For some time we here at unfatblog, and www.myfatspouse.com have made the contention that it is not realistic to FORCE people to find someone attractive, even through the force of political correctness.
I believe that WE are the origin of this argument.
Fat Acceptance blogs have many authors, who are masters in the art of rhetoric, although science seems to elude them. Language is their playground. This makes sense, considering how many are academics in the liberal arts fields.
It was just a matter of time until same people that believe that eating what ever the heck you want, and that fat has nothing to do with health, would make yet another preposterous assertion that humans can FORCE themselves to find different types of people attractive.
“My Wife Isn’t Sexy Anymore” and What You Can Do About It
I found the included guide to “finding your fat spouse attractive” particularly interesting.
“2) Look at pictures of people who look like that person. If you can find them, nudes are good. (We’re a resource.) Look a lot. If the pictures bother you in some way, turn away and then turn back and keep looking. If you are a porn reader or watcher, porn is good here.”
Ok…any takers here??
Kate Harding is more than willing to buy into this concept as well. After all fat acceptance is not stranger to contradiction.
Do I have to find FAT people attractive?
What is most interesting is that Fat Acceptance adamantly denies that a human can lose weight through force of will.
They have even gone so far as to deny that the force of willpower even exists!
But, they are perfectly willing to tell us that our sexual aversion to obesity is simply a choice????
Let’s not forget about obese men who think women should find them sexy. I can’t tell you how many obese men 10-15 years older than me hit on me. Not only does this involve grandiosity and denial, but I also think there is an element of sexism: Women diet, not men; women are all desperate for a man and will settle (we aren’t and we won’t) women like older men (we do not) whereas it’s perfectly normal for men to only be attracted to women 10 years younger than them (it isn’t).
I love it. You should write more often.
I would love to point out the problems with Shapely Prose more often, but I can’t spend 30 seconds over there without getting incredibly frustrated with every word I read, so I have to get out of there with my sanity intact.
Just to be clear, we were not intending to say that anyone has to find fat people attractive, or that willpower is a) easy or b) important.
What we were saying is: if you are in a good relationship and you want to stay in that good relationship but your partner’s weight is in the way, there are things you can do. In other words, if you–for whatever reason–want to find fat people attractive, it’s not a hopeless case.
BTW, that whole column was based on a Dan Savage column that turned out to be a complete fake.
And I’m just saying that if they love you and their weight is that much of an issue, they’ll lose weight. I’ve lost over 40 pounds in the last year and i’m still losing weight. Hint: it has to do with diet, i eat less 😀
Speaking of science eluding people, dear Unfatblog author, you might want to educate yourself on the psychology of attractiveness – say, how priming affects evaluations of sexiness, or how mere exposure to a person over time makes them seem more attractive.
You might also want to look into the psychology of prejudice – for instance, how negative reactions correlate with how others’ faces differ from one’s own.
I don’t find you attractive, dear Unfatblog author, but it’s nothing to do with whether I think your body is beautiful. It’s your ignorance I find repellent.
Let’s say that it’s true and there is someone out there who has a girl/boyfriend who is as the writer described his wife to be. Isn’t that indicative of a serious problem? The biggest problem that I have with this whole “just find them attractive, dammit” thing is that it places everything squarely on the shoulders of the unhappy spouse. S/he is the one who has to work on the relationship, the fat spouse doesn’t have to do anything but sit back and wait for the unhappy spouse to get happy.
I guess a gay person should just buckle up and look at nekkid pictures of the opposite sex in an attempt to find them attractive so that they may stay in a heterosexual relationship. It’s that easy, right? The same could be said of heterosexual people turning themselves gay. After all, the genitals are small in comparison to the rest of the body, it should be easier to change your attraction patterns for them, right? People are people…
S’cuse me, I’m gonna go buy a Playboy and go over to convert that hot gay guy I’d like to bang. I’ll be back laters!
