As stated elsewhere, the posting tonight refers to a blog post in which the blogger stated that fat women could attract men of all sizes, and shouldn't settle for men they didn't consider attractive. The blogger also seemed to consider "tall men with tattoos" as conventionally hot.
Lesleigh Owen and I talked about this previously. We also discussed the concept of "fatting" - of making fat attractive, of linking concepts and ideas and thoughts and scenes to fat beauty, of redefining and writing fat beauty into poems. For in order for fat people -men, women, trans people- to consider themselves desirable and attractive, they must feel that their bodies and auras can be thought of as hot.
What struck me in reading (and responding to) the ensuing conversation, and what made me sad, is that the men who responded, mostly but not only fat men, assumed that they could not be considered conventionally hot. I myself have certain definitions of "hot" which do not involve any particular body types, and which emphasize wit, humor and urbaneness. I think the author of the blog and posting was trying to make the point that fat women should not consider any particular body type "off the table." However, the men who read it were insulted that she mentioned a specific kind of conventionally "hot" kind of body, even though at no time did she restrict "hotness" to that one body type.
I felt sad that the men reading the post would consider themselves as made to feel unattractive or marginalized. (Although of course this is how fat women have been made to feel for decades..)
I hope that fat men will do more writing about themselves as hot and sexy and desirable. I would love love love to see more fat men writing poetry about their fat, sexy selves.
No comments:
Post a Comment