How has this fetish changed over the decades?

[Benny Mon]

I'm but a comparative youngster, and my horizons are correspondingly limited. But some of you have been in fat fetish spaces for a long time now.

My question for you: how has this fetish changed over the last 5 or 10 or 25 years (or more)? Sexuality's not a static thing, but we often think of it that way, like feedists in 2022 desire and fantasize about the same things that people who were into fat did in 1972--or 972. I think that's probably not true, and I wonder if any of you have observations that can corroborate my hunch.

What's your take on this? My own foray: I feel like gaining has become a much larger subfetish in the scene than it was like 10 or 15 years ago.

 

[Tad]

I feel obligated to try and answer this, because I've been around this scene online for about 25 years, but at the same time I don't feel like I have a very wide view, so I don't know if my take is reflective of what others have experienced. Anyway, here is just some "this is what I remember from way back when", all just based on memory with no research to double check exact dates or order that things occurred in.

So in the beginning there was darkness ... or at least, while there may have been plenty of people with desires to gain weight of for a fat and gaining partner, there wasn't even vocabulary for that, forget about places to talk about it But some people were looking for that, of course. There were a few physical magazines that had explored this space in one way or another, for some length of time or another, and then the world wide web became a thing. I didn't get online until early 1996 (16k dial-up modem!). Having stumbled across a couple of back-issues of BUF magazine some years previous I at least knew the terms BBW, FA, and feeder and feedee. There was no google search at the time and the available search engines were pretty bad, and combined with the slow access speed it could take a long time to find anything. But I was home sick one day so had time and went looking. I found a grand total of three sites with any content to speak of that were remotely related:
- Dimensions Magazine online, the web site for the print magazine. There was little here at the time (maybe the wannabes photos? I don't remember)
- The site of one FA/feedist, a young woman named Melanie Bell, who had a few gaining stories as well as maintaining an apparently lightly fictionalized diary. This was the most openly feedist material on the web at the time
- A site called BBWQT that was an effort to create something like a BBW/FA dating site, allowing women to post a picture or two and a personal ad, and there was some way for guys to reach out to them. A lot of the women had comments like "No feeders!" but a couple seemed more open to it

And that was about it, for several months. Worse, Melanie Bell came clean about her fetish with her partner, apparently resulting in a fight and maybe break-up, and her site basically went silent without any real activity after that. But then in early 1997 (IIRC) the BBWQT site added a discussion board, and not longer after a chat room! Both were soon aflame over the topic of whether feeders should be allowed in or not, and she responded by splitting both in two, creating 'The Weight Board' and 'The Weight Room' if I remember the names properly. There was still enough anti-feedist sentiment around that when I first posted on The Weight Board I did it under a different user name, not wanting to ruin my reputation on the original board.

At the time it was still very heavily slanted towards fat women and male admirers. One of my first posts on The Weight Board was a story that was mostly about male gain (there was some female gain too, but it was driven more by the guys gain), and the only response I got was roughly "We don't want any of that male gainer crap on here."

The web boards and the chat room rapidly became pretty popular, to the extent that the bandwidth costs were becoming significant, and more that the lady who had created them could support. Somehow a deal was struck, and they migrated to the Dimensions Magazine website, and she stayed on as web master. After that a number of new chat rooms and new boards were added over time, although when it came to the chat rooms it was always mostly one 'genera' chat and one 'feeder' chat going on with the other rooms being empty.

An ongoing issue was that there tended to be more men active in the Weight Board and in the feeder chats, and more women in the general areas, and also that the weight gain/feedist activity was often a bit spicier. This would result in more people moving over from the general to the feedist spaces, seeking activity, attention, or titillation, but their presence would also bring in more non-feedists, and a general air of disapproval about more overt feedist content. This led the feedists to migrate between the various chat rooms a number of times, and eventually many left the Dimensions chat rooms to the chat room created by Kelligrl.

Kelligrl was an infamous figure online, the first person most of us knew who was explicitly trying to make money by offering weight gain porn. She created her own site, I know there was some way you could pay for more access, but she also made a free chat room, and that was the home of feedist chat for a year or so I'd say. (eventually she would shut down her site with no explanation).

Sometime around then other sites started springing up, I don't remember what all and when, but Dimensions stopped being 'the place' for all things bbw/FA/feedist, but there was still a lot going on here (it became a bit more 'social media' before we used that term, with less focus on dating and FA erotica). A lot of the other sites seemed to come and go a lot, started with enthusiasm but not getting much traction and shutting down or at least fading away.

