General

Wow. The misogyny is off the charts.

So, I am a buff woman. Neither fat nor thin. Which ... kinda puts me outside of your little binary, but maybe that will lend more credence to my words.

Being into fat women or thin women isn't inherently a fetish. But it is possible to have a fetish for either (or both). In fact, if you can think of it, there's a fetish for it. Kinda like Rule 34.

Also, women exist outside of our ability to procreate and provide sexual pleasure for men.

Women have existed in all shapes and sizes since the beginning of humanity. And as cultures evolve and change certain body types come into fashion.

Right now, there exist cultures that glorify thin women as well as fat women. Both come with their own flavors of toxicity, but it all boils down to one thing:

When society tells women "You must look like this", it creates a kind of violence. There's a pressure to achieve and maintain a certain look as well as punishment for those that don't.

Meanwhile, women's bodies are vilified, objectified, and scrutinized with disregard to the women that inhabit these bodies.

Look, man. Like what you like. If you like fat women, you like fat women. You certainly are in the right place for it. But don't be a prick. Idk what you are going through, but that's no excuse as to how you are acting.

This comes off as very anti thin, Nothing wrong with being thin or fat, Very kind of body shape is beautifully

Kinda find it cringe that your saying what does and doesn't make a women attractive like sheer fact, Attractiveness towards someone is a personal preference and taste

Shout out to all the thin girls, muscles girls, chubby girls, fat girls and every other type of girl, You rock

Yah, you're right, should have edited this, wrote it in the middle of the night after reading something of the opposite viewpoint that pissed me and then didn't reread it before posting, not sure what I was thinking. Not the way I meant it, sorry. Thanks for calling it out. I meant it as an overreaction to the material I'd read, as compensatory, not as offensive, went overboard on the rhetoric. At the bare minimum, the first sentences of the 4th and 5th paragraphs should have been removed or greatly altered, clearly a poor choice of phrasing lol.

Mmmm, yah, poor phrasing throughout, though I didn't actually say thin wasn't attractive - I find it attractive, lol - what I said was that it doesn't have a biological reason to be attractive outside of waist to hip ratio. Which, still, is an overgeneralization, and cringe for other reasons. But no, not cringe for that particular reason.

I have a background in debate and public speaking, and I studied human biology, psychology, and sociology in college. Your argument is flawed. If you wish to critique the societal concepts of beauty, doing it through a biological lens makes no sense.

Biological attractiveness is about which traits best encourage reproduction. This isn't a static feature. The basic concept of evolution necessitates this fluidity.

In addition, human attractiveness is best understood through sociology and psychology rather than biology. Since humans are very good at transforming our environment to suit our needs, our drive to reproduce is based on other factors (e.g. culture and personal taste).

I find your so-called rant utterly fascinating. You claim that this is a critique of society, but you also clearly indicate a right way and a wrong way to be attractive as a woman. You say things like "A thin female body, on the other hand, has no biological reason to be attractive" and call the desire to be thin "neither natural nor healthy".

By your logic, thin women should either not exist or not be considered attractive by the larger society. This isn't a critique of social beauty so much as it is a long-winded way to body shame. It is both misogynistic and ablest.

If you would like some examples of how to critique social beauty without denigrating women, here are some examples:





Both are outstanding video essayists. I recommend everyone give these two a gander.

preach

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I just have to say, I realize that you mean some of this ironically or perjoratively, but I am very appreciative for you being willing to respond. If you feel this way, it means many others probably felt this way as well but did not respond. So thank you for responding, and thank you for giving me the chance to clarify my own thoughts.



That is an interesting and thought-provoking perspective, though I think the phrase "best understood" is a rather odd choice given your displeasure with my own subjective charges. That human attractiveness can and should be and is studied through sociology and psychology is absolutely correct and valid. That thinking of humans as not being animals, however, and as biology not also being an important and useful lens... seems an odd argument from someone that studied all of this stuff. Can you elaborate?





You know, someone else said that too. Where did I say that, exactly?

Wherever it was, I certainly did not mean it to sound as it apparently sounded to you and others. Perhaps that is where your charge of misogyny originated from.

I do not think... that I think, that there is a right and wrong way to be attractive as a woman. I think... that it seems odd, or ironic - both, I guess - that society, certainly American culture and fashion, so promotes excessive thinness as the ideal body type for women. To the degree that yes, it very much fetishizes thinness. And that in turn makes it ironic to think of appreciating heavier women as itself a fetish, an irony then multiplied by the fact that, yes, biologically, fat on a female body has been a central indicator of fertility for much of human history and prehistory, afaik.

You may find this fascinating as well, but I actually did not mean for this rant to be about how women choose express themselves AT ALL. It was only envisaged and intended as a rebuke of the current societal norm of exulting female thinness, especially in reference to the further exclusion of other body types, and how this has gotten to the point where the vast majority of the fashion industry is focused on either completely ignoring women that aren't thin or, "at best", convincing women that aren't thin that they need to hide anything that isn't thin, and then selling to resulting socially-engineered demand to hide parts of the body that are totally natural, even laudable - those same parts that on a thin woman are encouraged by that same industry and culture to reveal or show off or use to tantalize, to look cute, etc. Personally, I do find it cute on thin women. I just ALSO find it cute on heavier women, and it seems like that focus on only thinness has gotten to the point where it is, VERY MUCH, a fetish. And not even (solely) a sexual fetish - a socionormative fetish, a fetish of what is generally seen as even acceptable, much less attractive. And personally, I find that disturbing and, frankly, offensive (though I acknowledge the irony considering how I have seriously offended you by how poorly I've expressed it, lol).





That I said; do you have an argument specifically about "biological reason to be attractive"?

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No, you read that, but that was not what I said nor meant. However, my sentence there was poorly structured for such as strong ending, and certainly it was long enough to be confusing. The actual subject was meant to be "disease and damage" - rather redundant with "neither natural nor healthy", lol - with the focus of "cultural bodysize dismorphia and the pursuit (read: fetishization) of female thinness. The intention of that admittedly ambiguous phrase, "the pursuit of female thinness", was not in terms of what women want themselves - which nowhere through this entire piece or really my entire life did I ever think to comment on much less to dictate - but of what society, and to a lesser degree men, seem to push. Thus the clarifier, "fetishization", and the adjective, "cultural". As in: "cultural bodysize dismorphia and the cultural fetishization of female thinness". If this was the main reason for your responses here, I am sorry for wasting your time - like I said, I should have edited this more carefully before posting it.





Not what I said nor meant nor think.

My intention was mainly to highlight the irony of speaking of appreciating fat female bodies as a fetish while ignoring the hypocrisy and irony of how thin female bodies are viewed. Clearly the execution leaves something to be desired.





Okay, seriously though.

"Misogynistic": "strongly prejudiced against women". How?

"Ablest"... HOW?

Are you just looking for words that end in "ist" at this point?

I suppose you could say I am culturalist and racist too for focusing on predominantly white western society too. Or a misanthropist or misandrist for my charges against a culture made of people and still largely run by men. Or homophobic for not discussing or focusing on same-sex attraction, or for attacking fashion which is stereotypically seen as being run by gay men.

I mean, a lot of the stuff you said had a good point, or at least pointed out how my flawed prose could be misinterpreted. But... not this. Not unless you have a seriously good defense that there is something I am glaringly missing about my own character.

Thank you, will do so now.