could put up with my long stretches of hermit-like social disconnection and my worst hyperkinetic little boy episodes, where I go out on my craziest adventures, but when I said, "look, I need to lose about fifty pounds because my knees hurt, my scooter won't go over fifty, and I spend eleven percent of every damn day pulling my pants up," they'd just get this panicked look that conveyed but I'm really only attracted to bigger guys.

I had to rationalize that I was really tuning out of the last relationship with that dynamic because of something even more ugly and egregious, like a belief that Metal Machine Music is an actual piece of music instead of an unlistenable piece of jokey, self-indulgent bullshit that people defend as a great piece of music to show how brave and outré they are, but...sigh.

It's easy to get discouraged, more so when you're relaxed enough in your understanding of what makes a person and what makes you all tingly, but it's the times. They're a'changin'. Thanks to the constant buzz of the internet, as well as exposure to the other points of view that were locked out and marginalized for so long, there's access for anyone with an interest they're afraid to articulate. For now, because that's a pretty new access, these things get stuck in the realm of the fetishy and the alien, or even in a rendition of coming out, which makes for a good parallel in my mind.

If you read early gay literature, it's just so overwrought. It starts out (well, more recently, if you don't count the oldest story in the world, which is super queer) with sort of shame-ridden body horror, proceeds to lascivious dirty outsider porn, then to mawkish GAY POWER!!! writing (interestingly including more than a few calls for lesbians to put on as much weight as possible to take space away from men), then to glurgy coming out stories drowning in grim treacle, and to glurgy, pissed-off AIDS drama. Eventually, you get a literature where queerness is incidental, just a normative thing in the writer's world. That, for me, was one of the great things about Sedaris in his early work—it included his queerness without being about the same.

When you read some of the interviews with guys/girls/etc who are attracted to fat folks, you can really see the seeds of that in there, in the normalization of attraction of all kinds. If it's good, consensual, and not grounded in neurosis, what's the problem? I suspect we're getting there when it comes to bodymass-discordant relationships, though the mountain to climb there is to kill off the shame of being a plus size supermodel, because we're all good with being attracted to various types of boobs, long legs, particularly curvaceous asses, nice calves, big guns, and mule-sized dicks, to name a few, which are all as specific as anything we call a fetish, but not so proscribed by our ad hoc sexual nanny state. The main thing is to keep talking, keep representing, and keep the dialogue running, because there's a long way to go.
posted by sonascope at 7:19 AM on May 8, 2011 [3 favorites]

sonascope: "something even more ugly and egregious, like a belief that Metal Machine Music is an actual piece of music"

Hey you sound like a great guy and I hope you find love and acceptance for who you really are and all that but kindly fuck off with the self righteous musical philistinism thanks.
posted by idiopath at 7:43 AM on May 8, 2011

Hey, sorry, that last comment was kind of harsh. If you had merely insulted my body or my family or the clothes I wear or my sexuality I would have had the levelheadedness to let it slide.

For the record what I object to is not the fact that you don't like it (it would be exhausting to even care what anyone else's taste in music is), it is the dismissal of the possibility of legitimately enjoying it. The unveiled insult directed at not the taste, but the very character of any person who doesn't hate that sort of music.
posted by idiopath at 9:02 AM on May 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

but kindly fuck off with the self righteous musical philistinism thanks.

"Self righteous," ha! Sometimes it's worth considering that not everything ever written is meant to be taken 100% seriously.

Speaking of not 100% serious work—call me what you will, but give me sincere, finely crafted noise and drone music made by a musician who's actually dedicated to it and taken the time to think about it instead of the work of a great musician who's engaged in a bout of electronic dilettantism as a drug-fueled lark or a thinly veiled attempt to make a point with his/her record company any day.

Not caring for a piece so aimlessly cacophonous that the artist himself claimed (until decades later, when an opportunity to make a few bucks off the piece finally arose) he'd never actually heard all the way through doesn't make one a philistine. As Reed himself famously said, "Well, anyone who gets to side four is dumber than I am." Artists are entitled to their pranks and indulgences, just as the listener is entitled to snort and move on to something not done in the spirit of a great big "fuck you."
posted by sonascope at 9:06 AM on May 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Not caring for a piece doesn't make you a philistine. Denigrating all persons who care for it does. The author is dead. Lou Reed may be a dumbass, but one can like the album without being some kind of poseur.

To try to bring things back to the topic, it is the difference between saying "you know I actually don't find overweight women attractive" and "only desperate and manipulative assholes date overweight women, even overweight women admit that their own bodies are disgusting, FA guys are just looking for cheap and easy sex from women with low self esteem". The first can be a valid report, and there is nothing there to argue with. The second is a deep condemnation of a huge number of people based on the presumed worst qualities of a minority.

If you had made a cheap shot about the kind of body I am attracted to or my favorite turnon I could have let it slide, but the music I listen to and make is more important than that.
posted by idiopath at 9:22 AM on May 8, 2011

Well, musical taste is more to the content of one's character than the color of their skin, but I was referring to a specific person in that quip, and furthermore indicating a type of fandom I find unattractive. Barthes was correct that the artist is dead, when it comes to critical analysis, but it's my contention that MMM is in print because it's the work of someone famous, so it doesn't exist without a context. For me, the craftsmanship and conceptual design just aren't there, and I made light of the specific sort of "I dare you to listen to this" mentality you'll often find in Baltimore's energetic DIY and improvised music scene as a disposable aside to a larger point. Why would that be less worthy of being let "slide" than a "cheap shot" about body type? I think opinions about art and taste are the most arguable things there are, to be honest, and that argument is far more productive than outrage. Frankly, the best exemplars of pushing the boundaries in music were often the ones most inclined to have a sense of humor about it. That said, I'd rather dig out my copy of Wind Licked Dirt and argue about that than having to sit through a solid hour of MMM, but your mileage may vary.

On a more civil note, do you know if anyone's taking over the collection from the Avant Garde Project archive, or is it just gone for good?
posted by sonascope at 9:55 AM on May 8, 2011

ubu.com now hosts the agp

I do appreciate that you are actually into this type of music, but it wasn't your not liking I took offense at, it was the insult embedded in your expression of dislike. A supermajority of my friends hate the music I am into. None of them get away with dismissing me for liking it and remain my friends.

The outrage was about the slander and had nothing to do with the art, except liking that particular piece of art happened to make me part of the group being slandered.

But I've had my morning run and am not outraged any more. I am happy to argue about art but this thread is not the place to do it. I am not interested in arguing about whether my taste in art makes me ugly, or whether I only like it in order to show that I am brave and outré.
posted by idiopath at 10:11 AM on May 8, 2011

idiopath: "(once upon a time too thin or too hairless but those are nearly impossible with where the erotic narrative is today)."

*sigh* I know. Why must you remind me.
posted by symbioid at 12:42 PM on May 8, 2011