FA Myths thread # 2

[James]

"FAs want their partners to be fat as a way of controlling them and preventing others from being interested in them"

(Please read the following before posting a response)

This is the second topic for discussion in relation to the FA board project "FA Myths and Misconceptions". The above myth is adapted from a suggestion by Silver Fox in the Myths and Misconceptions submissions thread. It will be discussed for 2 weeks in this thread before being edited and ultimately posted to the FA Myths and Misconceptions sticky.

The aim of the 'FA Myths and Misconceptions' project is create a useful and helpful resource for all FAs, but it is presumed to be of likely specific benefit to the new and/or inexperienced among us for whom misconception and misunderstanding may be most common.

Please keep discussion on topic and productive. Any off topic discussion, flaming, personal attacks or thread crashing will be deleted.

[Jay West Coast]

Hahaha....

As any guy who has lost the big beautiful girl he wanted to date to another guy who also wanted to date her can attest, you're not the only guy on the planet who thinks she's hot. If your partner is fat, they really do have just as much social prerogative as a thin person.

Moreover, as shallow as our world is, people fall in love for more than just fatness/thinness. Beauty is a diverse, complex thing. I might be in the minority as far as liking fatness, but a lot of guys out there also dig girls who are smart, funny, kind, thoughtful, ambitious, successful, even-tempered, spiritually healthy, generous, loving, sociable, thoughtful, considerate, passionate, strong, insightful, imaginative, self-sufficient, and fun-loving. To assume that because a person is fat she's unmarketable is, of course, totally wrong.

So, yeah, if someone were to look for away to "control" and "keep people from being interested in them" they should devise some other alternative-- because in my experience simply being fat wouldn't accomplish that.

[James]

It seems pretty dumb I agree... and it really isn't the case with myself or with any other FAs I've know. Thats not to say that there aren't FAs like this but I haven't met one yet.

I think its an interesting myth because it is one that I've heard stated by people outside of the FA/BBW community. Silver Fox's post in the suggestion thread reminded me of a TV segment that I saw years ago in the UK where there were three women discussing this myth as if it was clearly the only possible explanation for the dynamic of a thin man dating a fat woman. I think that if one's starting point is to exclude the possibility that fat can be attractive then this kind of myth (sadly) makes more sense to that particular worldview than the idea that fat can be sexy...

[bdog]

I actually go the opposite route. I try to make everyone else fat so my partner's not interested in them. It's a lot more work but when I finally convinced the food industry that everything tastes better with corn syrup things have been getting easier.

[rollhandler]

I have not only seen this being discussed by non FAs but by the BBWs themselves.
It seems that some have such a distorted view of themselves and the men that adore them that it becomes an issue of control combined with jealousy and its prevention as to why any guy would be interested in them. It flows along with a myriad of trust issues that BBWs and BHMs are susceptible to and spoon fed to them by the cynical society at large.

On the reverse though is the myth that if a BBW loses weight her partner will always leave, so it almost seems a double edged sword of propaganda where the only safe way to keep the partner happy is to stay fat.
Rollhandler

[Silver Fox]

As I stated in my original post, this is the one myth about FAs that most infuriates me, mainly because it is so contrary to the way I am. I am the furthest from a "control freak" that one could be. Although there are more and more people in this society that are becoming aware that there is such a thing as a sincere FA (whether they know what FA means or not), there are, of course many who are not and so are baffled by the phenomenon. Also, to be fair to the people whose responses I quoted, my wife somewhat misrepresented the facts in our situation, making it look like I fell in love with her when she was thin. Perhaps there may be some non-FA control freak men that may think that way, but to me, the idea is totally repugnant. I was married previously to a beautiful budding BBW and early in our relationship I was encouraging her to fatten up, but I very quickly decided that I shouldn't do that. That what she did with her body was her business. She gained weight on her own not necessarily wanting to, but not trying too hard not to. As our relationship was breaking up, she blamed her weight gain on me because as she knew I liked it, she never tried very hard to prevent it or lose any weight. (As I had learned by that time she was pretty psycho)

Bottom line is, I doubt any true FA would want their partner to get fat as a means of keeping other men from being interested in her, but I suppose that there could be some wacko non-FA guys who would.

