Real Sex Lives: Betty Fokker, "Even I, schooled in feminist thought and the rejection of fat-hating bullshit, wonder why he would ever WANT to fuck me"

(You have arrived in the midst of a grand celebration in which we're running IBWMW's all-time favorite Real Sex Lives.)

Today's guest post comes courtesy of the lovely Betty Fokker, penner of The Stay-at-Home Feminist Mom. (The slogan on her blog-- and just one of the many reasons I love her so--is: Don't try to oppress me with your patriarchal values. It will not go well for you.) 

Betty is hilarious, smart, and takes my breath away with her adept cussing. She is also fat. Oh, don't worry, she'd tell you the same thing herself.  

Now normally, Betty is well aware of how smoking hot she is, and rails against the whole stinkin' fat-hating society, but in the following post, dear Betty briefly succumbs to self doubt. Here she's talking about fat, but I think a lot of chicks could say the same thing about their stupid straight and/or curly hair, freaky pointy ears, or whatever.

(An aside: It took me like an hour to find a decent image (above left) to convey the concept of sexy zaftig womanliness. By contrast, it took me .00000004 seconds to find an image to convey the idea of "lady with big boobies.")

I also like her post because not only does Betty use the term "asshat" with typical aplomb, but she also lays down this sentence: "Even when I walk out of the shower and he pops a boner that you could club a baby seal with, I still wonder if he likes what he sees."

Here now, ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Betty Fokker:

Turns out that almost 1/3 of the women of Britain feel that they are too fat to have sex, and that (strangely!) has a negative effect on their libido. Imagine, if you will, the concept that you loathe your physical self so much you don’t feel you should have sex since some poor male (or female, since the Fokker doesn’t care one way or another who shares your bed. I am not an asshat.) would have to look at your nekkid flesh, and touch your smooshy body. I don’t have to image, considering the fact every time my Sweet Babou wants to tear up the sheets doing a nekkid waltz, I am surprised and bewildered.

Even I, schooled in feminist thought and the rejection of fat-hating bullshit, wonder why he would ever WANT to fuck me. I’m fat, therefore I am undesirable.

I have always, in my heart, operated under the assumption that he loves me so much he is willing to make the sweaty pretzel with me despite the fact I am repulsive to look upon. Moreover, I see that love as a sign of his quality as a superior human, not as a function of my worth. I just feel lucky. Like a lottery winner, not someone who invented the next-big-thing in computers and got rich from my efforts.

I was a well-loved and petted preschooler, so I always had the hope, maybe even the assumption, that I would be a lottery-winner in love one day. After all, I had been loved, so it wasn’t beyond the realm of reality. But as all the cultural messages of my ‘ugliness’ because of my obesity hammered at me for years, I assumed it would be one of those miraculous events – like a reverse beauty and the beast. I dreamed that one day a man would love me in spite of my hideous outward appearance. Which is better than the idea that I would never be loved, I guess, but is still all kinds of Fokked up.

Maybe I would have been more sanguine that Sweet Babou desired me is he had been a chubby-chaser. Then it would have made sense to me why he wanted me. But no, his prior girlfriends could be used to skewer cocktail hors d'oeuvres. So I have always believed, on some level, that loving me was a great sacrifice on his part, done because his heart was pure. All the rumpy-pumpy since we met has failed to convince me otherwise. Even when I walk out of the shower and he pops a boner that you could club a baby seal to death with, I still wonder if he likes what he sees.

This is not what I want to feel. I want to believe, as well as understand, that my fat does not devalue me. I do not believe it devalues others, but I cannot shake that feeling about myself. It makes me all the more determined, as a woman and a mother and a feminist, to fight fat-haters on every front, since this is horrible and I don’t want my daughters or any other woman to ever think of themselves as less because their body is more. Fat–hate and discrimination is BULLSHIT, y’all.

But I still wonder if he secretly thinks I’m yucky.

*****

See also: My Wife's Body by An Anonymous Husband, in which a husband examines this phenomenon from the male point of view.

xoxo
jill

(image source: http://lacontessa.tumblr.com/post/907275831/tamara-de-lempicka-le-modele-1925)