Saturday, March 03, 2007
Meat Market
A doughy-faced man-child who goes by the name of DJ Scorpio finally admitted what I had most feared about Big Beautiful Women (BBW) parties (the gatherings for fat girls and the men who admire them). “I went to a party for the first time and the girls swarmed to me like flies,” he said with a completely straight face.
“I guess that didn’t happen to you in regular clubs?” I asked, just as poker-faced. I knew well that a gig-challenged Reggateon DJ with a silver chain and no day job would get NO play anywhere else. At least he was honest.
“Nope, I get nothing.”
My friend Jodi’s allergic reaction to her first BBW party hit me like a ton of bricks. A few months ago, in an attempt to do research for a book, Jodi was nice enough to attend a Nancy Goddess event in lower Manhattan with me. I had been leery myself. I knew that Goddess had been hosting these parties for almost 20 years in New York City, but I was always deterred by my own images of a club packed with feederism-obsessed men overstuffing 400-pound women with cupcakes and then fucking them while crumbs tumbled out of their mouths. The saner part of me knew all the men couldn’t all be that bad. But “not that bad” still included used car salesmen, my seventh-grade social studies teacher Don who routinely brushed against our training bra-ed boobs, and the man I met in a Texas bar who within minutes of our acquaintance guided my hand down to his cock without ever changing his facial expression. On the other hand, I couldn’t help wanting to experience a club where people wouldn’t look at my fat in disgust, or even worse, completely ignore my existence.
So on a cold Saturday night, Jodi and I drove to Lower Manhattan, climbed the steep stairs of a nightclub on wobbly high heels and paid our $20 at a small make-shift box office table. The woman who took our cash was in a bra and she weighed 300 pounds. Before I poked my head around the wall that guarded that club, I had never seen anything like I was about to see. There in the dark, shadowy rooms I saw fat girls roaming. Curvy size 24s. Four-hundred-pounders in sequined nightwear, who needed canes to walk. Size-12 tweeners in tight jeans and cute boots. Flowing, curly hair. Short, bleached crew cuts. White. Black, Latina. One nation under a layer of fat. And there were random men scattered about in corners. Some were young and strong and fine. One was old and blind and wearing a bright red suit. One that I talked to really was a used car salesman on Route 9 in New Jersey. Who were these men? Did their friends know where they were? Were these women happy? Would they be going to the diner for a 5 a.m. breakfast or to the Sunday noon Weight Watchers meeting on the Upper West Side?
When Jodi saw the heavy female-to-male ratio, she couldn’t hold back.
“These men can have anyone they want. These girls are desperate.”
It felt like a punch in the stomach. I didn’t want these men to think they could control me because I was fat and desperate. I wanted choice and freedom and respect. After all, isn’t that why hundreds of thousands of Russians cram their families into tiny Brighton Beach apartments – for freedom and respect? Were we fat girls choice-deprived as if we lived in an anti-fat dictatorship?
In my life I had been lucky enough to attract good men. But I had also spent the better part of my alone time alone worried that I would never get a man, and planning a fabulous, but unaccompanied life. And I remember thinking that the connection I finally found with my husband was like good nutrition because I no longer had to dress up my rolls and trot my fat self out into a hateful world alone. Instead I could investigate stories for newspapers, teach college students and raise children.
So in response to Jodi’s fears I felt defensive of the girls in there. These large and feisty creatures were in a Manhattan nightclub dressed fabulously. They had cleavage. They had Lane Bryant’s finest. They had knee-high boots. And they were dancing their fat asses off. They didn’t seem desperate at all.
“but they all have on the same outfit,” said Jodi, who has ranged from thin to minimally chunky in her life.
“They only have three shops to buy clothes from, and they all look the same,” I had to admit.
I hadn’t noticed that the majority of women there had on wrap shirts –that hide your belly and boost your boobs. I have one myself. Actually four: Three wrap tanks and one black sweater. Jodi didn’t want to be desperate for her clothes or her men. Her feelings were valid. I left the party confused and unable to make sense of my experience there.
It all finally came together for me about a month later. Sometime in November an acquaintance of mine decided he had a crush on me. This shocked me partially because I had been feeling like a tired and haggard mom since my second child had been born. But it stunned me more because this man was the kind of hot that stops women in their tracks in the street.