The BHM/FFA board was started on Dimensions, which started off slowly but gradually did prove that there were real, live, FFA out in the wild, and I think that helped broaden the community to be more generally 'fat people and their admirers, and gainers and their encouragers' sort of view, instead of being so heavily gendered (the entire scene still slants gendered, but it is no longer as blatant about it)

More later, this is plenty long enough for now.

 

[Jon Blaze]

Feederism is definitely more popular. Likely as an after effect of how much more mainstream body positivity is as a concept. But in some ways I think the communities are starting to split. Body positivity covers a lot issues. I think the gripe most of us have is true size discrimination in laws, spaces, healthcare and the like. But outside of that it's pretty inclusive.

The Feederism community on the other hand is becoming strong but very niche. There are many more spaces for it. Several subreddits, Tumblr, FF, TikTok, Feabie, FetLife, and so on. A lot of people remain anonymous though. It's also hard to find efforts or sub communities that revolve around a true community concept. A lot of it is about content selling and the like instead of, say setting up a bash or meetup. So increased development that is underground.

Some of those communities helped me become more comfortable with it, and embrace it as my kink. That and having a few friends who convinced me it was something they were into. One of the biggest factors being changing the narrative to revolve more around the feedee than the feeder. But with the increased popularity came increased exploitation. The documentaries related to it are formatted to make it a spectacle. Thin SWs are now creating feederism content. There are TikTok videos about how to exploit feeders. I'll be a bit of an asshole here too and say that a lot of feeders are getting severely disillusioned because people aren't serious about it unless it means making money. I'd argue it's different than past eras where it was more a of a hobby/fetish that some rare few would sell content related to it. But it is also just part of broader groups of people with different lifestyle choices, expressions, etc. I just don't want to see it become completely lacking interpersonal communication.

 

[extra_m13]

you created a similar thread on another website, and here we are again, me, with something to say. the scene has changed in someway, as already discussed but we, or me, have also changed. previously i would want it all. in my life. the beautiful smart and funny girl that would be happy gaining with no limit whatsoever. being around for a couple of decades you get to realize that you cannot really ask that to your lady. you can ask her to be happily overweight, even obese, for sure, not to diet and to eat it all. but it is just impossible to stay permanently on the gaining path. boberry was the dream girl, she seemed the dream, gaining, already very heavy, beautiful. she carried so well or so it seemed but around 620 she probably found the limit , i do wished that she talked about it more openly. and also that makes me appreciate models on the upside a lot more, chloe, lily, juicyjackie, jae, and some nice gains from fit to chubby like couchqueen.

 

[khrestel]

I'm just your fat girl next door who's been around for 20+ years. Responses before mine cover a lot so this is just my personal gut feeling.

This sounds like a whine but I feel these days the scene has grown more distant, commercial, separated and extreme. Gaining is celebrated on thin instabeauties to the extremes but the exploits of regular, chubloving people growing a bit wider by the year sharing their up and downs are becoming rare.

I miss the chatting, the communication and getting in touch with likeminded people. These days it's more just following the perfectly groomed gaining influencers.

 

[LJ Rock]

Like others who have commented already here, I can certainly speak to the changes we've seen in the online presence of feedism and fat admiration. Similar to what @Tad was saying, I think the first indications I got that I wasn't the only one who was interested in or aroused by fat and weight gain was in old issues of magazines like Buf and Juggs. The handful of stories and layouts that not only celebrated fatness but also put an emphasis on gaining and getting fatter were an indication to me that maybe, just maybe, there were others out there who found these sorts of things to be interesting.

Years later in the early 2000s when I discovered the internet (still quite in its infancy) I was shocked to find websites that were loaded with this sort of content, and message boards populated with scores of men and women who described many of the same sorts of feelings and fantasies that I'd kept quietly to myself for years. There were a handful of now defunct sites that I frequented, but Dimensions was by far the most active at the time, and the place where I really learned to embrace the community as well as my own feelings and my place within it.

To be certain, changes that have occurred in our world over the past twenty years or so have had a big impact on this community: the advent of social media and a greater proliferation of erotic/porn*graphic material online, along with changing ideas about weight and body image in society as a whole has done a lot to change the perceptions, I think, of feedism and fat acceptance, but as @khrestel said in her post, its also done a lot to commercialize and oversaturate the marketplace with fat-erotic content, while at the same time making it feel far less personal and interconnected than it felt to most of us twenty years ago.