The problem isn’t a spouse’s weight. The problem is a spouse’s attitude. “You have gotten fat and unattractive” blames the fatter spouse for the problem. “I don’t find fat people attractive” is a more honest statement, and owns the problem. It’s not a spouse’s weight that kills a relationship – it’s a spouse’s bias. No, the unhappy spouse doesn ‘t *have* to work on anything – he/she can wait for their fatter partner to leave them for someone who loves them as they are.
What I can’t figure out is why not being attracted to a certain body type is the crime of the century. Well, that and why it’s a crime to force someone to change themselves for someone else and it’s not a crime to force someone (usually the fit spouse) to change themselves for someone else. It just doesn’t make any sense to me!
Or, and this is the craziest thing I’ve ever said, both people can work on the relationship and try to meet half way. Relationships are not one sided, it requires both people make an investment in it and if one isn’t providing what the other needs then the relationship should end. It’s sad, but it’s not horrifyingly tragic.
Becky, you are a bastion of sanity in an insane world! 🙂 thanks!
YES BECKY! And by what definition of attraction? I mean, I only feel “sexual” attraction to my husband, but I find many other people attractive- of both sexes. I personally do not find excessive fat rolls or draping fat to be a look I find attractive on either sex- but I also don’t find freckles attractive, or moles, or really skinny men or women or huge bodybuilder types of either sex either. And what level of attraction to be broken down? Like, as a woman who is 5’10, I never was sexually attracted to shorter men, but I could find them attractive as a person or their faces, etc… What about dyed blonde hair women with the dark roots showing that are smoking a cigarette with tons of black mascara? If you said you didn’t find them attractive but they could change how they looked by taking better care of themselves, is that different than people who think the same of obese people?
Becky, I’m glad you suggested that both people can work on the relationship. How would you feel about telling them that over on myfatspouse.com? There are men over there who seem to be putting the blame for their marriage problems squarely on their wife.
There are plenty of women on that site who complain about their obese husbands and blame their marriage problems on their weight too, you know.
I believe if a formerly thin person has become obese during a marriage, it may be an indication that there is something wrong in the marriage. I have seen this in my clinical practice: When the woman told me she used to be thin, at first I didn’t believe her because she was morbidly obese. She then brought in a picture of herself before her marriage and she was unrecognizable, a gorgeous slender woman. I believe she didn’t love her husband very much and ate out of guilt after they married.
I think you misunderstood me. When I said that they should work together in no way shape or form did I mean that the fit partner should force themselves to have sex with the fat partner (or to drastically change their attraction patterns). From what I’ve read of the mfs.com forums, I’m only a casual browser, it seems that some of the partners there are willing to work very, very hard to save their marriage. Just because that doesn’t include forcing themselves to find fat attractive doesn’t mean they’re bad people. (I’d also like to point out that not all the people on mfs.com are males with fat wives, there are some women with fat husbands, as well with just as valid issues.)
What I did mean is that both people need to agree to work out all their problems, perhaps in therapy. There needs to be honesty and kindness from both parties, though I wouldn’t recommend most of the suggestions in the mfs.com list (wallpapers? wtf!) They need to see if they can reach common ground (and yes, this does mean that the fat partner needs to lose some weight. However, the fit partner needs to provide all the love and support they can to help them make that happen.) It’s not an easy road to travel for either side, but if they’re fully committed to the relationship then they should be willing to try. If either partner isn’t willing to at least try then the marriage is as good as dead.
It’s realistic to expect that your partners appearance will deteriorate over time, but it’s not realistic for someone to gain 200lbs and expect their partner to find them as attractive as they did the day they met.