[Tad]

Many years ago I flipped through the book "Fat is a feminist issue." I of course went looking for what it said about guys who were attracted to fat women--this was before the advent of the web so I was still desperate for any other views on my feelings.

As I recall it, it basically said that some guys liked their wives to be fat, so that other men wouldn't be interested in them, and the guy could have more control over them. That was the only case it provided for men preferring a fat woman. Since I'd never thought of it that way I ended up not reading the rest of the book--a pretty classic case of 'the halo/horns effect' I guess, where seeing one area where I knew it didn't match my experiences I discarded the whole thing.

So yah, that view is definitely out there.

....and it probably should be out there, because I suspect that for some guys, that is part of the motivation. I'm sure it is not all FA, I think that it is not most FA, and I suspect that some or even most of the guys who feel that way would not meet my definition of an FA, but I do expect that some guys feel that way.

I expect that much the same would apply for women.

People can just be shoddy that way, and some will use all sorts of methods to have power over another.

Bizarrely, I've chatted with at least a few people (both genders) who have fantasies of being controlled that way. I could never understand the appeal of that, but then again I think those were fantasies, not preferences of an actual life style.

[Weirdo890]

Originally Posted by James

"FAs want their partners to be fat as a way of controlling them and preventing others from being interested in them"

Okay, that has to be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. While there are FAs like that out there, most of them are not some Svengali-like manipulative mastermind. Just another way for people to explain a phenomenon outside of their comprehension.

[kioewen]

Originally Posted by Tad

Many years ago I flipped through the book "Fat is a feminist issue." I of course went looking for what it said about guys who were attracted to fat women--this was before the advent of the web so I was still desperate for any other views on my feelings.

As I recall it, it basically said that some guys liked their wives to be fat, so that other men wouldn't be interested in them, and the guy could have more control over them.

Well, seriously, what did you expect from a book with "feminist" in the title? Whatever the issue, the feminists will find a way to spin it to make a condemnation of men. As usual, they hijack SA to advance their cause.

The main reason why some full-figured women believe this, though, as others have suggested, is because it's a projection of their own self-loathing, and a way to reconcile one idea, which they believe to be true (plus-size = unattractive) with a second idea confronting them, which flatly contradicts that (some find find the full figure attractive on a purely aesthetic level). This myth gives them a convenient "conspiracy theory" to reconcile the two ideas.

In other words, this FA myth arises because of a BBW myth (that men cannot actually find a larger female body beautiful in its own right).

[Tad]

Originally Posted by kioewen

Well, seriously, what did you expect from a book with "feminist" in the title? Whatever the issue, the feminists will find a way to spin it to make a condemnation of men. As usual, they hijack SA to advance their cause.

Whatever points you had in the rest of your post, you lost me on this quoted paragraph.

Could we please avoid bashing in this thread? There is plenty of that going around Dimensions at the moment, I'd really like to try to keep these threads for constructive comments.

[James]

Originally Posted by Tad

Whatever points you had in the rest of your post, you lost me on this quoted paragraph.

Could we please avoid bashing in this thread? There is plenty of that going around Dimensions at the moment, I'd really like to try to keep these threads for constructive comments.

Thanks Tad, I was about to delete that but since you've replied I'll leave it there with a request for others to find ways of making their points that do not rely upon destroying or misrepresenting the points of view of others.

Talk about feminism until the cows come home if its relevant to the subject at hand. Don't attack or misrepresent feminism just for the sake of it though please.

[TraciJo67]

Originally Posted by kioewen

Well, seriously, what did you expect from a book with "feminist" in the title? Whatever the issue, the feminists will find a way to spin it to make a condemnation of men. As usual, they hijack SA to advance their cause.

The main reason why some full-figured women believe this, though, as others have suggested, is because it's a projection of their own self-loathing, and a way to reconcile one idea, which they believe to be true (plus-size = unattractive) with a second idea confronting them, which flatly contradicts that (some find find the full figure attractive on a purely aesthetic level). This myth gives them a convenient "conspiracy theory" to reconcile the two ideas.

In other words, this FA myth arises because of a BBW myth (that men cannot actually find a larger female body beautiful in its own right).

Kioewen, I would agree that it is an FA myth. But I do not believe that it is a myth, per se. I've seen too much evidence of its existence, mostly from insecure men who are very fearful of their SO's leaving them. To them, it isn't about fat = beautiful, in the same way that it is for you. It *is* about fat = she won't be as attractive to other men. In other words it is about control.

