.what’s Weight got to do with it?. July 22, 2008

.authored by Something.of.Substance.

Trolling Craigslist.org today looking for people in my area planning to attend the opening of the highly cult-ish “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” with whom my posse of neo-geek, non-closeted fanatics might merge and twitter, I was once again dismayed over the current state of the Personals section. Some man once again made the mistake of announcing that he would like to meet someone “slender”. Ok.

Unleash the rabid women of the world! How dare he! What a pig! What if we all demanded men with 8+” dicks only!!!

Ahem.

Well, honestly, isn’t that their right to announce the wanting of a super-Johnson? Shouldn’t this dude be allowed to ask for whatever he wants in life?

As a feminist, I firmly believe that size-ism and fat phobia are some of the only legitmitized forms of discrimination this country still flaunts. While racism, anti-semitism, classism, and, to only a marginal extent, sexism are not politically-correct in public, Fat Bashing is something of a national sport. And, women are primarily the targets of this cruel practice. Aggressive advertising, blatant size discrimination, the decline in intellectualism, and the increase in superficial spectatorship in America have all contributed to a climate where we are what we look like. This is one of the reasons I started this web forum: to repudiate the belief that people (but primarily women) are only worth what their looks could sell.

But, I digress.

So, stumbling upon this flame-throwing incineration in progress, I did what any other single, feminist female would do: I came to no one’s rescue. I do NOT think it’s right to order people the way you would your Super-size McDonald’s Double-beefy meal. However, that doesn’t stop anyone from having preconceived qualifiers as to what they would like to find in a match. These traits don’t necessarily have to be physical, and we can all be swayed by the omnipresent “inner beauty”, but that doesn’t stop people from having a Dream.

MLK Jr. is currently spinning in his grave.

So, because I’ve never met a decent firefight I haven’t liked, I decided to jump head-first into the melee with the following pronouncement:

“The critical point that everyone is missing in all of their flaming is that this man has a RIGHT to announce what he finds attractive. As a 25 year-old female who is considered to be this country’s “average” size, I am overweight, medically. I understand as much as anyone that attraction is, at least initially, 9/10ths physical. I mean, let’s just cut the shit, everyone.

Of COURSE no one is going to want to date someone they aren’t physically attracted to! Even though I’ve been overweight since my second year of college (thanks to cutting out the crew team in favor of music ensembles and adding in the carbohydrates and a bought of depression), I am still not generally attracted to overweight men. Granted, I place a lot of stock in someone’s personality, character, hygiene, body image, etc. But, if you are trolling internet search boards with a laundry list of criteria: “must have blonde shoulder-length hair that is straightened every day, hazel (not brown) eyes, an innie belly button…”, then that is the type of person who is only into what he sees. And, he’s letting you know that upfront!

But, ladies, let’s not pretend like we don’t have a similar list of requirements. I, for one, want a man with glasses, tattoos, and preferably piercings. While I’m 5′4″ tall and a size 14 with a 38-E chest, I would like a guy under 6′ tall with an slim/average-to-slim/athletic build (even though I don’t maintain one at the moment nor would my body shape be “average” if i tried). It would also be great if he appreciated artists like James Welling, read the poetry of Rilke, the philosophy of Lao-Tzu and Anais Nin, geeked-out over “The X-Files” but no other sci-fi ventures, and teared up a little over “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” while discussing it at the local indie coffee hut over a double-soy iced fair trade espresso in his non-designer denim and ironic neo-rugged trimmed beard before we went back to his non pre-fab apartment in Vic Village or Clintonville where we’d spend a hott night on his double mattress on the floor surrounded by a vintage gothic candelabra and a framed poster of Che Guevara.

However, I’m open to the possibility of people being more than a list of characteristics. And yet, I still have that dream. Could I lose the weight and, therefore, attract more men with my sparkling magnet of a personality? Of course! Have I been working on being more fit? You bet! I went vegetarian three years ago, and have been attempting to quit smoking so I can exercise even more. I lead an active lifestyle. I have a classically beautiful face. I shower. I am much more than how my body looks.

That still doesn’t change the fact that people WILL look. And, they will judge what they see. Do I like this idea? No. Can I help it? Only to a certain extent.

The man you are flaming isn’t a bad man or a good man, he is simply not interested in what you look like. Does this make him a shallow man? Perhaps. But, it doesn’t make you any more noble, likable, or really any less shallow to be trolling on here for someone who wants you because of or in spite of your fat than the man who doesn’t want you because you are.

My somewhat verbose message is this: you can’t change anyone else’s mind. you can only change you. if you are not happy with how you look or who you are, change it! if men continually fail to find women who are “slender squirters with a DD rack and slightly asian features”, they will learn to change their perception. i know that i am not happy with my body as it is. i expect it to be able to do more for me. However, i still believe i am beautiful and interesting and worth getting to know. And, even at my highest weight, I still attracted those who I was attracted to because, in the end, I believed I was worth it and there are those people out there who will too. Losing weight won’t change the fact that we all “look”, regardless. But, it will help me be even more confident in expressing it to others.

In conclusion, please check out my “body” shot so that you know i’m really not posting from behind the persona of a tanorexic twig. And, because, of course you want to look. It’s what we all do. Instead of focusing on the looking, let’s focus on why we feel the need to have such rigid expectations of what we hope to or, to the initial man posting that only “huge” women responded to his ad, how we treat those who don’t fit within our shallow standards.”

Until we come together as a community and agree that fat-phobia is unwarranted, crass and fundamentally wrong, the national dialogue WILL NOT CHANGE. Posting hate rants about required penis size won’t change the dialogue. Telling girls they must be under 125 lbs won’t change the national dialogue. I’m not a believer in the current Fat Acceptance movement because I believe, medically, that fat is unhealthy.

But, it is not the medical community that is so affecting what we find attractive…or how we treat those people that we don’t.

look, Ma, a shoulder!