(this is a piece which was solicited by On Our Backs but rejected because it wasn't sexy enough, was too political. Later printed in a slightly altered form in the Seattle Bi Women's newsletter, North Bi Northwest)
Big women make we want to cuddle, wiggle and dive into their soft grab-able flesh. I'm attracted to them the same way I'm attracted to myself, settling down for a self-loving session with my own bountiful fleshiness. Recent big women screen successes like Baghdad Cafe, Sugar Baby, and Hairspray really turn me on.
The Fat Dykes Float in San Francisco's annual Lesbian/Gay Freedom Day Parade is so magnificent!. There's something exquisitely fierce about us parading our big beauty, transcending the message that tell us to hide. One of my favorite fat dykes hails from Provincetown, Massachusetts. This magnificent 300 lb. woman taught herself to wind-surf, braving the ridicule of local male teens heckling her from the wharf. After she learned, she started her own windsurfing business, specializing in teaching other big women the joys of windsurfing in the P'town bay.
What she taught me is that you can be fit at any weight. And that it's attitude that's far more important than any actuary table or other person's standards of what's right for you.
We all have hang-ups about our bodies, regardless of our size. Ann Landers reported in a recent column that 150,000 U.S. women die each year from anorexia and bulimia. 53% of high school girls are unhappy with their bodies and fashion models weigh 23% less than the average woman. The diet industry makes $33 billion a year. Even the well-known fact that most people who take off weight put it back on doesn't cut their profits. Women value being thin more than success or love, according to a recent Glamour magazine survey. We're only talking about straight women, you say. Ha! We queers hardly transcend these societal pressures. Just look at the lack of strong large women images in our own magazines, the derogatory comments made about big women at women's events, the internalized self-hatred in your own soul.
A lot of this is shame about our sexual power I know. Do we have a right to sexual energy, right now, as we are today. You bet!
I push myself to take risks, to play out my fantasies in the present, just as I AM, not when I lose x amount of pounds, not when I've changed my muscle/fat ratio to a better place through enough exercise, not after I've worked through all my incest and addiction issues in therapy
but NOW.
Pushing myself to take risks and playing out my fantasies in the present
helps me gather the courage
I need to face each day. It's that simple.
It also pushes alot of people's buttons
about their stereotypes about fat people
and about women over 40. That's their problem.
We all have the right to be ourselves as fully as we can be.
But does this mean I'm completely happy with my weight, with my body as it is today? No way. I wish I could say so but it wouldn't be honest. I've seesawed between 250 and 150 and back again the past few years. So have several of my girlfriends. One even got below her normal weight taking fat shots from a doctor, but stopped and gained it back because she was afraid she was becoming addicted to them. There are real health problems to being overweight and to eating compulsively. I don't want to discount them because I struggle with them intimately. An excessive amount of stomach and leg padding, for instance, does change the nature of my orgasms and my breathing, not to mention my blood pressure. When I exercise and eat better I feel better and sex is better. When I eat unwisely I sink into inertia and this affects everything in my life. But here's the interesting irony. I've never, ever been able to lose weight or get in shape by guilt-tripping or punishing myself. My psyche just doesn't work that way. When I snap out of my depression I take care of myself, not the other way around. So what's the solution? Beats me. There's something paradoxical about my self-imaging, I know that. I have to both love myself the way I am AND be able to visualize myself as healthy and strong at a lighter weight, to be able to let go my binge urges and trust that I can be powerful if I'm not as big.
This paradox will probably continue to "shape" me as I make my way through meals and lovers and learn to live my life.
Return Home
Return to Writings & Videos