On a side note, not every feminist is a man-hating shrew and I hate to see such broad-brush condemnation of a principle that I am very much behind. I want women to own their power in much the same way that men seem to intuitively learn to, and in ways that are individually meaningful to them.

[robovski]

The stated myth is a myth when applied to FA's in general. Sadly/happily people are widely varied, and ther are those who give creedence to the myth. Most FA's are just genuinly attracted to fat partners (I know I am). There is a school of thought that all human interaction is about getting control over others as a way of controlling the universe that surrounds us but I always thought of that as frankly a bit paranoid. Not every conversation is about domination/submission or manipulation, nor every action a person partakes.

But then there are those for whom the myth is true. There are psychopaths, manipulators and players, people who see others as a means of fulfilling their own goals without consequence to others. Don't doubt that evil exsists, it does. Doubt instead whether it exsists in every heart. I find myself sometimes guilty of this, attributing a motivation to malice when it just as easily could be attributed to something else (i.e. neglect or misunderstanding).

So what am I saying? Basically, it all depends. It depends on the individuals involved and who they are, what they feel, how they percieve a situation and the circumstances they are in. I'd say it likely that most FA's are just interested in fat partners because fat partners turn them on, not because they are seen as "easy" or controllable. There will be people like that, but I'd argue it was more likley that such an individual wasn't an FA in the first place, but instead motivated by the desire for control or the promise of an easy lay. When individuals like this are discussed in relation to the myth, it is easy for a person to mistake the manipulator/controller as an FA when that person actually couldn't have cared less if the subject was fat.

[Elfcat]

You know, I feel the need to speak some words here. Carrie Hemenway, the leader of the Feminist SIG early in my NAAFA membership, was one of my favorite women in the organization. We have Lesleigh and Julianne and others who see feminism in a far different way than this simplistic way you describe. A lot of books back then had negative messages about fat. I tossed the copy of The Joy of Sex my father gave me when I turned to the glossary and found under "Obesity": "If you have excess weight, lose it, if not for your sex life then for your life."

[Elfcat]

Prevent others from being interested??? I love it when others show interest in a partner of mine; it proves the point that she is indeed legitimately beautiful, and that I am with her because we chose each other and not out of these other silly reasons the haters always want to invent.

[Tad]

Anyone want to offer any summaries of what has been discussed so far?

[bbwsrule]

I have certainly heard this before, probably 20+ years ago. Never gave it much thought until mentioned here. This is surely a non-FA idea for obvious reasons. Perhaps some closeted FA's that are with fat girls might make this claim in public as a copout.

I suppose someone who wants to make his wife less attractive for manipulative purposes, would want to beat her down psychologically. Calling her fat (as an insult, not a compliment) and other nasty things would help.
Some people, unfortunately, do this exact thing. Just like rape however, I would say it is more about the violence (verbal/emotional abuse is a form of violence to me) than anything else. To someone who can't imagine Fat Admiration, this would perhaps come to mind.

As a tactic, in practice, it doesn't work at all in my case. My wife, and many other BBW's, get lots of compliments on their appearance, and get hit on. This harks to the self image of the BBW: if she sees herself as beautiful (even if flawed as most do) it radiates; if she loathes herself and her body that will radiate also.

It seems that society is gradually changing in this respect, seeing the beauty of a beautiful BBW who takes pride in her appearance.

[swamptoad]

"FAs want their partners to be fat as a way of controlling them and preventing others from being interested in them"

Ok ....

I thought about looking at another perspective for insight.


Non-FAs that want their partners to be less fat as a way of freeing them and allowing others to become interested in them"

Though I see that this angle shows selfish to unselfish. I still see a myth for each. The notion that Fat = Ugly and Skinny = Pretty is where I am getting at. Size and Shape just doesn't complete the criteria for defining what is ugly or pretty about a person. And I don't know if I wrote on the topic of another myth or not. I'm just sharing what I've pondered.


I just quickly did a flip flop angle for thinking. Not trying to go off-topic. Just trying another approach.


Now, does this add to more confusion?

[James]

ok - closing this one up now. Thanks for all your contributions!