keryx | sex! right here!

So,

fancymcsnazsnaz posted about the upcoming 'let's talk about sex' big fat carnival (of blogs).

I have a lot to say. It's something I've been thinking about.

I was a curvy, belly-having teenager, but despite being 100% sure I was Fat (and yeah, I mean Fat here like it's a bad word - we're gonna take that as an assumption for the rest of the story, okay?), I wasn't actually fat. And pretty geeky, or maybe not geeky so much as just flat-out weird. Boys didn't like me. So when people did like me, I felt sortof obligated. I think the idea of being Fat caused me to think in this really stereotypical way, that anyone who wanted me was doing me this huge favor. And I don't know how much every teenaged girl thinks that; it seems pretty common (as does thinking you're Fat whether you're fat or not).

Relatively speaking (i.e. relative to my parents' youthful experience), I've got myself some class privilege. But I was still labeled a slut and a dyke (yay, slutty dykes!), mostly - as far as I can tell - for being weird, because I think those are words kids usually use to ostracize people along class lines. Anyway, I was plucky, so I thought, fuck them, I was both slutty (in the sense of actually taking some charge of my sexuality and not assuming everyone was pitying me) and kinda dykey (or well, at least out-ly bi) by the time I was in college. And I was also waaaaay thinner. I got hit on a lot, and cleverly rejected people almost as often. So it was this weird juxtaposition - I was thinner because I was doing stupid, stupid shit wrt eating, but I was also getting decent play in a way that felt empowering. And then I eventually fell in love, which also meant I had a scheduling mechanism for eating, and I got fatter while simultaneously feeling kindof out-of-the-water about this whole sex+love thing, which was a mindblowingly new concept.

I spent a pretty long time thinking fat equalled Fat, and while I was never like a sex-with-lights-out (well, except for special occasions) kinda girl, I do think the comingling of getting fat and being in a relationship made me sorta perpetually awkward. I think, actually, that dieting did that more than anything else - it creates this duality between mind and body, with the mind conquering the enemy Fat body. How can you really be at home with the body as a source of pleasure when it's a locus of failure? [I can couple that with my theatre work at the time, come to think of it, because I was never, ever happy with that, either.]

In the last 5 years or so, I went back to physical work in a way that reminds me of my adolescent "Okay, kids, you think I'm a slutty lesbian! I'll show you slutty lesbian!" attitude. I take up X amount of space on stage. I have hips that wiggle. I'll show you Fat.

It's a little bit angry, but I think that's justifiable. There are a lot of people - people I know, too - who "just aren't attracted to" anyone my size [Attraction, of course, is purely biological. No cultural bias at all. Snerk.]. I'd prefer that their fat phobia be their problem, but when it defines how they think of me (i.e. not ever possibly sexy) they make it sorta my problem, too. The fat phobic people will, literally, have to fuck themselves.

Anyhow, The Ex took this all quite in stride - he was formerly a fat dude, and shrank a whole lot, but as far as I know never stopped being attracted to me. I was able to expand my idea of what was attractive from soft to harder and scrawnier, too, but despite the fact that it was I who seemed to have more trouble adjusting to his shrinking, when we split up, I remember thinking "It's because I'm just too fat!" - which is utterly, utterly ridiculous. But it's such a cultural story, isn't it? This stereotype that it had to be about attraction, that attraction is all about size.

I've shrunk (as you all know, gentle readers, since I just won't shut up about that), but I'm still fat. And yet pretty much anyone I've expressed a sexual interest in since I've been single has reciprocated. So obviously attraction is not all about size, or at least, isn't about size in a way that labels fat universally bad.

I'll draw some conclusions from this in a bit, but I had to write a bunch of that out in order to organize it in my own head.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

arovd.livejournal.com

1) because I think those are words kids usually use to ostracize people along class lines.
Oddly enough, everyone thought I was a stoner, even though i conspicuosly did not hang out with the stoner crowd. ('cause stoner really is a bit of a social thing, esp. in high schhol/college. I think it was just their way of fitting my rather ho-humly-eccentric behavior into some sort of box they could understand.

2) How can you really be at home with the body as a source of pleasure when it's a locus of failure?
Bingo! Give that lady a prize.

From:

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags