We would lie together in his tiny bed and daydream of my postgraduation move to Boston. I started researching jobs, and he started looking for apartments. This beautiful life belonged to someone else, and he deserved someone better.
Someone easier, prettier, cooler, and, of course, someone thinner. Not chubby or fluffy or husky or curvy — fat. Three years ago, I weighed just over pounds and wore a size 30 or 32, depending on the cut of the clothing. For me, the size of my body is a simple fact. I do not struggle with self-esteem or negative body image. I do not lie awake at night, longing for a thinner body or some life that lies pounds out of reach. But I had never seen a fat woman in love — not in life, not in the media.
I had never seen fat women who dated. I had never seen fat women who asserted themselves, whose partners respected them. Because this was uncharted territory, I assumed it was also unexplored. My risk-taking resolution ebbed from my broad, soft body.
How could he love me if it meant loving this? Everywhere I looked, bodies were openly critiqued and ranked, and mine steadily landed near the bottom of the scale — 2, 3, 4. His thinness alone earned him a much higher standing. I had learned that I was undesirable to almost everyone. For years, my body took center stage in my dating life.
Dates constantly commented on my size, a knee-jerk reaction to their discomfort with their own desire. Over time, I came to experience any attraction as untrustworthy, as if danger lurked nearby. In retrospect, I worried for my bodily safety, as if only violence could develop an appetite for a body as soft as mine. And I worried that I would become a sexual curio, more novel than loved. Desire for a body like mine meant my partners were irrational, stupid, or resigned to settling for less than they wanted.
In the years since my first breakup, I had struggled to accept interest where I found it. I shrank from their touch, recoiling from their hands like hot iron, believing their interest to be impossible or pathological. Any intimacy required vulnerability, and vulnerability inevitably led back to humiliation. This is among the greatest triumphs of anti-fatness: It stops us before we start. As these little fissures opened into wounds, I dressed them by retelling the story of our relationship.
It had always been impossible, too beautiful and tender to be true. Maybe he had taken pity on me, doing a charitable deed by showing affection to a pitiable fat girl.
And a recent study, published in The Journal of Sex Research , finds that not only do FAs prefer overweight women, but that they also find a wider range of body sizes attractive than other men do.
The study asked two groups of men — those who were scouted at FA events, and those who did not identify with the subculture — to rate black-and-white photographs of 10 female body types. Both groups were asked which figure they desired the most, as well as the largest and thinnest figures that they found attractive.
I think that if we, as men, spent half as much time being as nice in real life as we try to make ourselves out to be online, we might actually help the world out a little bit. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies.
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Recommended Stacey Solomon 'celebrating her imperfections' didn't empower me. Before I started identifying myself up-front as fat in my dating profiles, I had spent hours, days, months pondering whether I wanted to be a party to upholding the worldview that the most important thing about me to a potential suitor is the size of my body.
Conclusion: I resolutely did not. But by that point I had had enough terrible first dates and I mean terrible as in they excuse themselves to go to the bathroom and never reappear type of terrible that I decided to take the harm reduction approach.
I convinced myself that this was honesty. This was empowerment. And in a way, it was. We meet up and our chemistry is ri- dic -u-lous. He starts with caressing and then moves straight into what I would call worshipping it. And he does all that too.
He probably left my place at around 2 a. We hang out a second time, then a third time, all in the first week. And by "hang out," I mean we spend time being sexy at my house. You know the Three Ds? Even slender women know these horrible rules.
So, even though Derek had asked to see me multiple times in the first week and was clearly attracted to me, I did not push to see him in daylight outside my apartment because I was worried I would come off as too needy. After that hot-and-heavy week, Derek asked if he could come over the following Monday. We had yet another a steamy session, and were lying in bed, talking about philosophy or Tarantino or something, and holding hands. After a pause, I gathered up my courage and asked him if we could go out next time we saw each other, maybe get coffee.
There was silence. As each moment of hesitation passed, I felt more and more like a kid who just broke a vase and was awaiting punishment, vulnerable as hell. He said something about being busy.
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