07-02-2026, 05:00 PM
Hello, visitor!
Article:
The Rumpus
We don’t like to think that love traffics in the same biases that shape our culture—but of course it does. Mixed Feelings: Am I Too Fat For Love? I’m twenty-three, female, and single—not entirely by choice.
Click here for fat and looking for love
I’m fat, also not by choice, but I feel as though it has irrevocably damaged my romantic and dating life. After years of being told my body is ugly and unattractive by my parents, classmates, and god knows who else, I kinda believe it. I have a decent-ish face, which helps offset some of the feelings I experience from being overweight. And I have a strong, brash, loud, sarcastic, and funny demeanor, almost as if to compensate for my fatness. So, when I do happen to be in a relationship, I see and feel myself change. I convince myself that because I’m so ugly, I should be grateful that a man should even want to be with me. As a result, I have forgiven my past two partners for being awful, ignorant, not treating me right (the list goes on), because who the hell else is going to date me, right? Luckily on both occasions, I ended things with each man after having a moment of clarity. The thing is, it’s been two years since I broke up with my last boyfriend and I feel lonely. I haven’t even kissed anyone in the time since. Men don’t tend to hit on me. If they do, it seems like a joke to me and I push them away. That has only happened once this year, anyway. In the other instance this year where it didn’t seem like a joke, I wasn’t attracted to him—and I’m proud of myself for rejecting him. I’m trying to use Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble for something—anything. I just want to feel some sort of contact. I get matches but all my pictures are from the bust up, so I’m made to feel like I’m being deceptive by not revealing my body. My friend who is also plus-size but much prettier than me advised just to say I’m fat up front on my profile. When I did that, I got no matches. I want to know: What can I do to gain confidence? How can I undo the years of attacks on my appearance? How can I feel attractive enough to take a simple full-body selfie? How can I ensure I won’t lose my personality to a man ever again? – Lost and Lonely. Dear Lost and Lonely, I’ve been reading and rereading your letter and I keep coming back to that thing that people often say in moments like this: You have to love yourself before anyone else can love you. This idea has always kind of annoyed me, but it’s taken me awhile to figure out why. I think the folks who offer this particular platitude often do so with the best intentions. Confidence is attractive. And loving yourself is an absolutely worthwhile aspiration. But the idea that someone doesn’t deserve love—or isn’t ready for it—until they are a model of relaxed self confidence just doesn’t sit well with me. Because it implies that if you want a partner and don’t have one, it’s at least a little bit your fault. But I don’t think that’s how love really works. Don’t most of us—in the darker corners of our psyches—harbor a quiet fear that some part of who we are is truly unlovable? I suspect we like the “love yourself first” ideology because we like to believe that love is connected to deservingness. We also like to imagine that attraction and desire are shaped by forces beyond our control. We don’t like to think that love traffics in the same biases that shape our culture—but of course it does. And one of those biases is that being thin is the only way to be beautiful. Our culture fetishizes thinness in countless ways, from gossip mags that monitor celebrities’ “post-baby bodies” to Oprah’s endorsement of Weight Watchers. We act as if being thin is a triumph of willpower and being fat is a moral failure. People who are fat are promised that when (and only when) they lose weight, they’ll suddenly find happiness, health, and love. And yet, the evidence shows that most people who lose weight are unlikely to maintain the weight loss over time. Our obsession with transformation, dieting, celebrity cellulite, and shows like The Biggest Loser isn’t harmless. It has real, serious consequences. According to Linda Bacon, a nutritionist who founded the Health at Every Size movement, these consequences include: “food and body preoccupation, repeated cycles of weight loss and regain, distraction from other personal health goals and wider health determinants, reduced self-esteem, [and] eating disorders.” Far from making us thinner or healthier, the shame we assign to being fat is making our physical and mental health significantly worse. To put it concisely, fat stigma is a load of hot garbage. It’s not just unkind and unhealthy, it’s deeply dehumanizing. I’m so sorry that the people you love have thrown this load of garbage across your shoulders. I’m sorry we live in a world that says that fat is inadequate, shameful, “ugly”—the word that echoes each time I read your letter. I admire how honest you are about all the things we’re told never to mention—shame, desire, longing, loneliness. I couldn’t even say these things with the voice in my head when I was twenty-three, but I felt them—deeply. It’s really hard to love yourself when the world tells you every day in a hundred tiny ways that you have failed to achieve the incredibly narrow standard for desirability. But what’s ugly here isn’t you, it’s our culture. Last weekend, I spent several hours lying on the couch researching skincare regimes. While I did this, my partner washed the breakfast dishes, walked the dog, went to the grocery store, and made us lunch. “Still looking at beauty products?” he prodded as he set the table. “I know. I know,” I groaned. “It seems ridiculous and vain. But it’s hard—despite my feminist convictions—to feel confident when I see all these ads and magazine articles and blog posts telling me I should be worried about getting old and saggy.” “I get it,” he said. “But you don’t!” I protested. “You don’t get these messages.” I explained that, in my quest for reliable information, I’d found an article published by the Northwestern School of Medicine called “Understanding Skin Care for Your Daily Health,” which seemed to offer actual, dermatological information. But even it was explicitly addressed to women. “If this is actual medical advice then why don’t men need this stuff, too?” I demanded. The problem with the skincare industry is the same problem with the weight-loss industry, which is that major corporations thrive off of our insecurities. They create ads designed to perpetuate those insecurities and then sell us products that promise to relieve them.