Taking a look back even further, I think it's difficult perhaps to say with any amount of certainty how the fetish has changed or developed. I am in my late forties, and I would be interested to hear from some folks who may be older than I about what their perception of that is. It seems to me, that while maybe these thoughts, feelings and fantasies as a "fetish" may not have been talked about openly or existed within the construct of any sort of "community" that it must still have existed in some form or another.

I mean, I have to figure that some of the artists and animators who made some of the cartoons full of stuffing and expansion scenes that served as "imprinting" events for many of us had to have been plugged into that somehow. The perennial classic "Pigs is Pigs" dates all the way back to 1937. What was it at that time that made the creators or writers of that short want to create a visual depiction of a pig being force-fed to immobility? I mean, can you imagine that pitch meeting? lol "Yeah, kids will think it's -- funny. Yeah, that's it. Funny!"

There are a lot of other things to consider of course in the long-view of this scene's evolution. In the world at large, its really only been a very short time that many of us humans have had access to any sort of abundance of food, and in here in the US the proliferation of processed foods high in sugar, salt and fat content has made the ability for one to get fat a far more common thing than perhaps it has ever been in all of human history. Has that helped feedism and fat fetishism to evolve and expand amongst various populations?

We can look back at the few apparent examples of fat-celebration throughout history that we know of: the decadent banquets and orgies of the Roman aristocracy, renaissance paintings of Reubens and the like which featured the plush female form -- even the Venus of Willendorf and other such idols, and we can of course speculate that there must have been some sort of acute interest in abundance, indulgence and fatness, but we may never be able to know for sure. I mean, was Reubens really turned on by the fat babes he painted, or was he simply depicting what was seen essentially as a status symbol of his time and place: the wives of men who were wealthy enough to feed them well?

Okay, so I know I am kind of going on and on here, but the last thing I want to say is this: the changes in the online feedist and fat admiration communities we are seeing today I think likely began to take root around the same time as the mass exodus that occurred here. What was it? About ten years ago now? I don't know if I'll be rustling feathers by saying this, but I don't think its much of a stretch to say that the dissolution of the broader sense of community that existed here led to an overall feeling of dissolution in the online community at large, and opened up a vacuum for more commercial interests to take place. Perhaps it was inevitable, but I also think its so great and so important that those of us who are still here are able to still openly communicate, talk about things that are important to us, and to keep some element of the spirit that brought us all here in the first place alive.

 

[TheShannan]

Being around lurking since the early 2000s I realized some stuff.....some people really need to understand what being in this type of relationship fully entails. It means one day your SO may not be able to work someday, you may need to help buy clothes, help with food and groceries, etc. It's interesting to see so many people try to be so controlling in this fetish but don't want to help buy food, etc etc. That's not feederism IMO. That's just you fetishizing

 

[luckyfa]

Gaining is celebrated on thin instabeauties to the extremes but the exploits of regular, chubloving people growing a bit wider by the year sharing their up and downs are becoming rare.

This is so true!

 

[luckyfa]

.....some people really need to understand what being in this type of relationship fully entails. It means one day your SO may not be able to work someday, you may need to help buy clothes, help with food and groceries, etc. It's interesting to see so many people try to be so controlling in this fetish but don't want to help buy food, etc etc. That's not feederism IMO. That's just you fetishizing

That‘s right. It‘s important to understand what you get yourself into even when you don‘t intend to feed your SO into greatly reduced mobility or even immobility. To me it seems that some FAs aren‘t willing to cater to the needs of a fat person in the long run, hence the „distant feeding“ via the internet.

 

[Mr. Jigglesworth]

For me, it's gotten stronger as I get older and the women I'm attracted to bigger and bigger. Like mirroring my fantasies of when I first dreamt of big women during puberty.

 

[luckyfa]

For me, it's gotten stronger as I get older and the women I'm attracted to bigger and bigger. Like mirroring my fantasies of when I first dreamt of big women during puberty.

That‘s me too. There‘s clearly a dose/response-relationship, at least up to a certain degree. My desire for excess femal body fat also become more and more exclusive over time.

Edit: typo

 

[NZ Mountain Man]

In the 60's and 70's I saw a lot of ball bellies and as a child I wanted to be squashed by them. Now days i see more apron bellies.
I would say the way we are feeding and building bellies has changed.