I’ve been lurking both in your blogs/Web sites and the FA ones. I can identify with both ideologies because I was a fat child, a fat adolescent, and have, at times, been a fat adult. But I’m not really “fat” now (BMI 23 kg/m2, but working to get down to a lean, mean 18.5 and toned), and I workout 6 days a week and watch my eating vigilantly. Both my parents and both set of grandparents have/had type 2 diabetes and its nasty complications, including heart disease, peripheral artery disease, etc. It hurts me SO much that my parents choose to continue their unhealthy lifestyles rather than live a long healthy life for me, but that’s another story. Anyway, I also work very closely with the latest obesity studies due to my job in a very well-known anti-diabetes organization, meaning I essentially read AND comprehend all of them. And NONE of the studies I have read even remotely state that fat isn’t dangerous. It is. It’s been proven time and again, both in the U.S. and internationally. So I have come to find the FA movement to be VERY infuriating for the reasons you and your readers have stated previously. I just wanted to let you know that having read both sides, I have to say that the FA movement is complete BS, even as a fomer “fatty.” I don’t hate overweight people, as I was bullied very much as a young person, but the ignorance the FA movement is disseminating is SO VERY DANGEROUS.
Oh and I read today in that idiot Kate Harding’s blog that most (if not all) registered dieticians are eating disordered. huh?!! How does that even make sense?
…”Force” yourself to find someone sexy when you really don’t? That sounds scarily like those Bible Camp lunatics who insist you can force the gay out of yourself by the power of Jesus.
Sorry, Fatosphere, you can’t control who you’re sexually attracted to.
Becky, I agree with you: I don’t want to see anyone force themselves to do anything they don’t want to do. I agree with your suggestions: working things out together, perhaps in therapy; honesty and kindness from both parties; trying to find common ground – I think if both partners were to practice even one of your suggestions, they would become happier in their marriage.
While I think it would be better if couples practised these things, I see a problem with saying either partner “needs” to do something or “should be willing” to do something else. The problem is, demands don’t work – unless the other partner is so dependent on the partner doing the demanding that they’re afraid to say no to them, in which case they’re not going to be happy in the marriage as long as that situation persists.
What definitely doesn’t work is the demand along the lines of, “Change yourself to be what I want, or you don’t love/respect/care for me!” That type of demand just turns people off. Recognising one’s own needs but not one’s partner’s (and telling them “You need to do this!” is not recognising their needs) and valuing them only insofar as their latest contributions to one’s own needs, can destroy a relationship.
Elizabeth, I get some of the stuff you are saying. It is hypocritical for men to be big slobs and insist on a woman being fit. The FA on the other hand thinks that no matter the circumstances a fat person should be accepted/ found attractive. Acceptance is one thing but attractive is up to the eye of the beholder.
From your professional standpoint it appears their egocentric nature never evolved beyond a child’s development. They make up stories that they can never lose the weight and have followed professional advice but nothing works. Any logic applied would reveal this is untrue. They may believe this but in reality they are deluded or perhaps the first person on the planet capable of defying biochemistry, physics, and thermodynamics.
I get heat from the FA community only because I choose not to accept the practice of taking half truths and lies and spinning them into their propaganda. I agree that everyone should be treated equal but they have some an enormous amount of resentment towards people being fit or those that differ from their draconian view points.
“I believe if a formerly thin person has become obese during a marriage, it may be an indication that there is something wrong in the marriage.”
As far as I can see it ‘s an indication that there’s something wrong with the lifestyle, ie too much of the wrong kindof food and too little of the right kind of exercise. If a person turns to food when the marriage is unhappy, it’s primarily this behaviour that needs to change. Otherwise this person will turn to emotional eating each and every time the going gets rough the end-result will inevitably be severe obesity and ill health.
You can’t control who you are attracted to. As a fat person, I often felt guilty for not being attracted to someone who was interested in me, but it is what it is. I felt like I didn’t have the “right” to be picky. After all, I’m fat, right?
When I first met my husband, he was hardly my type. I was also hardly his type. It quickly became something that didn’t matter because our personalities worked together and now I happen to think he’s the sexiest man on earth.
Elizabeth, I do think it is a damn shame that you’re a practicing therapist who didn’t believe a patient was thin without proof in photos. That’s just ridiculous, unless she was being treated for being a compulsive liar.
