What’s the big deal about fat chicks?

There’s been a lot of negative talk in the Manosphere about fat chicks.  Some say that fat acceptance is a subversive manifestation of cultural Marxism.  If we posit that this is a factor, then it’s only half of the picture.

Remember that the cultural Marxist playbook is about keeping everyone dissatisfied and stirring up divisions in society.  Given that, it’s not too much of a stretch to see that another angle of attack would be to make guys dissatisfied with almost all women out there.  What I mean is promotion of the “heroin chic” as the epitome of feminine beauty.  I’m not convinced that cultural Marxism is behind all this, but this does lead into an important point.

Body mass and the Overton Window

The Overton Window molds public opinion; the short version is that certain positions are deemed “acceptable” and others outside are considered “extremist”.  This window shifts over time, and this can be deliberately engineered.  That’s something that propagandists in television and Hollywood have been using to great effect to nudge the public closer to accepting SJW agendas.  That, of course, has moved our culture light-years to the left.  (For example, who in 1986 – or even 1996 – would have predicted that the US military would start  paying for sex changes for soldiers in 2016?)  However, the Overton Window also is a good model for how society is led to consider what is hot and what is not.

Here’s what I’m talking about.  The average American body mass index has gone from 25 in 1960 to 28 in 2002, thus from the upper end of “normal” to the upper end of “chunky”.  As of 2014, the average man is 5’9″ and weighs 196 pounds; the average woman is 5’4″ and weighs 169 pounds.  This puts the average 2014 BMI for men at 28.9 and women at 29.0, almost in the officially fat range.

Meanwhile, the public’s tastes haven’t followed the trend.  Instead, the ideal feminine body type being promoted (later I’ll discuss who’s promoting it) has gone from the “normal” range to the “underweight” range (BMI 17-19; likely BMI 16 means dead).  That sounds like quite a recipe for dissatisfaction, doesn’t it?

I can hear it already – “to hell with American women”.  Actually, the rest of the world isn’t too far behind.  Trends are going up everywhere; like feminism, this isn’t just something we can run away from and expect it will never catch up to us.  Actually, the Middle East is right up there with us, and Pacific Islanders are leading the pack.

Aesthetic standards change over time

Standards of beauty vary from one culture to the other.  They change over time too.  That being said, there are some attributes that change according to the dictates of fashion, and others that are basically set in stone.  We’ll cover the former now, and the latter in the next section.  Female body weight is one of the changing standards.

Ice Age statuary includes a number of female figurines, all extremely chubby – no doubt this ideal represented abundance, very desired in times of great scarcity.  Greco-Roman statuary typically represented what we’d consider verging on full figured, though not too busty.  From Renaissance paintings, we see a number of quite voluptuous women.  Ideals in the 20th Century varied somewhat, but ended up going sharply downward, and today’s legacy is the “heroin chic”.

What caused weight to go up in post-Industrial Age times?  First, the public is working easier jobs, getting less exercise, and relying more on automobile transit.  Food became very cheap and plentiful by historic standards.  At the same time, it got increasingly less healthy, full of processed crap from agribusiness.  Eventually, the public (both women and men) started getting a lot bigger.  The jogging fad of the 1970s and the popularity of weightlifting not long after didn’t quite stop this trend.  In the 1990s, we started spending increasing amounts of time glued to our computers, with predictable results.  These days, interest in children’s sports has dropped dramatically.  Finally, there’s a lot of confusion about what diets are best.

Meanwhile, the fashion industry pushed for increasingly thinner models, and Hollywood followed along.  Consequentially, the ideal of feminine beauty versus what average women actually look like became increasingly distant.

What female shape is it natural to appreciate?

What does a Barbie doll have in common with chubby Ice Age figurines like the Venus of Willendorf?  They have bust-waist-hip proportions in the ideal range.  The reason why this is ideal is because this is associated with fertility.  A woman with typically masculine proportions – flat chest and narrow hips – would have the appearance of being physically immature.  Also, a woman whose waist is larger than her bust and hips – similar to a guy with a beer gut – probably has metabolic syndrome, which generally includes PCOS.  So the reason why neither look particularly feminine to us is because it’s a matter of natural selection over hundreds of thousands of years.  So it’s natural to desire any woman with curves in all the right places, whether she has a classic slender hourglass figure or is quite voluptuous – it’s all good.

