Maybe it *is* a choice, after all.

It seems that any mention of a cause for fatness other than sitting on your ass eating McDonald’s all day is seen as an “excuse.” “Stop playing the victim; you choose to be fat.”

You know what? Maybe I do choose to be fat.

I choose to do things like study, read, sew, and spend time with my friends instead of exercising for 3-4 hours a day.

I choose to eat when I’m hungry instead of ignoring my body’s needs.

I choose to treat my asthma with a medication that causes weight gain instead of having trouble getting around because of my breathing problems.

I choose to eat food that tastes good instead of replacing it with half-assed substitutes.

I choose to have a job where I can sit comfortably instead of searching for one where I’d have to hurt my knees and back by standing.

I choose to take the bus instead of walking somewhere if it’s cold, or I’m tired, or I just don’t feel like it.

I choose to not mutilate my digestive system and possibly risk my life for what is essentially cosmetic surgery.

I choose to reject the notion that because I have “bad genes,” I must simply “work harder” to fit into someone else’s standard of beauty.

I choose to feel happy with my body the way it is.

So sure, I choose to be fat. And you know what? I’m okay with that.

Attraction, Entitlement, and Personal Beauty Standards

Even before I discovered that I was a fat admirer, my personal standard of what made a guy attractive never quite matched up to that of mainstream Western society. (Mostly it involved long hair, glasses, and hairy chests.) So I never expected, and never expect, people in visual media to conform to what I consider attractive–if the story or situation calls for them to be hot, it means what mainstream Western society considers hot (thin, muscular, tall, hairless), not what I would like to see.

I don’t really register anyone as particularly unattractive, just simply not my type. If I see a hot guy (what I consider hot) it makes me happy, but I don’t particularly care if I don’t, and I certainly don’t feel upset or cheated out of anything.

But people who hold to the mainstream Western standard of hotness seem to feel that it’s some kind of personal offense when they have to look at people who don’t measure up. I heard someone ranting a while back about the new Twilight movie and how Edward is supposed to be hot, what were they thinking casting someone so fug… And you know what, even within the confines of the mainstream standard, there is room for personal variation. Obviously the people who cast Robert Pattinson think he’s hot, and from what I’ve heard so do lots of teenage girls–so you just need to suck it up and realize that not everyone finds the same people attractive as you do.

Why do people feel that they’re entitled to have everyone they look at fit their standard of attractiveness? Why, rather than feeling happy when someone fits their standard of hotness in a film or what have you, do they feel that it’s normal when everyone fits their standard of hotness and feel offended or cheated when someone dares to be what they consider unattractive? Why is it that, when I’m watching an opera film in class, the professor feel the need to apologize when the performers don’t look like they’ve been photoshopped into a blemish-free size zero?

And anyone who has dared to commit the crime of wearing less than a burkah while fat knows that this attitude is not just about film and media. Strangers feel like they have some kind of right to only look at strangers they find attractive, and some kind of right to namecall and harass if you don’t measure up.

A friend once said, while describing a hot guy to me, that “this is what all men are supposed to look like.” My first thought was “I think I saw a Twilight Zone episode like that once.” My second was, What is wrong with people looking differently from each other?

What is wrong with different people having different standards of beauty? Why is it that people can’t accept the fact that having a personal taste outside the “norm” is not some kind of fetish or incorrect perception? If we have natural variation in body type, isn’t it a good thing that we’d have natural variation in taste? Why can’t we accept that, instead of trying to force everyone’s looks and tastes to fit one unattainable standard?

Stop denying that you look bad!

I think I’ve written up a post on a certain topic at least two or three times, but I keep rereading it and not liking how it sounds. Maybe one day I’ll get it right.

In the meantime, I’d like to complain about a particular commercial advertising a treatment for hair loss that comes on about once every commercial break when I’m watching baseball. Usually I tune it out or change the channel in the first five seconds because it’s so annoying, but one time that it was on I happened to catch a single line:

Stop denying that your hair looks bad!

And I thought, jeez, this is like the whole “fat people should stop being self-confident and start feeling bad about themselves (for their health!)” thing, isn’t it?

The problem is that “be happy with the body you have” doesn’t sell anything. Convincing people that something’s wrong with their bodies so they’ll buy your product to “fix” it does.

Fat Attraction, Part 2

I never realized how hot fat men were until I met my fiancé.

I never found fat particularly unattractive–I’d just never thought about it. I don’t have many physical preferences, although my love for long hair is a not-so-well-kept secret, and I’d never been in love with a fat man before, so it never really occurred to me. It didn’t even occur to me when I first saw his pictures, or when I first saw him in person. It wasn’t an unattractive trait, just a neutral one, something I thought didn’t matter one way or another.

