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| Dan Weiss and his girlfriend, photographed for the Voice in April 2011 |
This week’s blog again starts with a personal anecdote about a troubling conversation I had with someone I know. Friends Meagan and Scott and I were walking down the street one night when Meagan, a fellow feminist, got me onto the topic of body image and how important it is in our culture. We were talking about fat women and the men who love them when Scott interjected, saying, “Guys are only into fat chicks because they’re insecure.” “Do tell?” I asked, surprised. “Yeah, they think they can’t get anyone else so they go for someone who’s desperate and probably willing to go for them.” “Oh yeah? What about men that simply find their size attractive?” Scott argued that while these freaks existed, most men that chose fat women as partners were simply aiming low. When I tried to get him to entertain the possibility that a man (or woman) could truly find the fat body beautiful, he told me that while this attraction did occur the majority of “chubby chasers” simply didn’t feel worthy of a skinny (and therefore), beautiful woman.
If only Dan Weiss were with me, he could serve to defend my point. Dan Weiss is one of the subjects of the Village Voice article “Guys Who Like Fat Chicks” (he and his girlfriend are pictured in the newspaper’s cover pictured above). I highly recommend that you read this if you get the chance, it’s a good read and pretty enlightening, focusing on the personal experiences of both men and women involved in these relationships. The piece is a beautiful example of fat bodies being admired and appreciated, and not just in a manner of self-love. It serves to show that there is nothing particularly off or strange about men who love a good, fleshy woman, and that being an FA is as much of a fetish as, say, being attracted to blonde women.
However, because of the present stigma against fat and the people with an abundance of it, those who admire and are aroused by them are stigmatized as well. Fat shame extends well past the bodies of the shamed and into the lives of their lovers and friends. This excerpt from the article sums up this concept pretty well:
[Kevin N.] was five-foot-10 and 131 pounds at his Coventry high school. Meanwhile, his “pretty” girlfriend was an all-state softball player—size 16, five feet nine inches tall, maybe 200 pounds—but could bench more than her scrawny boyfriend. A rumor spread that he was gay, which he didn’t bother to refute. Liking a fat girl was so much more of a preposterous scenario that he worried the truth would “make it snowball even more.”
Although this quote is pretty heartbreaking, the rest of the piece focuses on the glorious and happy lives of a few fat women and their admirers. It does this without ridicule, villanizing, or presenting this relationship as any sort of sideshow freakery. Something that moved me was the author’s explanation of what it meant to be “out” as a fat admirer in our culture, as opposed to “in the closet.” To be in a closet implies shame, secrecy, something forbidden. This shows that we’ve reached a point in our cultural narrative where fat is urged to be abandoned at all costs. To many, allying yourself with not just the adipositive movement but with fat people as lovers implies a twisted side to your sexuality, and so these desires are repressed on a larger scale. The lovers and partners of fat people are often not given a space in which they can justify their attraction, and so this leaves room for the public to develop myths and stereotypes about them. It’s another example of society’s (successful) attempts at normalizing us, and most, I’m assuming, don’t even realize this, accepting this as the norm. This is why I’m such a fan of this article (and of the Village Voice in general), because it works to give a voice to the marginalized.
It's interesting seeing how this is put. I too have heard of the words "chubby chaser", but I've never heard it used as your friend did. It was always a joking manner, like "oh, you're into that... hahahaha" not in a demeaning atmosphere. Yet I too can see where this ideology of 'freaks' comes from. That some people believe those who chase fat people are desperate or gay. Something we know to, obviously, not be true.
ReplyDeleteI think the worst part of this article, and by worst I mean shocking, is that in the quote they had to put quotations around the word pretty. Does this mean that because a woman in fat she can't too be beautiful, or simply pretty? It's shameful that our culture has come to this.
I experienced a similar discussion over break: my mentioning of Farrell's Fat Shame morphed into my aunt expressing her disdain for the "fetish" of men that love fat women. She said that men who enjoy fat lovers are called "feeders" and that they derive pleasure from making the women even larger by feeding them. So once again, people are thrown into categories (feeder), and this time it's the men that love fat women. The assumption is that these men have some sick obsession with making the women fatter. And just the fact that my aunt and society at large place the loving of a fatter person into the realm of fetishism creates a dichotomy of rationality versus irrationality. Basically, the whole idea is that the only way these women will gain love is through some bizarre fetish, and that despite the grotesqueness of their body, it is that and not their personality that is getting the love.
ReplyDeleteI love the article and this blogpost. I think it really develops the idea that there are men who accept fat women and debunks the stereotype that all men are into or should be into thin women. The fact that people would infer homosexuality upon men who date or are interested in fat women really speaks to our society and its non-progression towards fat acceptance. Reading the article that this blogpost is attatched to opened my eyes to a lot of different point of views around the subject of men wanting fat women. There should be no shame around this, if a man likes a women, why does it matter what her body size is? I feel like this all ties back into the "war on fat" that targets the people who are fat and therefore targets the people who like fat. I think your blogpost really does debunk some mysteries of being fat and finding love, while providing experience from those who love fat as it is and there is nothing wrong with that.
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