Fat Chicks

Dear Madame X,

I saw an article on your website about BBW and it gave me hope. I am a large teenage girl and no one at school likes me. I ask my friends to ask boys whether they like bigger girls before I can talk to them but none of them say yes. I’ve chatted to a few people on the sites but my mom caught me and freaked out. She says people should like me for who I am inside not how I look, but how can I find that person when I look so fat?

Petunia Pig

Dear Petunia Pig,

First of all, stop calling yourself a pig!

I know you have probably heard this before, but plenty of teenage girls feel fat, when in reality they are perfectly normal sized. At puberty women start producing more fat than they did in childhood (to help with the baby-making) and sometimes this change can be shocking, but is not actually as drastic as some people feel it is. Now, I don’t know your actual height or weight, but there’s a good chance you fit in to this category.

I think the first thing to do is to stop looking at the typical models in magazines as the ideal body type. They are way below average and it has been shown that people underweight are at greater risk of health problems than those overweight.

There’s been a great trend lately of plus sized models working in fashion (although I like to call them normal-sized models, as more women look like them than the typical model).

Now if you truly are overweight and are truly worried about your health, please see your doctor for some advice.

But at the same time you need to learn that being fat doesn’t have to be the end of the world.

There’s a great journalist who writes a fat acceptance blog called Shapely Prose and she has written a great article on why being fat is okay. She writes:

So when they say “You’re not fat,” what they really mean is “You’re not a dozen nasty things I associate with the word fat.” The size of your body is not what’s in question; a tape measure or a mirror could solve that dispute. What’s in question is your goodness, your lovability, your intelligence, your kindness, your attractiveness. And your friends, not surprisingly, are inclined to believe you get high marks in all those categories. Ergo, you couldn’t possibly be fat.

But I am. I am cute and healthy and pleasant-smelling (usually) and ambitious and smart and lovable and fun and stylish and friendly and outgoing and categorically not icky. And I am fat — just like I’m also short, also American, also blonde (with a little chemical assistance). It is just one fucking word that describes me, out of hundreds that could. Those three little letters do not actually cancel out all of my good qualities.

So I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that there are lots of fat women out there who are beautiful, intelligent, kind, generous, happy, and both loving and loved.

BBW is only a very small part of this. The BBW you refer to is men who have a fetish for fat women, and although you might be able to find love by looking in that community, it’s more important that you first learn to love and accept yourself.

Have a look at some of the articles and community discussion online about fat acceptance and I think you will find it much more useful than trying to find a man who has a fetish for fat people.

But I do understand you are worried and I understand that being fat can present some challenges and it can be difficult to fit in sometimes.

If you are concerned about your health (physical or mental) maybe talking to a counsellor about your feelings would be helpful. It wouldn’t have to be forever, but maybe just a few times to help you get through the rough patches.

This column will appear every Wednesday to spice up your week.

Please email me with any and all questions about sex and relationships and I will answer them in this column.

Also read:

Fat Chicks Are The Final Frontier