And then I lay next to him, his arms around me, my back pressed against his stomach, and I felt this amazing synthesis of strength and softness, of the protectiveness of his large, muscular frame, and the cuddliness and comfort of his fat stomach. “Cuddly” is so the wrong word there because it doesn’t sound sexy–but it was. It wasn’t the first time I realized that he was hot, but it was the first time I realized that all of him was.

I’m sure some of the reactions right now are along the lines of “ew fat men are gross stomachs aren’t sexy what’s wrong with you =(“, and you know what, different people have different tastes in physical bodies, and that’s all right. But I’m an immensely practical person–to a fault, some would say–and I would say that finding fat sexually attractive–or learning to, if you don’t already–has distinct advantages.

I’ve posted about this before, but it’s worth mentioning NAAFA’s official policy on fat admirers again:

Further, NAAFA believes that in a society where at least 65% of the population is considered fat, a preference for a fat partner is normal and should be encouraged rather than discouraged.

We live in a society where Chloe Marshall, at the average size for British women, is considered unacceptably fat. Images of thin people in the media are unattainable for most people, especially when their pictures are constantly Photoshopped. Statistically speaking, you are probably not going to end up with a thin mate. Thinking that you deserve a thin significant other, or expecting someone to change his or her body for you, is quite the entitlement mentality.

In addition, we gain weight as we grow older, from things like pregnancy, stress, and changing metabolism. Even if your significant other is thin now, he or she will probably get fat at some point in your lives. That this is termed “letting oneself go” demonstrates not only a cultural bias towards thinness but a fear of getting old. I like the way BStu put it in this post:

Some people think it is limiting to be an FA. Really? There is a range of probably 300lbs of what I’m really turned on by and plenty past that which I find quite aesthetically appealing in its own right. “Thin Admirers” like what? A range of 30lbs, tops?

I wouldn’t say that I had a range of 300lbs for what I found attractive–although if I fell in love with a 500lb man instead of a 240lb man, who knows?–and it would be jumping the gun a bit to suggest that my fiancé and I will always find every part of each other attractive and never find any of the effects of aging objectionable. But I can say with confidence that as we grow older, we’re not going to start finding each other unattractive because we hit the edge of some magically unrealistic 30lb range.

Anyway, this is all a long-winded way of saying that my fiancé’s flying in tomorrow and staying until next Saturday, so I’ll probably be MIA from the internet for a while. Have I mentioned that he’s sexy?

I’m curious

• Where did this stereotype about fat people being dirty, smelly, and lacking in basic hygiene come from? Do people just forget the thin people with body odor or who don’t take showers because “everyone knows” that thin people aren’t gross?
• When was it that someone decided that women needed to shave in order to be clean, beautiful, and acceptable?
• Why is it that few men shave their armpits, and yet men are never told that they’re neglecting basic hygiene for not doing so? And how can people deny that such a double standard is sexist?
• And I think the biggest question is, why is the internet so offended about the state of my armpits? And would they be so offended if this were not a fat acceptance blog?

Newsflash: it is not my job to be attractive to you. Anyone who thinks I should base my choices about my appearance on what they think is severely deluded.

Shaving and Body Image

I don’t shave.

When I first started not shaving it was more out of laziness than any kind of idealism. Shaving is annoying and I have better things to do with my time, the thought went, so why bother? It’s kind of crazy, in retrospect, that the choice to not modify one’s body to fit someone else’s standard of attractiveness can ever be considered “lazy.”

I went back and forth for a good few years; I’d go without shaving for months, mostly in the winter (because it didn’t matter if I wasn’t shaving when no one could see it), finally decide I was too hairy, shave, and then wonder what on earth the appeal of shaving had ever been. Gradually I realized the benefits of “going natural.” The hair on my legs was soft, with no stubble to rub my inner thighs enough to make them bleed. My underarms were less sweaty and smelled better. (That’s the natural function of underarm hair, after all. Hair is not icky or dirty–it helps keep you clean!) So when my last razor went dull I decided, this is it. I’m not giving my money to these people anymore. I feel happy, and I feel unashamed. The only annoying thing is that my legs get warmer in the summer, but I figure that if guys can deal with it, so can I.

When I got rid of razors for good, there wasn’t really a change in my actions; even when I shaved occasionally, I was still hairy most of the time, and when people saw me in public there was a good chance that I’d be hairy and not try to hide it. But there was a shift in the way I thought about it. As long as I shaved occasionally, I was still accepting society’s beauty standards as the norm; even if I didn’t follow them, I accepted that I should follow them. But this simple decision forced me to change my thinking. I was no longer neglecting basic grooming out of laziness–I was demanding that my body be accepted and admired for what i was instead of accepting society’s demand that I change myself.

