Fat Sex

FAT SEX

FAT SEX

The Naked Truth

REBECCA JANE WEINSTEIN

Copyright © 2012 by Rebecca Jane Weinstein

SECOND EDITION

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Cover photograph Club Allegro Fortissimo, Paris 1989, by William Klein, with permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weinstein, Rebecca Jane, 1967-

Fat sex : the naked truth / Rebecca Jane Weinstein. -Second edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8253-0775-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Overweight persons--Sexual behavior. 2. Sex. I. Title.

RC628.W425 2015

616.85’26--dc23

                     2014035810

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Book design by Jamie Kerry of Belle Étoile Studios

Cover design by Becky Stockbridge of ibecCreative

FAT SEX

This book is dedicated to my parents.

You know who you are.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

Prologue: I’m Fat

1. Forgivable Fat

2. Fat is the New Gay

3. Does This Fat Make My Ass Look Big?

4. Alice in Cyberland

5. Can’t Even Get Laid by a Fat Chick

6. The Ugly Twin

7. Putting the Die in Diet

8. I’ll take that Closet in an Extra-Large

9. You Can Never Be Too Thin or Too Thin

10. XXX-L

11. Lesbian, or Just Fat?

12. The Man with the Really Big … Belly

13. Fat: A Life’s Work

14. My Junk Still Works Like Everybody Else’s

15. The Fat Suit

16. Jiggly Bits

17. A Beautiful Corpse

18. French Double Doors

19. Juicy

20. Good Things Come in Big Packages

Epilogue: Still Fat

THE UGLY DUCKLING BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FOREWORD

The F-Word

BY MARGARET CHO

It’s the insult of the statement, not the word fat, but it’s hard for me to hear and to use that word without all of the baggage associated with it, because it is a word that has been deliberately used to hurt me.

It’s like a knife. Is it going to cut you or is it going to butter you up? The first thousand times it cuts you, and so you’re going to be wary of it buttering you up, because it’s gonna feel like a cut and you are going to bleed no matter what. It’s an involuntary emotional reaction that I can’t control. I want to control it. Help me get it under control.

I have bad history with it. I got called fat when I was doing All American Girl and I didn’t eat after that and wound up in the hospital, my kidney failing at 24 years old. I also developed a heart murmur and still have bad shit my body won’t forget from that time. The incident easily cut at least a decade off my life. I was perfectly healthy before. Now, I have to be a lot more careful.

I remember the phone call vividly. The producer was my good friend. She was rad, a fun gal. She came to my trailer in secret and we smoked cigarettes where her kids wouldn’t see or smell it. I really loved her—I trusted her. I needed someone like her then. You need your women around you to keep you safe. I was young and scared and I just wanted a job for fuck’s sake. I was only trying to work.

She called huffing and puffing and saying that your … body … was just toooo … your face …. The … fat … you’re too fat. You are just so fat we can’t do this. You are too fat and we have to do something … you have to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. ANYTHING.

I felt like I was going to die and I nearly did. It was beyond my control, and almost 20 years later I am still utterly destroyed by any negative assessment of my, or any woman’s, body. It’s not just me I bleed for when I am cut by this word, it’s everyone. I feel for all the world like I am feeling for all the world.

I give other people too much power because I can’t look the other way or shrug it off or ignore it or consider the source. I overreact because that is my nature, but at least it’s fairly poetic. What’s awesome is I can actually laugh about it. I really do.

Fuck people who try to insult women by calling them fat. Fuck them all. Hahahahahaha.

I am actively trying to reclaim the word fat. I am actively trying to get better. But I do have a disease that is deadly as cancer or AIDS. Anorexia kills. Bulimia kills. I am still sick. I am in remission I guess, but the virus lives in me. Dormant for now. But it’s there.

I want to educate people about my disease. It’s caused by ignorance and casual cruelty. I want to stop the spread of my disease.

People thinking they can say whatever they want about women’s bodies and thinking they will not be held accountable? No, I am not having it. I wanna be like Fatgirl!! You could shine a big stretch mark in the sky and I will come whizzing through the night on my motorcycle to kick some douchebag’s ass!

If you think you can dismiss our beauty and belittle us you should just know, say what you will, but I am going to make you eat your words. Fatgirl is coming for you. Na na na na na na na na FATGIRL!!!!!