Wow there is a lot of venom in here. Okay, well, in all honesty we are sort of programmed to a certain ideal. For instance if you just take a glance at Playboy of the late 60s and Playboy of today, there are big and subtle differences in the women, the body types and even the type of photography.
I don’t fault anybody for seeing beauty in whatever form they cling to. I do though think that if somebody feels a little programmed in one direction and wants to re-adjust to another direction, there is nothing wrong with that. Especially if they are doing it with the desire of having a loving and lasting relationship.
Also, the title of this post is rather misleading. I don’t think anybody is trying to pull “A Clockwork Orange” on folks. Nobody is forcing anybody. It’s one choice among many.
Each relationship is different and the couples have to determine the dynamic and what is possible and what is not. I don’t think you could fault anybody for that.
I’m a new reader but I love this blog…i’ve been reading Kate Harding for a while because i’m bored at work and it’s entertaining how completely disconnected from reality people can be. Fat-o-sphere is such an accurate term because it really is just a huge inpenetrable bubble. It’s so similar to the kooks who deny global warming and evolution.
The idea that one should force oneself to find a fat person attractive is ridiculous. I’m sorry, but love is not unconditional. I don’t understand why people find that so unhealthy – if my future spouse gains 50 pounds i’m dumping her fat ass. Not gaining 50 pounds is not hard.
Shit, I lost 15 pounds this summer by working out 5 days a week for 45 minutes and eating decently healthy at a slight caloric deficit. And i’ve put on 8 lbs of muscle in the past 2 months working out only 4 days a week and eating decently healthy. Not rocket science.
The concept of a genetic set point is also absolutely absurd from any perspective. Diets on their own might not work, granted, because your metabolism adapts quickly. But have NONE of these people been exposed to resistance training? Changing your levels of bodyfat and muscle is the name of the game when it comes to that, there are plenty of people in my gym who certainly don’t see what I accomplished this summer as anything remarkable at all (neither do I actually).
One thing i’ll agree on with FA people though is the concept that BMI is a preposterous scale. In order for me to be a 25 (the border to “overweight”), i’d need to have roughly 4% bodyfat, and i’m not that muscular, really. I don’t know why I weigh a lot for my height but I do apparently.
I feel sorry for you Chris21. I also feel sad for your future lovers. Your love sounds like it has a lot of rules and limits.
How does the rule of not gaining 50 pounds make it sound like my love has a lot of rules and limits. Me saying that you can’t gain 50 pounds is not an unreasonable limit on love. It’s not an unreasonable limit on anything. It’s 50 fucking pounds. Not 10 pounds, not even 20 pounds. 50 pounds! It’s not like you wake up one morning and are 50 pounds heavier. That takes a hell of a lot of time and laziness.
No i’m sorry, but i’m going to stay grounded in reality and BE HONEST with my lovers that hey, I think we’d BOTH be happier if you didn’t gain 50 pounds. I’m NOT saying “be constantly unhappy with your body because it will not be good enough for me”…i’m saying “you are awesome and perfectly capable of losing a few pounds if you want to”. And it’s not a damn lie, anyone is capable of losing a few pounds if they want to.
My husband is 100 lbs. overweight. Our sex life is non-existent, not only because I’m no longer attracted to him but because he doesn’t feel attractive. This is a difficult situation for both of us.
After reading all of the above postings I noticed not one over-weight person said what type of person they are attracted to. Are over-weight people attracted only to other over-weight people, or are they attracted to fit and trim individuals? I don’t think it’s really fair to judge.
I love my husband and have tried countless times to encourage him to lose weight; his life may depend on it. So far nothing I say has ever made a difference and he continues to gain weight and I unfortunately continue to be unattracted to him.
Chris – what if your wife gains 45lbs? What if she gains 50 during pregnancy or illness and can only lose 20 of it? You put a number on the limit of your love. For all you know the person you fall in love with may be too bony and gaining weight would be good for them. You have already decided a number and everything. What she loses a breast or two breasts to cancer? What if her boobs sag after having children? What if she is in a car accident and is broken, or burned? I wish you luck in your relationships and maybe you’ll be lucky to have somebody who will love you until you are bald and have a pot belly.