I started to get curious about him -- not because I was interested. After all, my husband still wanted to do me after watching two babies get yanked surgically out of my belly. I wanted to know why this hot man wanted me. So I asked around. Did this guy have a history of dating fat girls? Was he some sort of fetishist? Did he have insecurity issues? Was he looking for a Mama? Did he secretly watch Karate movies and eat dry Capn’ Crunch all day on Sunday thinking that he wasn't good enough to be skating through Central Park with all the other beautiful New Yorkers? I needed to know because even after have ten years of a successful marriage and two fabulous children, the little fat girl in me needed to define my self worth in the dating world.
Upon asking around about my admirer, I learned that he dated skinny girls, most of whom he had met at the gym. Did I mention he is a personal trainer? No I swear this isn’t some weird fantasy. I got the information about my admirer from a friend of mine who went to high school with him and called everyone she knew to learn more. She called me on my cell while I was on my bicycle. “I can’t find anything wrong or abnormal about him,” she said. “I have checked in on everyone he knows and there is no weird past – although, clearly there is a problem with a man who hits on a married chick.” Good point.
That night, I had a nightmare about admirer. I wasn’t married and I was alone in a room with him. Our eyes locked and his neck smelled sweet. He was leaning in for a Danielle Steele style kiss when it clicked in my mind that I would have to strip in a minute. My mind raced through images of my bottom belly roll and the two rebellious pockets of fat that despite years of spin class still sit right at the top of my inner thighs just below my vagina. My heart was beating so hard it actually woke me up. As soon as my eyes opened I could feel Bruce breathing easily next to me. His warm little breath bursts felt like a sweet little heater on my neck. I laid there in the bed anxious and daydreaming. I had a sick image of admirer three years into our romantic relationship. We’re at a family Chanukah party and he is shooting me a hostile face to let me know I should NOT take another latke from the plate. He asks me on the way home how many times I have worked out that week, and he is not satisfied with my answer. Mid-fantansy I realize that in reality this man has fallen for me despite my weight. I guess my shining personality and brazenly stylish fat-girl clothes have done the trick. I also suspect he has had Svengali images of molding me into a thinner woman with my bold, big-girl personality. That personality would be the fabulous sense of wit many fat chicks develop to be the smartest and funniest in a room full of skinny folk. In my fantasy with admirer, I diet my rolls away for him, but that other me disappears with them and I am stuck with the sense of humor of a corpse and a mediocre body. Later my obit explains how I died in a steely and bright operating room mid-gastric bypass -- my asthma had taken over my lungs.
Suddenly the idea of a man who searched BBW parties specifically for fat girls didn’t seem so bad. Hadn’t I fallen in love with Bruce because I felt our bodies matched in bed? We had first connected during a student rally against Persian Gulf War Part 1. He was one of the rally’s leaders and I was a reporter for the campus newspaper. We talked for hours, and our intellects had fallen in love long before our hearts did. Just days into our friendship Bruce told me about his wicked crush on his 9th grade teacher Ms. Phillips. “She had the widest hips you have ever seen and an ass that stuck out like a fucking basketball,” he had said. He loved even more that this voluptuous body had been topped by a “school marmish” hairstyle and “the biggest bifocals you could ever imagine.” We were walking through the park, stomping through swampy puddles, and I remember thinking this was code for “I like ‘em big and freakin’ smart.” I had found my man.
Later his mother who showed me a picture of their family matriarchs – Bruce’s great grandmother and her three sisters sitting at a picnic table. I mentally dubbed them Bullet Betties because at least three of them looked as if they were hiding a wad of cash and possibly other hardware under their Double Ds. I thought about the Betties right before I walked down the aisle at my wedding. I was 316 pounds and Bruce stood next to the rabbi beaming at me as if I were the most beautiful woman in the world.
When I finally awoke from my nightmare about admirer, I realized I could never be loathsome of BBW parties again. Shouldn’t fat girls have a place to go where the men that hit on them are not settling, but getting exactly what they bargained for? And if some of the men there were like DJ Scorpio, couldn’t others be like Bruce – or even somewhere in between? Wasn’t it possible to walk in like DJ Scorpio and walk out with a woman who you genuinely cared about? And isn’t it true that skinny girls pick up manipulative buttholes at clubs too? The answer to BBW parties is caution. It’s like I tell my 7-year-old: “There are psychos and sweethearts on the playground. It’s your job to learn who’s who.” That goes for all of us.