HAHAHA.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to the following individuals who, without their contributions and support, this book would not have been written: Joyce Ellen Weinstein and Mark Weinstein, who supported me in more ways than one and were considerate enough to give me their DNA; all the brave people who contributed their stories, I couldn’t have done it without you; Winifred Golden of the Castiglia Literary Agency, my agent and cheerleader; Buffy Morrissette, my good friend, surrogate sister, and tireless editor; Elizabeth Janovsky and Patricia Washburn, also my friends and editors; Becky McKinnell of iBecCreative.com who contributed the fantastic cover design; Robert Chiozzi, my business partner who picked up the slack when I was otherwise occupied; Margaret Cho, who certainly speaks for herself, and Sarah Martin, who did me a serious solid; all of the people on PeopleOfSize.com and the Size Acceptance boards who were so enthusiastic and gave me more than one pep talk; my high school, college, and current life friends on the Interweb who offered feedback and didn’t judge me; and finally Ella, who can’t read because she is a dog, but gave me the unconditional love I needed to get this done.

Thank you also to the supporters of this book: Dixie Rich, Bobbie-Jo Elwood, Curtis Forsythe, Durette Hauser, Mark Weinstein, Eleanor Chung-Wernow, Homalyn Dakers, Becky McKinnell, Jodie Morrissette, Shawna Hamic, Heather Boyle Nymeyer, Garland Arnaud, Vanessa Madrazo, Wm. Christman, Debora Meltz, Ragen Chastain, Sue Carter (on behalf of SSBBW Magazine), Victoria Leigh Reuveni, Sarah Brodwall, Barbara Shapiro, Alice Fu, Giorgio Piccoli, Reenie Stelzer Rousseau, Peggy Elam, Celine McGuire, Jayne Williams, Cyd Highfield, Carol Squires, Christopher Martin, Douglas Goldstein, Pauline Jakobsberf, Caitlin Holland, Malnpudl, Aine Pearson, Cindy Baker, Carla A. Pfeffer, Tiffany Ross, Madeline Z.

INTRODUCTION

These are the true stories of people who were brave and generous enough to tell them. They are stories of individual life experiences and are, therefore, subjective. They don’t represent everyone and don’t try to. What they aim to do is offer some perspective on life and love as a person of size, a large person, an overweight or obese person, or—more to the point—a fat person. Many people, fat and thin and in-between, will relate to these experiences, which help to demonstrate that fat people, while stigmatized for being fat, are much like everyone else in many, or most, ways.

Throughout the book, you will find information, research, and anecdotes. They relate to the stories and are not a complete compilation of all of the issues relevant to fat and living as a fat person. They are also not intended to be an academic dissertation. They are interesting tidbits, and it is my hope that they may lead you to want to learn more. They, too, are subjective, at least in the manner in which they were selected and how they add to the narrative.

As the narrator of these stories, my voice and my interpretation are interjected, though I try to capture the spirit, personality, and attitude of those whose stories I am sharing. Some of these stories are sad. But they are also charming, funny, and uplifting. There are happy endings, or happy middles, or happy moments.

This book is a labor of love, about love and the search for love, for other people and for oneself.

PROLOGUE

I’M FAT

No man will ever love you, proclaimed my grandmother in her self-assessed infinite wisdom. I was nine or ten—old enough to know exactly what she was talking about, and young enough that I believed her. Thirty-five years later, in the kind of therapy they do for veterans of war, I understood that she wasn’t entirely right. But, she wasn’t entirely wrong. Of course, as any therapy veteran would know, right or wrong, it was not about a man’s love for me, but my love for myself. I’ll get right on that.

It took me years—years—to say the word fat. It took what felt like an entire brain overhaul to say the words fat sex. And even now it’s difficult to feel like a normal person. Fetish walking. Oh, the shame.

But as it turns out, not everyone is thin. As it also turns out, not everyone cares. It’s not necessary to say we live in a culture obsessed with thinness. But, we live in a culture obsessed with thinness. It’s also not necessary to say that there is subtle and overt hostility toward the idea of fat sexuality. But, there is.

There is subtle and overt hostility toward fat in just about every arena of life. There is a war against it, after all. I suspect if we lose that war, the terrorists win. It is not clear who the terrorists are in this case, there seem to be many cells: the Happy Meal; high fructose corn syrup; school lunches; overwork; under-work; recess; television; the Internet; video games; eating disorders; poverty; urban sprawl; microwaving Tupperware; lack of breastfeeding; the ratio of calories consumed to calories expended; bariatric surgery; the aversion to anal leakage. Mostly, the lazy fat slobs that just lie around eating chicken wings all day and don’t get off their giant arses. Whoever they are.

