Did you ever read the kid’s book “The Pumpkin Giant” (If you have not, you can find a couple of the illustrated pages here: http://meridthgimbel.blogspot.ca/2013/10/bi-fri-book-look-pumpkin-giant.html and the full text here: http://www.soupsong.com/fpumpki2.html ).
I stumbled across it in the library of the small town I grew up in not too long after I learned to read, so maybe six years old? It was the first time that I really thought about fat stuff. I think I already knew, at some fundamental level, that I liked fat, but that it was not generally approved of. (re-reading it now, I'm sure I didn't understand all of the words, but I certainly caught the gist of the story. I didn't tell anyone older, with a better vocabulary, about the story because I knew a lot of people would not approve of it, and I didn't want to hear the criticism)
In this story the sort-of-hero and heroine were so fat that they couldn’t walk, and only rolled around. On the one hand that seemed very limiting to me, I like walking, running, skating, skiing, and riding my bike all over town. On the other, having a safe place where you could be as fat as you wanted, with someone else who was happy being fat (and implicitly—eating as much as you wanted and never worrying about getting fatter) was very appealing. You’d give up a lot, but might it be worth it?
I didn’t think about it in so many words, but the mere fact that someone had written this story, and someone had published it, that said that there were people willing to write about fat characters without moralizing lectures about the evils of fat. That mattered to me a lot too.
I wonder how much that shaped my fat appreciation, the whole being an FA who wants to be fat, believing that fat could be associated with a ‘happily ever after’ ending? What if my first big exposure had been one of those cartoons where a character got really fat and then something horrible happened to them, reinforcing that some people might happily get fat, but nothing good would come of it?
What were your first exposures to fat stuff when you were growing up, and do you think they shaped your feelings in this area?
I stumbled across it in the library of the small town I grew up in not too long after I learned to read, so maybe six years old? It was the first time that I really thought about fat stuff. I think I already knew, at some fundamental level, that I liked fat, but that it was not generally approved of. (re-reading it now, I'm sure I didn't understand all of the words, but I certainly caught the gist of the story. I didn't tell anyone older, with a better vocabulary, about the story because I knew a lot of people would not approve of it, and I didn't want to hear the criticism)
In this story the sort-of-hero and heroine were so fat that they couldn’t walk, and only rolled around. On the one hand that seemed very limiting to me, I like walking, running, skating, skiing, and riding my bike all over town. On the other, having a safe place where you could be as fat as you wanted, with someone else who was happy being fat (and implicitly—eating as much as you wanted and never worrying about getting fatter) was very appealing. You’d give up a lot, but might it be worth it?
I didn’t think about it in so many words, but the mere fact that someone had written this story, and someone had published it, that said that there were people willing to write about fat characters without moralizing lectures about the evils of fat. That mattered to me a lot too.
I wonder how much that shaped my fat appreciation, the whole being an FA who wants to be fat, believing that fat could be associated with a ‘happily ever after’ ending? What if my first big exposure had been one of those cartoons where a character got really fat and then something horrible happened to them, reinforcing that some people might happily get fat, but nothing good would come of it?
What were your first exposures to fat stuff when you were growing up, and do you think they shaped your feelings in this area?
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