“I guess that didn’t happen to you in regular clubs?” I asked, just as poker-faced. I knew well that a gig-challenged Reggateon DJ with a silver chain and no day job would get NO play anywhere else. At least he was honest.
“Nope, I get nothing.”
My friend Jodi’s allergic reaction to her first BBW party hit me like a ton of bricks. A few months ago, in an attempt to do research for a book, Jodi was nice enough to attend a Nancy Goddess event in lower Manhattan with me. I had been leery myself. I knew that Goddess had been hosting these parties for almost 20 years in New York City, but I was always deterred by my own images of a club packed with feederism-obsessed men overstuffing 400-pound women with cupcakes and then fucking them while crumbs tumbled out of their mouths. The saner part of me knew all the men couldn’t all be that bad. But “not that bad” still included used car salesmen, my seventh-grade social studies teacher Don who routinely brushed against our training bra-ed boobs, and the man I met in a Texas bar who within minutes of our acquaintance guided my hand down to his cock without ever changing his facial expression. On the other hand, I couldn’t help wanting to experience a club where people wouldn’t look at my fat in disgust, or even worse, completely ignore my existence.
So on a cold Saturday night, Jodi and I drove to Lower Manhattan, climbed the steep stairs of a nightclub on wobbly high heels and paid our $20 at a small make-shift box office table. The woman who took our cash was in a bra and she weighed 300 pounds. Before I poked my head around the wall that guarded that club, I had never seen anything like I was about to see. There in the dark, shadowy rooms I saw fat girls roaming. Curvy size 24s. Four-hundred-pounders in sequined nightwear, who needed canes to walk. Size-12 tweeners in tight jeans and cute boots. Flowing, curly hair. Short, bleached crew cuts. White. Black, Latina. One nation under a layer of fat. And there were random men scattered about in corners. Some were young and strong and fine. One was old and blind and wearing a bright red suit. One that I talked to really was a used car salesman on Route 9 in New Jersey. Who were these men? Did their friends know where they were? Were these women happy? Would they be going to the diner for a 5 a.m. breakfast or to the Sunday noon Weight Watchers meeting on the Upper West Side?
When Jodi saw the heavy female-to-male ratio, she couldn’t hold back.
“These men can have anyone they want. These girls are desperate.”
It felt like a punch in the stomach. I didn’t want these men to think they could control me because I was fat and desperate. I wanted choice and freedom and respect. After all, isn’t that why hundreds of thousands of Russians cram their families into tiny Brighton Beach apartments – for freedom and respect? Were we fat girls choice-deprived as if we lived in an anti-fat dictatorship?
In my life I had been lucky enough to attract good men. But I had also spent the better part of my alone time alone worried that I would never get a man, and planning a fabulous, but unaccompanied life. And I remember thinking that the connection I finally found with my husband was like good nutrition because I no longer had to dress up my rolls and trot my fat self out into a hateful world alone. Instead I could investigate stories for newspapers, teach college students and raise children.
So in response to Jodi’s fears I felt defensive of the girls in there. These large and feisty creatures were in a Manhattan nightclub dressed fabulously. They had cleavage. They had Lane Bryant’s finest. They had knee-high boots. And they were dancing their fat asses off. They didn’t seem desperate at all.
“but they all have on the same outfit,” said Jodi, who has ranged from thin to minimally chunky in her life.
“They only have three shops to buy clothes from, and they all look the same,” I had to admit.
I hadn’t noticed that the majority of women there had on wrap shirts –that hide your belly and boost your boobs. I have one myself. Actually four: Three wrap tanks and one black sweater. Jodi didn’t want to be desperate for her clothes or her men. Her feelings were valid. I left the party confused and unable to make sense of my experience there.
It all finally came together for me about a month later. Sometime in November an acquaintance of mine decided he had a crush on me. This shocked me partially because I had been feeling like a tired and haggard mom since my second child had been born. But it stunned me more because this man was the kind of hot that stops women in their tracks in the street.