So, okay, even if it appears our culture believes fat people are gross, the people living in our culture are, well, doing them. And it’s not just that fat people let themselves go after marriage, so post nuptials we are condemned to sex with a fatso. Actually, secretly, or perhaps not so secretly, a lot of people desire sex with the not-so-svelte. There is much evidence of this—procreation for one—but the most powerful is the sex industry. No one knows how many sexually related Internet sites there are (estimates range from one percent to 85 percent of the World Wide Web is made up of sexually explicit material), and no one knows how many sexually related Internet sites there are that feature large women (BBWs: Big Beautiful Women; and, SSBBWs: Super-Sized Big Beautiful Women), but let’s say it’s safe to estimate it at: a lot.

At around the age of 15, during a time in history in between girdles and Spanx, I wore a bathing suit under my dress. The first time I seriously made out with a boy (park bench, East Village, way past curfew; you know who you are), he asked me if I was going swimming. A perfectly reasonable question, considering. I thought he said: You’re fat. My mistake. Two of us girls had a thing for him, and he picked me. It didn’t occur to me that, fat or not, if he picked me, I was the one he wanted.

But really, how could I know? Reality had very little to do with my perception of reality. That, it seems, is a common problem.

Most of us have heard the true tale of Barbie, that if she were a real woman, she would be 7 feet tall, weigh 100 pounds, have 33 inch hips, wear a size 4 dress, a 39FF bra, and size 5 shoes. There are variations on these calculations. Some less reactionary types say she would only be 6 feet tall and would weigh 110 pounds. Everyone agrees, though, that she would have super big boobs. Whatever the precise dimensions, she would be somewhere between unusual and disturbing. It is virtually inconceivable that an actual human could achieve her form without tremendous luck and extensive surgery.

It doesn’t take a sociologist—or even a feminist—to recognize the distorted images of women in our culture. And it doesn’t take tenure to notice pervasive news and entertainment media perpetuating an extremely thin ideal. It is evident without much discussion that the weight-loss industry is ferocious. Women—and, more and more so, men—suffer greatly from feelings of inadequacy and shame because of weight. From those with a muffin top to the super obese, the struggle is profound, and the impact often catastrophic.

It is estimated that 10 percent of American women have eating disorders.¹ This estimate may be low, as binge eating, in particular, is underreported. Research also suggests that an additional 65 percent of women demonstrate behaviors consistent with disordered eating.² Whatever that means, exactly, and whether or not the numbers are precise, it is probably fair to say women in America, and progressively more so all over the world, are screwed up in one way or another about food. This is also true for men. Roughly 25 percent of all Americans with eating disorders are men, and 40 percent of those men have binge eating disorders.³ These numbers are probably not terribly accurate either, because eating disorders are even more underreported in men. Much of this disordered eating is associated with, and a consequence of, dieting.

If you haven’t heard about how fat Americans are, you must be in al-Qaeda (though they probably know, too). Researchers say that more than 30 percent of American adults are overweight, and another 30 percent are obese.⁴ This is according to the very unreliable BMI (Body Mass Index) measurement. Nonetheless, a lot of American adults are fat. A lot of American children are fat too, apparently. They also say one out of three American children are overweight or obese. The First Lady has made it her mission to fight the war against obesity in children. Athletes and actors, pop stars, chefs, politicians on both sides of the aisle, fast food producers, schools, and kids themselves, have jumped on the anti-fat-children bandwagon. From cooking classes to flash mobs, to legislation and prohibition, the country is fighting the battle of the bulge on every front. Some of this is couched in sensitivity and some is overtly humiliating. All of it is, thus far, fruitless (no pun intended). So, the masses are screwed up in some way when it comes to food. Upwards of 70 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, and a large number of these fat folks feel shame and humiliation about their size.

Then we have the urban legend telling us men think about sex every seven seconds, and women think about sex almost as much as men. If there are two things humans have on their minds, it’s fat and sex. Fat and sex may cohabitate, but they have a volatile relationship.

