It takes a long long time to accept yourself especially if your body doesn't conform to society's ideals. Girls particularly are totally brainwashed into thinking that only slim is attractive.
Could you show her this site without freaking her out? I find the more fat bodies I look at, the more my brain has trained itself to think of a larger woman as normal - to the point where I sometimes do a double-take when I see a skinny woman in a magazine or on the tv.
And the more you look at fat people, the more you see beyond the fat to the fact that there is an individual with their own qualities underneath, without the fact that they are fat being the first thing you notice.
I'm not saying whitewash the fact they are fat because that's unpalatable. I'm saying that most people have been so conditioned to recoil at the sight of fat that that is all they see - the average person doesn't look closer and see what beautiful hair/eyes/skin/fashion sense/grace etc or indeed PERSONALITY a fat person might possess, which at the end of the day is obviously the most important factor.
Perhaps if your girlfriend gets used to fat being commonplace and normal she won't feel that that is the only thing that defines her, the first thing people notice, the most important thing about her, and will be able to accept it and rank it where it belongs - an incidental aspect of her appearance like the colour of her eyes or the length of her nails.
But it's a really hard stage to get to, and you may find you can't help. She might just have to go through the processes of getting there herself in her own time.
11 years