Coda – Are you talking about only visual attraction and nothing else? I think it’s hard to define love and relationships in only visual terms. I like kilts. I have always liked men with dark hair but also fell in love with a man with fair hair. Who you fall in love with may not be your ideal visual attraction. Energy, synapses, connection, all of that is so much more important. I don’t know for sure, but I’d bet that if your spouse was eating food that was good for him and getting some exercise he would feel better about himself and even if he only ever lost 25 of that 100, you probably could still be happy again because he would feel better. More fit. You would also feel like he was taking care of himself better as well, which would make you feel better yourself. When people are depressed about their looks they sort of give up and give in to the cycle and it creates lots of other problems, as you mentioned. I hope you guys can work it out!
Jeez OK, I should have stated that any extreme FAT gain caused by her OWN LAZINESS (not by a fucking disaster) is what would cause me to leave her. I’m saying that it has to be her own fault that she has let herself go because she refuses to have the willpower to stay healthy. Excessive (and I mean excessive) FAT gain is not healthy. If a girl is bony, then put some muscle on her! Fat gain isn’t the only route to being not bony. But also, if she is 3% body fat and looks like a refugee then sure, i’d be fine with it if she gained a little fat as well.
Basically what i’m saying is that if you’re such a lazy person that you gain such excessive amounts of FAT because of it I don’t want to have you in my life. A little fat gain is fine, it really is. Right now i personally am actually attempting to put on muscle but a side effect of that is a little fat gain. However in no way is it an unhealthy amount of fat gain.
I don’t plan on having a pot belly…ever. I work out and plan out my meals – because I 1) Don’t want to have that pot belly and 2) I feel more energetic and healthy. It’s just called taking care of yourself. It’s not some magical process that’s open to only a few genetically lucky individuals. It should be like brushing your teeth everyday – no one listens to anyone complain about how that’s a pain in the ass to have to do everyday. It’s automatic and accepted. Just like eating right and exercise should be.
Heather Bartlett – Stop twisting Chris’ words. The concept he states is VERY simple; choice. YOU are the one that brought in disasters. Why don’t we all be as ridiculous as you and say, “you’d stop loving her if her vagina accidentally fell on another man’s penis?!” That’s how much sense you are making.
There’s BIG difference between someone choosing to do wrong and a person struck by disaster (i.e. not their choice).
Stop being a victim and stop cheering on victims. We all risk being hit by a car but, the sane ones of us take simple steps to minimize these risks; like not walking into the middle of a busy street and saying that this was out of our control.
What if your husband decided to start chewing and lost all his teeth, you still gonna french kiss him?? (don’t lie now)
Again, this whole issue is regarding choice, not freak million item long ‘what if’ disaster lists.
I am an overweight male, 30 years old. Mind you, I’m only 70 lbs overweight as opposed to being 170lbs overweight 2 years ago. I’ve been working on reducing it, and have had moderate success. I hope to be completely done by age 31 or 32.
My whole life I’ve been attracted to a variety of women. I can’t stand the really fat ones, but a little bit of fluff is usually ok depending on how it looks on them, and how the other womanly features develop. (Yes, feminists, I include personality in there.)
I believe that it is everyone’s individual responsibility to maintain their shape as best as possible. I married someone unwilling to maintain her shape, and as such I am in a pretty miserable marriage. Once my shape is fixed up, it’s likely that I’m shipping the hell out. I figure that gives her ample time to make up her mind to do it, so it’s not like I’m springing an ultimatum of “lose 100 lbs by tomorrow or else”.
It’s just as much her responsibility to me as it is mine to her, and that is why I started losing the weight first. I guess the bottom line, though, is that I can enjoy a fluffy girl if she seems truly content. I cannot tolerate obesity, even to the slightest degree, if I can sense the brooding depression which creates it underneath. That is the biggest turn-off ever, and it makes me think that this person is so self-centered that they will never be able to truly participate in a good marriage.