Have you noticed that on television and in the movies, any time a fat person gets into a sexual relationship, the primary storyline is about the emotional conflict of whether their partner actually finds them attractive and the angst around taking off their clothes? I recall vividly a scene in The Practice between Camryn Manheim’s character and her tall, thin, handsome would-be lover, where she expressed her trepidation about sex with him because of her body, and his exclaiming, Don’t you think I find you attractive? She broke down in tears (maybe she didn’t, but in my storyline tears come next), and he swept her off her feet—figuratively. She was heavy. But on a show where she was otherwise portrayed as a strong, independent lawyer with self-confidence to spare, when it came to getting naked and touched, she was suddenly the uncertain schoolgirl, doubting that the man she had been dating found her sexually attractive. It’s preposterous. It’s also probably widely accurate. Sadly, I relate.

A recent study concludes that obese people have less satisfying sex lives than their thin counterparts. Duke University researchers studied 91 obese men and 134 obese women who completed a sexual functioning questionnaire before enrolling in a weight-loss study.⁵ The questionnaire covered nine areas: interest, desire, arousal, orgasm, satisfaction, behavior, relationships, masturbation, and sexual problems. We found that there was lower sexual satisfaction and lower sexual quality of life among women than men, and overall sexual quality of life was low among both groups, stated Dr. Truls Ostbye, a professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine.

Earlier research, not tied to a weight-loss study, sampled 112 obese women in long-term relationships. Sixty-seven percent of these women tested sexually satisfied.⁶ Satisfaction was correlated to good sexual communication, positive body image, and partner sexual enjoyment. Dissatisfaction was less tied to weight or their partners’ attitudes toward weight. Weight negativity was correlated to poor body image, but not to any particular weight. This study suggests that couples’ therapy and working to improve body image would be more effective than weight loss. I’m no scientist, but you don’t have to be fat to have body issues, and you don’t have to be thin to have fun in bed.

I could go on and on about the trials and tribulations of being fat, the bigotry and prejudice, the notion that fat people are the last group it is socially acceptable to mock, the research on sexual dissatisfaction and dysfunction, the conventional wisdom that fat people are sexually undesirable and undesired, the countless jokes at the expense of fat chicks. But that is not what this book is about. This book is about fat sex from a different perspective.

Yes, some of the stories will portray a sad reality, and some will portray sexual life experiences most of us will only know in our wildest dreams. But all will portray the reality of fat sex. Not the narrow-minded, bigoted, stilted story of the lonely and isolated fat person who never gets any. But the reality of what 60 to 75 percent of Americans—most of whom do have sex—experience. Some may find this notion disgusting. Those who do probably could use some therapy themselves. Most will just relate, on some level or another, and whether secretly or not, like it. Because when it comes down to it, Barbie can’t stand up, and the average guy doesn’t look like Ken (which is for the best, since he has no genitals).

There is another urban legend: fat women are better in bed. I have heard various explanations for this phenomenon. It is most likely perpetuated by those who are just more attracted to large people, and therefore, to them, fat women are better in bed. As stereotypes about fat people go, it’s one of the more flattering. I choose to believe it; but then again, it serves me.

So how did it work out for me? I will tell you that my grandmother did a number on me, and it’s taken work to un-brainwash myself. I still struggle with it every day. But humans are resilient, and sex is a powerful motivator. And you know, fat women are better in bed.

1 Get the Facts on Eating Disorders. NEDA Feeding Hope. https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/get-facts-eating-disorders.

2 Karras, Tula. Disordered Eating: The Disorder next Door. Self. April 21, 2008. http://www.self.com/body/food/2008/04/eating-disorder-risk/.

3 Ross, M.D., M.P.H., Carolyn. Real Healing: Binge Eating in Men. Psychology Today. October 2, 2012. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/real-healing/201210/binge-eating-in-men-0.

4 Fast Stats: Obesity and Overweight. CDC 24/7: Saving Lives. Protecting People. May 14, 2014. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm.

5 Obese Men and Women Report Less Satisfying Sex Life. Duke Medicine. http://corporate.dukemedicine.org/news_and_publications/news_office/news/obese-men-and-women-report-less-satisfying-sex-life.

6 Areton, Lilka Woodward. Factors in the Sexual Satisfaction of Obese Women in Relationships. Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality. January 15, 2002. http://www.ejhs.org/volume5/Areton/09Results.htm.

1

FORGIVABLE FAT

Flirting is just what Elizabeth does. She flirts with both men and women. In person, on the phone, in email, as part of the art she makes. Seriously, ironically, coquettishly, brazenly, openly, subtly, with humor, with objects, with grace, and absurdity. She flirts with the old and the young, the beautiful and the homely, the tall and the short, the hairless and the furry. If you watch closely, you’ll find she flirts with pets and houseplants and the silverware by her plate.