Fat and looking for love
Article:
The Rumpus
We don’t like to think that love traffics in the same biases that shape our culture—but of course it does. Mixed Feelings: Am I Too Fat For Love? I’m twenty-three, female, and single—not entirely by choice.
Click here for fat and looking for love
I’m fat, also not by choice, but I feel as though it has irrevocably damaged my romantic and dating life. After years of being told my body is ugly and unattractive by my parents, classmates, and god knows who else, I kinda believe it. I have a decent-ish face, which helps offset some of the feelings I experience from being overweight. And I have a strong, brash, loud, sarcastic, and funny demeanor, almost as if to compensate for my fatness. So, when I do happen to be in a relationship, I see and feel myself change. I convince myself that because I’m so ugly, I should be grateful that a man should even want to be with me. As a result, I have forgiven my past two partners for being awful, ignorant, not treating me right (the list goes on), because who the hell else is going to date me, right? Luckily on both occasions, I ended things with each man after having a moment of clarity. The thing is, it’s been two years since I broke up with my last boyfriend and I feel lonely. I haven’t even kissed anyone in the time since. Men don’t tend to hit on me. If they do, it seems like a joke to me and I push them away. That has only happened once this year, anyway. In the other instance this year where it didn’t seem like a joke, I wasn’t attracted to him—and I’m proud of myself for rejecting him. I’m trying to use Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble for something—anything. I just want to feel some sort of contact. I get matches but all my pictures are from the bust up, so I’m made to feel like I’m being deceptive by not revealing my body. My friend who is also plus-size but much prettier than me advised just to say I’m fat up front on my profile. When I did that, I got no matches. I want to know: What can I do to gain confidence? How can I undo the years of attacks on my appearance? How can I feel attractive enough to take a simple full-body selfie? How can I ensure I won’t lose my personality to a man ever again? – Lost and Lonely. Dear Lost and Lonely, I’ve been reading and rereading your letter and I keep coming back to that thing that people often say in moments like this: You have to love yourself before anyone else can love you. This idea has always kind of annoyed me, but it’s taken me awhile to figure out why. I think the folks who offer this particular platitude often do so with the best intentions. Confidence is attractive. And loving yourself is an absolutely worthwhile aspiration. But the idea that someone doesn’t deserve love—or isn’t ready for it—until they are a model of relaxed self confidence just doesn’t sit well with me. Because it implies that if you want a partner and don’t have one, it’s at least a little bit your fault. But I don’t think that’s how love really works. Don’t most of us—in the darker corners of our psyches—harbor a quiet fear that some part of who we are is truly unlovable? I suspect we like the “love yourself first” ideology because we like to believe that love is connected to deservingness. We also like to imagine that attraction and desire are shaped by forces beyond our control. We don’t like to think that love traffics in the same biases that shape our culture—but of course it does. And one of those biases is that being thin is the only way to be beautiful. Our culture fetishizes thinness in countless ways, from gossip mags that monitor celebrities’ “post-baby bodies” to Oprah’s endorsement of Weight Watchers. We act as if being thin is a triumph of willpower and being fat is a moral failure. People who are fat are promised that when (and only when) they lose weight, they’ll suddenly find happiness, health, and love. And yet, the evidence shows that most people who lose weight are unlikely to maintain the weight loss over time. Our obsession with transformation, dieting, celebrity cellulite, and shows like The Biggest Loser isn’t harmless. It has real, serious consequences. According to Linda Bacon, a nutritionist who founded the Health at Every Size movement, these consequences include: “food and body preoccupation, repeated cycles of weight loss and regain, distraction from other personal health goals and wider health determinants, reduced self-esteem, [and] eating disorders.” Far from making us thinner or healthier, the shame we assign to being fat is making our physical and mental health significantly worse. To put it concisely, fat stigma is a load of hot garbage. It’s not just unkind and unhealthy, it’s deeply dehumanizing. I’m so sorry that the people you love have thrown this load of garbage across your shoulders. I’m sorry we live in a world that says that fat is inadequate, shameful, “ugly”—the word that echoes each time I read your letter. I admire how honest you are about all the things we’re told never to mention—shame, desire, longing, loneliness. I couldn’t even say these things with the voice in my head when I was twenty-three, but I felt them—deeply. It’s really hard to love yourself when the world tells you every day in a hundred tiny ways that you have failed to achieve the incredibly narrow standard for desirability. But what’s ugly here isn’t you, it’s our culture. Last weekend, I spent several hours lying on the couch researching skincare regimes. While I did this, my partner washed the breakfast dishes, walked the dog, went to the grocery store, and made us lunch. “Still looking at beauty products?” he prodded as he set the table. “I know. I know,” I groaned. “It seems ridiculous and vain. But it’s hard—despite my feminist convictions—to feel confident when I see all these ads and magazine articles and blog posts telling me I should be worried about getting old and saggy.” “I get it,” he said. “But you don’t!” I protested. “You don’t get these messages.” I explained that, in my quest for reliable information, I’d found an article published by the Northwestern School of Medicine called “Understanding Skin Care for Your Daily Health,” which seemed to offer actual, dermatological information. But even it was explicitly addressed to women. “If this is actual medical advice then why don’t men need this stuff, too?” I demanded. The problem with the skincare industry is the same problem with the weight-loss industry, which is that major corporations thrive off of our insecurities. They create ads designed to perpetuate those insecurities and then sell us products that promise to relieve them.
Fat and looking for love