So instead of thinking of the ideal woman as someone who looks like she just got out of a POW camp, instead we should look to the movie superstars of the past:  Mae West, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Mamie Van Doren, Sophia Lauren, Raquel Welch, and so forth.  None of them were exactly tubby, but they certainly had curves in all the right places.  This is certainly not the “heroin chic” ideal that Hollywood and the fashion industry today is lauding as the epitome of womanhood.  Once more, these represent ideals, and not all – or even most – of the public will fit the bill.

The point is that we should, as individuals, ignore the efforts by the media and the fashion industry to push the Overton Window to a body type that’s both extremely rare and a bit unhealthy.  It also wouldn’t hurt if we loosened up our requirements a bit, within reason.  This opens you up to a more target-rich environment.  Think about it – if 80% of women only give the time of day to 20% of men, does it make sense to weed out all but the skinniest third of the takers?

Who is setting the trends these days?

It’s no secret that the fashion industry is dominated by gay guys.  Hollywood certainly has an above-average proportion of gays too.  The fact is, the male aesthetic is linear and the female aesthetic is curvy.  The “friends of Dorothy” just don’t appreciate curves.  Gays like “twinks” quite a bit, so they’re projecting the female equivalent of what they like onto public tastes.  Thus heroin chic it is.

This isn’t the first time that fashion standards have gone a little crazy.  Chinese foot binding, African lip plates, and facial piercings over here – need I say more?  Worse, what you see is not always what you get.  Due to airbrushing and photo processing, women on magazine covers – and increasingly in the movies – aren’t really what the models and actresses actually look like anyway.  In fact, with Photoshop, you can even make a supermodel out of a slice of pizza.  So the question is this:  should we accept what the gay fashion designers say is the ideal feminine type, or go back to the curves we like?

Another factor is social pressure, best illustrated by an old joke:

Q:  How are fat chicks like mopeds?
A:  They’re fun to ride until your friends find out.

The Manosphere is a bit guilty of this too, with guys bragging about skinny “HB9s” and “HB10s”.  Really, who cares what your friends think, or especially someone online you’ve never met?

“But I have standards!”

Sure, everyone has standards.  If your love life is everything you want it to be, run with it.  If not, then making reasonable compromises is the most rational strategy.  This doesn’t mean that you have to regard a really big one in the same way you do a skinny one, or even date her if you don’t feel like it.  Remember, I said reasonable compromises!

I have standards too.  Beyond a certain point, things do get a little bit iffy.  Still, I’ll cut her some slack if she has enough good characteristics to compensate.  For instance, a pretty face and great hair go a long way with me.  I would have missed a good number of opportunities if I’d felt bound to arbitrary standards set by other people.  My first really skinny girlfriend was my third girlfriend.  (Unfortunately, she had some personality issues, and we’ll leave it at that.)  I’m not sorry that a woman who today would be average-sized took my virginity.

I have enough data points to describe some of the good characteristics of fat chicks.  They usually aren’t stuck up, and personality is important to me, no matter what she looks like.  (I know how to deflect a Bitch Shield, but I don’t bother to game someone who thinks she’s God’s gift to men; that attitude is a complete turn-off.)  Many are freaks in bed.  I’ve found that the skinny ones – with some exceptions – are a little more likely to be pillow princesses.  Finally, big gals almost always have one advantage:  huge tracts of land, all natural.  I love to bury my face in a big pair of sweater puppies!

Does this mean we should get on board with fat acceptance?

Although I encourage a reasonable amount of flexibility in personal standards, I consider it a bad thing for people just to let themselves go.  There comes a point where it starts getting unhealthy, and people should respect their bodies.  The fact is that waistlines have been expanding both for men and women.  (Not all that many guys have warrior physiques these days.)  It’s a complicated issue, and it’s not going to go away overnight.   Better information about diet, more exercise, and doing something about the crap that agribusiness puts in our food would go a long way.

I’m also skeptical that fat shaming works.  The usual result will not be to take heed, but rather to reject the message, or run home crying and break out the ice cream.  Some might consider that funny in a junior high sort of way, but it’s certainly not constructive.  Let’s remember that honey catches more flies than vinegar.  Many of us have improved our physiques; myself included.  If we can find an opportunity to subtly bring this up and provide some constructive information, that will give better results.