The most amazing sex I ever had was with a woman who was 30 lbs overweight. I never noticed until looking objectively at her pictures six years later, but that’s just how it is. She captivated me, and not because she had some supermodel body.
Body isn’t everything, and I think most everyone knows that. Thing is, there has to be enough of an attraction to spark a relationship. Absent such attraction, you have nothing.
For obvious reasons, natural selection has hard-wired the human sex drive to be stimulated by visible signs of reproductive viability in a prospective partner — which are, basically, visible signs of being healthy. Slender people are more healthy. That’s why (with rare exceptions) we find them more attractive. Evolution did that, not culture.
As a couple of other commenters have noted, it’s odd that even as most non-troglodytes have come to realize that no amount of therapy or willpower can turn a gay person straight, the FA movement has started imagining that it’s possible for people to will themselves into changing what body types they find attractive.
Losing weight, especially in our culture which is saturated with unhealthy foods and opportunities to avoid exercise, is enormously difficult. But making yourself find fat attractive when you simply don’t is impossible.
My wife was never skinny – always about 40lbs overweight from when I met her. I didn’t find her as physically atrractive as lots of women I had dated but her personality captivated me.
I always hoped that she would diet but she never really tried – not even for our wedding but she still looked lovely.
However, there were other problems in our relationship, our sex life, her over-spending and general do-what-I like attitude.
Eventually, I stopped finding her attractive physically, although she hadn’t really changed that much physically – maybe gained another 20lbs but in the scheme of things nothing dramatic.
The change in my attraction to her was because the way I saw the other aspects of her – the thins that had captivated me in the first place – it was like it had been an illusion. I saw her in a completely different way and that changed the way I saw her physically too.
I chanced upon this site because I would actually desparately love to find her attractive again – I just don’t. There is no connection at all.
Hey Mark! You need to check out this site, bring this post on over with you. We might be able to help.
http://myfatspouse.bravehost.com/index.html
There’s more to lovingsomeone, than how they look. You guys keep paddling the shallow end of the pool, and stayin’ classy!
Before I comment, I am gay and this is about my ex bf of 4 years, so if you don’t like gays then stop reading now!
When E and I first got together I was 130 and he was 190,he’s tall so he looked good,think football player build,within a year of being together we gained about 20lbs, at first it was funny,and then the longer we were together it wasn’t funny,it was hurting our relationship,we became lazy,moody and didn’t enjoy eachothers company anymore,both of us fell into a depression,both of us held on to a relationship that should have ended,being fat helped in some ways to destroy my relationship,when you have zero self esteem,and he has the same issues it’s not a good match,I lost all attraction and the relationship became a chore,in the end fat killed the love i had,it made me angry,it made me insecure,it made me hate,you can’t force yourself to find fat attractive,in the end all that love will fade when you’re no longer feeling attracted to the person you love,so don’t. Lie,be honest fat is the enemy and if people opened their eyes and see what fat does,it destroys lives!
My wife is about 260 lbs and a size 24. We have been married for 29 years. If I could force myself to find fat attractive, I would. I have tried, but thus far all I can manage is to temporarily suppress my revulsion to the rolls of fat. If feeling a little sexual the sight and feel of the fat takes it away. If I could hypnotize myself (or be hypnotized) into thinking fat was sexy, I would do it in a minute. I have been supportive of every temporary effort she has ever made without being mean or degrading. She just loves to eat and it often feels like she loves food more than me. (And yes, I have told her this.) I feel she has traded our sex life for a second helping. I came across this site seeking for a way to make myself find her attractive. BTW I weigh 160.
Reblogged this on Vonne Monai and commented:
It was just a matter of time until same people that believe that eating what ever the heck you want, and that fat has nothing to do with health, would make yet another preposterous assertion that humans can FORCE themselves to find different types of people attractive.
I found this column after googling: “How to find a fat wife.” Suprise!