Elizabeth is an artist. She makes provocative pieces that tell stories of worlds both real and imagined. They aren’t provocative in a titillating way, despite the fact that through them she flirts. But flirting isn’t always romantic. In fact, if you look up the word, it means various things: To move erratically or in a jerking manner; to come close to reaching or experiencing something; to show superficial or casual liking; to experiment; or of course, to behave amorously but without serious intent. So the flirting in her provocative art takes many forms. Some of them are quite unsettling.

Elizabeth is a provocateur. A rabble-rouser. An instigator. An activist. An architect. A troublemaker. And all the while, a flirt.

Elizabeth, despite her very worldly ways, grew up in the country, on a farm, one of seven kids. Along with a large brood, her mother was saddled with some psychiatric issues that led to a rather chaotic atmosphere. Some of the seven siblings are from the legitimate marital partnership, and some are the bastard children—the result of a farmhand and a torrid affair. Elizabeth is one of the bastard children. Between her mother’s extramarital and not terribly well hidden trysts, and the constant sex party that is a farm animal’s life, Elizabeth learned a great deal about seduction—or at least fornication—at an early age. If you don’t want your children to know about the birds and the bees, don’t let them grow up around pigs and goats.

Consequently, and Elizabeth does believe it is in part consequential, she has been a sexual being, and aware of it, for as long as she can remember. She had her first boyfriend as soon as she was around a boy to whom she wasn’t related. The first boy she found, she snatched him up. She was just a child—no actual snatch was involved. He was her kindergarten boyfriend and she would show her affection by kicking him in the shins—the farm animals didn’t teach much about courtship. He remained her boyfriend until the fourth grade, so he must have appreciated the shin-kicking.

In fifth grade Elizabeth got distinctly chubby and remained so through junior high. There were no boys willing to let her kick their shins. That didn’t stop her from being completely boy-crazy, just not successfully so. In high school she slimmed down enough that boys were interested again—until they got to know her. Elizabeth isn’t what you would call shy and retiring. She recalls making out with a boy. She took his hand and put it on her breast, telling him, in so many words, Go ahead, feel me up. He was totally freaked out. He had no idea what to do with her assertiveness, or her breast.

She was always more interested in and eager for sex than any boys she knew in high school. From what they tell us, that is unusual. High school boys are the horniest creatures on the face of the earth, aren’t they? Elizabeth is proof otherwise. Apparently she, in high school, was the horniest creature on the face of the earth.

It begs the question, really: in junior high, was it her chubbiness that kept the boys at bay, or some other force of nature? She says with certainty it was the chub. She got picked on a lot, though mostly it was the girls who did the picking. But the boys knew she was a social pariah and went along with the herd mentality. The girls were doing most of the ridiculing, but the boys knew full well Elizabeth was the object of their ridicule. To cross that imaginary social line was setting themselves up for derision as well. So, it was because of her weight, but only because the girls made that determination. Their lack of interest says nothing about whether the boys found her appealing—though in junior high, appeal may be determined entirely by social standing. Junior high boys have yet to develop the highly individualized and independent tastes of grown men.

Her experience since then, for decades of her life, is that boys, and then men, often don’t know how to separate their preferences from the preferences they have learned from their peers, parents, and the media. As she got older, graduated from high school and moved on to college, it was repeatedly the case that she would date boys who found her very attractive, but insisted on keeping it a secret. One date, when she was in college, was with a guy in the military. Elizabeth had a car so she gave him a ride back to the barracks. Some of his buddies were outside and saw them pull up. She got out to give him a hug, which was usual for them. His buddies started catcalling. What are you doing with a fat girl? Are you that desperate? That was the last she heard from him. But when they had been alone he was quite amorous. That contradiction has been a regular message for her. A lot of guys act on what they believe they are supposed to be attracted to, rather than their actual preferences. Some grow out of it, some don’t.

Elizabeth married the first man she met who was openly appreciative of her fat.

Her husband, to whom she is still married, is remarkably open about his own preferences. Now, years later, she finds that there are others who are willing to be open, but in her younger days they were few and far between. Additionally, the fat-appreciators she had met long ago saw her more as an object of a fetish, rather than a whole person. They wanted to have sex and literally worship her, but there was a disconnect, mentally. That’s what objectification is all about.

She recalls being the object of a fetish as an interesting experience. At first, when she was in her twenties, it was astonishing. It was great, and hot. "Here is someone who