Fat in Love. Age rating 18.

Dear all.

In today's blog post I am FINALLY going to cover a topic that my friend Rachael mentioned to me oh, about a year ago. However, it's going to be discussed in two parts. First just a discussion about 'fat sex'- not the logistics- and then I'm going to talk about the search for love as a plus sized woman. So hold on to your hats kids, who knows where this is going to go! In fact, the more I've written the more convinced I've become that this carries an age rating 18. You have been warned.

The conversation that ultimately planted the seed of fat fetish, feeders, BBW (big beautiful women), and just fat sex came about from a Channel 4 documentary on 'My Big Fat Fetish'. The show follows the trend, particularly on the internet, for fat based pornography, images of bigger women eating or being fed and the impact on their health and personal relationships. If you have a spare 50 minutes, it's a fascinating insight and I would certainly recommend watching it. After a cursory glance at one prominent erotic literature website I can tell you that there are over 800 stories when I simply keyworded 'fat fetish', when I got even more specific this goes into the thousands. The titles also got increasingly disturbing so proceed with caution should you go on a journey of discovery like myself...ahem. A leading fetish site (I've been all over the internet so you don't have to- unless you want to, in which case 'right on'), again after a cursory keyword search, brings up a total of 1008 fat related fetishes. So basically, what I've learnt is that the umbrella term 'fat fetish' is big BIG business. I've also learnt that women (in particular) will go to extreme lengths to please their customers, including sitting on individuals for a fee and having feeding tubes shoved down their throats in a desperate effort to fit in to the next size bracket. Whilst many of the individuals portrayed on Channel 4 are more than happy with their bodies, the effects can be devastating. One of the guys who got sat on in the documentary complains of breathing issues and the woman he paid to do so is house bound and needs to be cared for entirely by her son. I'm a big believer in different strokes for different folks so I would never EVER dream about telling any of these 'artistes' that they shouldn't be doing what they're doing. These are just my observations from researching this topic.

Charming. Thanks for that Urban Dictionary.

The one thing that I kept thinking was, why is fat pornography different to 'normal person' pornography? The equal rights activist in me is screaming that fat porn stars should be capable of taking part in more of the 'normal' stuff (what IS normal anyway?) rather than having to go to more and more humiliating, degrading activities because that is currently the primary medium in which they can be seen. Again, if people want to be fed whilst sitting on customers then I will defend your rights to the end of the earth, I would just like it to be possible for women (and men, though much less frequently) to not only be pigeon holed into this very particular kind of market that often actively discourages women from changing their lifestyles for the better if they want to- like I said, BIG MONEY!

But going back to the whole 'normal' thing, a second Channel 4 series explains that fat sex, much like sex between disabled people, the elderly and even gay sex is abnormal. Now, I thought that we would be progressive enough to accept, even encourage the above between consenting adults but when watching the show a couple of years ago I couldn't help but take the message that if you're in one of those groups that your sex life deserved a separate show from the people having the 'normal' sex.

So now, let me tell you about the search for love as an overweight person. This is all my own opinion and conjecture and I speak for no one else. I have been told by people I know, people who love me, that the only thing wrong with me is my weight, that if I lost some weight I'd have the boys banging the door down (not a euphemism, mind out of gutter please) and that when I get to my goal weight I will be a quote 'stone cold fox'- I think that's good?!? A question I'm asked frequently is 'when are you going to start dating again?' and the truthful answer, the answer that probably demonstrates key self esteem issues, is that I don't think I'd want anyone who wants me where I am now. I have, in the past, given up on my own dreams (including weight loss) as a result of ex boyfriends which I refuse to let happen again, my body is (hopefully) changing consistently so what someone's attracted to now will hopefully not be that way within a number of weeks and, in part, because of the way that fat love/sex is portrayed in the media I question people's motives for demonstrating interest in me. In addition, the kinds of guys I'm interested in can only be said to be currently 'out of my league'. Exhibit A:

He's just so beautiful.

Personally, I have never been attracted to a plus sized guy-that may be wrong of me but it's in the biology and there's naught any of us can do about who we're attracted to, or not as the case may be. That being said, even when I do get a demonstration of some interest I refuse to believe that this could ever be genuine and brush it off as someone messing with my head. And here's the rub. Will that ever go away? Will I EVER, even at my goal weight, marathon runner fit, think that someone could be genuinely interested or will I continue to turn down drinks, roll my eyes or just leave the room to avoid the situation even if it is the scorchingly beautiful brooding man currently staring at me from my computer screen. If it does, I'm definitely going to need more cats...