You Fat Bitch!

Stereotypes about fat people abound in our culture, but men fair much better than women.  Men can be portly, “large”, “big-boned”, “big”, corpulent even sounds elite and cultured.  Sure, fat guys get heckled on tv and in movies, but its always in that “aw, shucks!” joshing sort of way that lets the guy know he’s still respected by his male friends and even might deserve to get laid once in a while.

Fat women, on the other hand, that’s a travesty unto itself.  If you don’t think that a fat woman is tantamount to heretical, consider the sexy magazine ads for perfume or cologne.  The scantily clad woman and the topless male embrace with longing stares.  The suggestiveness of sex permeates the page.  Or, tv commercials with the promise of the hot chick if only you wore Axe aftershave, or bought the newest Scion.  Replace all those anorexic chicks with a 200 pound mamma and you will revolt nearly all American viewers.  Nothing says “turn off” more than a fat woman.

What’s astounding is the level of animosity our culture has toward fat women.  They aren’t just repugnant (at least at the media level), they are an embarrassment.  Unlike fat men with their beer bellies and their box of donuts, fat women rarely get air time–and when they do it’s a mockery. Neither Roseanne Barr or Rosie O’Donnell have ever gained the respect their male counterparts have enjoyed.  The message of the media is loud and clear.  Fat women should not be seen–which means never, ever heard or acknowledged.

When fat women are actually noticed, or make themselves unavoidable, they are presented in derogatory and demeaning ways, often with slurs aimed at their sexuality, temperament and nearly all preceded by the word “fat”:

• fat bitch
• fat whore
• fat slut
• fat dyke
• bull dyke
• fat pig
• fat cunt
• fat ass
• and so on

Although it might be reasonably argued that fat women have a reason for being bitchy, let’s dismiss this for the moment and focus on why these invectives are used with such prevalence and ferocity.

Are fat women bitchy?  Some, but probably no more than skinny women, whom in my experience tend toward much more “bitchiness” than larger women simply because they don’t eat.  Not eating starves their brains and they can’t not be bitchy.  I’d be bitchy too if I didn’t eat in order to wear a size zero.  But, joking aside,  perhaps the problem here isn’t one of general personality but of size.  A large woman is noticeable.  She is not demure or diminutive.  She may be soft-spoken, but she’s present regardless of how much she might try to draw attention away from herself.  Nothing raises fear in the male mind more than a perceived threat by a woman (ooooh, castration time).  And a large woman, at least sub-consciously, represents the inner mother men fear will smother them.  Is this true?  Perhaps.  But, it looms in the recesses of our collective psyches.  If it didn’t Norman Bates would never have caused the terror he did because of his mother’s overbearingness.  The only way for a man to redeem his superiority against this barrage of adipose is to insult it into inferiority.  ”Fat bitch” reassures the unadjusted male that he is in control and still virile.  It allows him to de-humanize that which he fears rather than simply feminize her (which is impossible because of her girth; stereotype: “feminine”=skinny).

Women can also play the “fat bitch” card also.  I suspect much of this is due to rampant jealousy rather than fear.  A fat woman lives for herself.  She eats what she wants even if she doesn’t like what it does to her.  Excessively thin women want food, but fear it more–and they fear rejection by the male.  Fat=unfeminine, which is counter to a great deal of our human history.

Oddly, enough many other epitaphs regard fat women as sexually promiscuous or at another extreme, men-haters  (for good reasons, perhaps).  These might be true in some cases, but no more than with thinner women.  Many a sexually abused girl becomes lesbian or hates men; being fat is not a prerequisite.   Yet these slurs defy any logic, since the very “fatness” that makes a woman presumably undesirable to a man, would paradoxically make her a sex object for a man’s pleasure.    This might be the key to actually demonstrating the violent, controlling nature of rape, since by this logic a man would only desire to have sex with a fat woman if he was raping her, thereby demonstrating his “power” over her threatening obesity.

Then, there is the “fat-woman-as-sex-crazed-harlot” approach to this insult.  This presumes, in general, that all “whores” want it.  And they want it bad.  But, even more so with a fat woman, who simultaneously wants to consume the man by smothering him with her fat–overtaking his power with her beefy cunt.  Some men may desire this (I’m sure there are plenty of “stories” in Penthouse to titillate the chunky-loving bunches), but in general, I think our society (i.e., male-dominated society) resonates with terror at the thought of being subsumed by a fat woman in bed.  [Fortunately, NOT all men behave this way, and with the increase in fat everybody, I think such attitudes about weight and sex will undoubtedly change.]

As for the dyke bit–well, it’s just laughable.  Sure, there are bulldykes out there who would sooner rip a man’s balls off than give him the time of day, but fat is not necessarily a pre-requisite.  Lorena Bobbitt was thin and look at what she manage with a pair of scissors.

Yet, one can make connections combining the “fat bitch” diminutive with the “fat whore” accusation.  A “fat dyke” would perhaps be the ultimate insult since the targeted fat woman would become not just an object of ridicule, but detested utterly.  She’s so repulsive to the male that he cannot consider she would be appealing to any male whatsoever.  She must be lesbian–it is the only way feasible to reduce her to a level in which she can then be further insulted or mistreated.

Of course, as a counterargument to all of these notions is one even more perverse.  Men actually find themselves more attracted to the curvy, voluptuousness of a fatter female.  On a primal level, heterosexual men do not want sex with boys (i.e. skinny women shaped like sticks with vaginas), but want something to hang on to and feel beneath or on top.  Perhaps, the cultural images media produces are not representative AT ALL about how men might feel, but how society wants men to THINK about fat women.  Of course, I doubt every man has a secret fantasy about “doing it” with a fat girl, but it would go a long way to explain why many men end up with satisfying relationships with a less than skinny woman.

I think I could make the case that men repulsed by fat women could a) genuinely be repulsed and at some level threatened by a fat woman, or b) they are in fact attracted to fat women but are indoctrinated to believe that such attraction is “abnormal” and should be repressed.   This follows the notion that we often vehemently reject outright the very objects of our desire, particularly when we understand on a deeper level that society does not approve.

I’m sure that “truth” is muddled up somewhere in these places and more.  What is important is discussing them, whether right, wrong, true or false–so that we can rethink our positions on a very “weighty” issue that has detrimental effects on an every growing number of people, particularly women.

Tags: fat, fat bitch, fat dyke, fat whore, fattitudes, stereotypes