I started to get curious about him -- not because I was interested. After all, my husband still wanted to do me after watching two babies get yanked surgically out of my belly. I wanted to know why this hot man wanted me. So I asked around. Did this guy have a history of dating fat girls? Was he some sort of fetishist? Did he have insecurity issues? Was he looking for a Mama? Did he secretly watch Karate movies and eat dry Capn’ Crunch all day on Sunday thinking that he wasn't good enough to be skating through Central Park with all the other beautiful New Yorkers? I needed to know because even after have ten years of a successful marriage and two fabulous children, the little fat girl in me needed to define my self worth in the dating world.
Upon asking around about my admirer, I learned that he dated skinny girls, most of whom he had met at the gym. Did I mention he is a personal trainer? No I swear this isn’t some weird fantasy. I got the information about my admirer from a friend of mine who went to high school with him and called everyone she knew to learn more. She called me on my cell while I was on my bicycle. “I can’t find anything wrong or abnormal about him,” she said. “I have checked in on everyone he knows and there is no weird past – although, clearly there is a problem with a man who hits on a married chick.” Good point.
That night, I had a nightmare about admirer. I wasn’t married and I was alone in a room with him. Our eyes locked and his neck smelled sweet. He was leaning in for a Danielle Steele style kiss when it clicked in my mind that I would have to strip in a minute. My mind raced through images of my bottom belly roll and the two rebellious pockets of fat that despite years of spin class still sit right at the top of my inner thighs just below my vagina. My heart was beating so hard it actually woke me up. As soon as my eyes opened I could feel Bruce breathing easily next to me. His warm little breath bursts felt like a sweet little heater on my neck. I laid there in the bed anxious and daydreaming. I had a sick image of admirer three years into our romantic relationship. We’re at a family Chanukah party and he is shooting me a hostile face to let me know I should NOT take another latke from the plate. He asks me on the way home how many times I have worked out that week, and he is not satisfied with my answer. Mid-fantansy I realize that in reality this man has fallen for me despite my weight. I guess my shining personality and brazenly stylish fat-girl clothes have done the trick. I also suspect he has had Svengali images of molding me into a thinner woman with my bold, big-girl personality. That personality would be the fabulous sense of wit many fat chicks develop to be the smartest and funniest in a room full of skinny folk. In my fantasy with admirer, I diet my rolls away for him, but that other me disappears with them and I am stuck with the sense of humor of a corpse and a mediocre body. Later my obit explains how I died in a steely and bright operating room mid-gastric bypass -- my asthma had taken over my lungs.
Suddenly the idea of a man who searched BBW parties specifically for fat girls didn’t seem so bad. Hadn’t I fallen in love with Bruce because I felt our bodies matched in bed? We had first connected during a student rally against Persian Gulf War Part 1. He was one of the rally’s leaders and I was a reporter for the campus newspaper. We talked for hours, and our intellects had fallen in love long before our hearts did. Just days into our friendship Bruce told me about his wicked crush on his 9th grade teacher Ms. Phillips. “She had the widest hips you have ever seen and an ass that stuck out like a fucking basketball,” he had said. He loved even more that this voluptuous body had been topped by a “school marmish” hairstyle and “the biggest bifocals you could ever imagine.” We were walking through the park, stomping through swampy puddles, and I remember thinking this was code for “I like ‘em big and freakin’ smart.” I had found my man.
Later his mother who showed me a picture of their family matriarchs – Bruce’s great grandmother and her three sisters sitting at a picnic table. I mentally dubbed them Bullet Betties because at least three of them looked as if they were hiding a wad of cash and possibly other hardware under their Double Ds. I thought about the Betties right before I walked down the aisle at my wedding. I was 316 pounds and Bruce stood next to the rabbi beaming at me as if I were the most beautiful woman in the world.
When I finally awoke from my nightmare about admirer, I realized I could never be loathsome of BBW parties again. Shouldn’t fat girls have a place to go where the men that hit on them are not settling, but getting exactly what they bargained for? And if some of the men there were like DJ Scorpio, couldn’t others be like Bruce – or even somewhere in between? Wasn’t it possible to walk in like DJ Scorpio and walk out with a woman who you genuinely cared about? And isn’t it true that skinny girls pick up manipulative buttholes at clubs too? The answer to BBW parties is caution. It’s like I tell my 7-year-old: “There are psychos and sweethearts on the playground. It’s your job to learn who’s who.” That goes for all of us.
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