I went through a similar paradigm shift as I became more immersed in fat acceptance. I started with the sort of pseudo-fat acceptance that still fits within the normal beauty standards, under which I was happy with my body “as it was” but also accepted the fact that I was too heavy and should probably lose 15 or 20 lbs. (this would still leave me in the “overweight” range, so it was still fat acceptant, right?), but that I wasn’t going to diet because I didn’t feel like counting calories. When I became a real believer in fat acceptance, my body didn’t change and my actions didn’t change, but my reasons for not dieting shifted from “I’m too lazy to count calories” to “there’s nothing wrong with my body and I’m going to demand respect for it the way it is.”

I don’t shave. I don’t pluck my eyebrows. I don’t wear makeup. I don’t diet. I wear skirts and tank tops. I wear clothing that shows off my arms, my hips, my butt, my thighs, even my stomach. And if you have a problem with it, that’s a problem with your perspective, not with my body.

My Fat Admirer

I introduced my fiance to the Illustrated BMI Project today. His response: “Wow, those women are hot.”

Yup, he’s a keeper.

On Admiring Fat Bodies

A friend recently posted a question about feederism, and if fat acceptance was okay with such a thing. After reassuring her that no, feederism is absolutely not okay, I looked up NAAFA’s official statements on feederism and fat admirers, and these two things jumped out at me:

[NAAFA advocates:] That people of all sizes become empowered to demand respect for their bodies in the context of sexual relationships, without attempting to lose or gain weight in order to win a partner’s approval or attract or retain that partner’s desire.

Further, NAAFA believes that in a society where at least 65% of the population is considered fat, a preference for a fat partner is normal and should be encouraged rather than discouraged.

I’m sure most people, including myself, would see feederism as a fetishizing, objectifying practice–and yet people have no problem with expecting their significant others to lose weight for their own sexual satisfaction. The fetishization of fat is disgusting and wrong, but the fetishization of thin, that’s just normal.

I was reading some posts on a messageboard yesterday about spouses and weight gain. One man posted that his wife had gained a lot of weight and was also not interested in her personal appearance, sex, or exercise–and how was he supposed to deal with the fact that he didn’t find her physically attractive anymore? Even if she didn’t, as seemed likely from the comments, have depression, why would someone be interested in exercise if her husband is clearly only pushing her into it to try to get her to lose weight? Why would someone be interested in sex if her husband doesn’t find her attractive? This is why empowerment is so important–empowering people to demand respect for their bodies as they are, and empowering people to feel confident enough in their bodies that they demand a partner who finds their bodies attractive instead of settling for one who will try to force them to change.

Another thread was about husbands who loved their wives’ fat bodies, but instead of bringing a breath of fresh air as I’d hoped, I found this comment (paraphrased): “My wife is 60 lbs. overweight and I love her body the way it is. I wouldn’t want her to lose much weight, maybe just 30 lbs. or so.” What? As we’ve seen before, 35 lbs. is the difference between “normal” and “obese.” 30 lbs. is not a little bit of weight. What kind of world do we live in, that someone can claim to love someone’s fat body just the way it is, and still want her to lose weight?

Ever since I got engaged, I started getting a lot of weight loss ads on Facebook. Here is the worst offender, I think:

“You’re beautiful already–but you should still lose weight!” It’s like the mainstream anti-diet doublespeak: “Diets don’t work, and you don’t have to be thin to be healthy, but you should still diet make ~*~lifestyle changes~*~!” It seems so much more dangerous to me than “you’d be beautiful if only you lost weight,” because it’s a lot more insidious. It’s fat hatred in fat acceptance clothing. And it does make me wonder if the people who talk like that are maybe just afraid to admit that they find fat attractive without adding the obligatory “but weight loss is good” disclaimer to the end of it.

Bellies Are Beautiful

I’ve been self-conscious of my belly ever since I started to gain weight, mostly because I’m paranoid about looking pregnant. I hate that society has this idea that the only legitimate reason for a woman to have a fat belly is pregnancy, and I hate that that idea still affects me so deeply even when I’m able to love the rest of my body.

But I just took a picture of my belly to submit to belliesarebeautiful.com, and just looking at the picture I feel better about my belly already. It’s a funny thing.

“You’re not fat!”

I got into an argument with someone once who told me that not only is Joy Nash not fat, but no one thinks she is. The argument went like this:

• Joy Nash “looks healthy.” [Whatever significance "looking healthy" has.]
• Obesity is always unhealthy.
• Therefore, Joy Nash is not obese.

There was also an unspoken assumption, I think, that goes on in most arguments of this type:

• Fat people are always ugly.
• Joy Nash is smoking hot.
• Therefore, Joy Nash is not fat.

Why don’t people ever use this evidence to change their opinions?

1. Fat people are always ugly.
2. These fat people are attractive.
3. Therefore, Point 1 is wrong, and fat people can be attractive OH SHIT MY BRAIN JUST EXPLODED.

Do I hope too much of people?