Fat acceptance writer and activist Lindy West knows these catch-22s all too well. In a recent interview with Australia’s No Filter podcast, the 35-year-old spoke candidly about how she and her husband are perceived in public. “There’s this attitude that something’s gone wrong. He’s been duped. Something’s broken in the universe,” she said. “I get this vibe that sometimes women are hitting on him as if he’ll be so relieved to move on to another option and get someone that’s his number on the ratings scale, that matches him.” While there’s nothing wrong with someone having a fetish, the idea that conventionally attractive men are only fetishizing larger women devalues the relationship and the plus-size woman in it. It renders fat women invisible. Unfortunately, this has been an issue West has been confronted with time and time again, as she detailed in an essay for The Guardian. “There are long, manic message board threads devoted to comparing photos of me with photos of my fiancé’s thin, conventionally pretty ex-wife, and dissecting what personality disorder could possibly have caused him to downgrade so egregiously,” she wrote. “I can’t tell you how many women hit on him right in front of me – and how many late-night Facebook messages he gets.” Now, West gets to represent an endless stream of relationship possibilities for fat girls — fat-shamers be damned.
title: “Lindy West Feels Invisible In Her Mixed Size Marriage” ShowToc: true date: “2024-09-16” author: “John Wince”
Fat acceptance writer and activist Lindy West knows these catch-22s all too well. In a recent interview with Australia’s No Filter podcast, the 35-year-old spoke candidly about how she and her husband are perceived in public. “There’s this attitude that something’s gone wrong. He’s been duped. Something’s broken in the universe,” she said. “I get this vibe that sometimes women are hitting on him as if he’ll be so relieved to move on to another option and get someone that’s his number on the ratings scale, that matches him.” While there’s nothing wrong with someone having a fetish, the idea that conventionally attractive men are only fetishizing larger women devalues the relationship and the plus-size woman in it. It renders fat women invisible. Unfortunately, this has been an issue West has been confronted with time and time again, as she detailed in an essay for The Guardian. “There are long, manic message board threads devoted to comparing photos of me with photos of my fiancé’s thin, conventionally pretty ex-wife, and dissecting what personality disorder could possibly have caused him to downgrade so egregiously,” she wrote. “I can’t tell you how many women hit on him right in front of me – and how many late-night Facebook messages he gets.” Now, West gets to represent an endless stream of relationship possibilities for fat girls — fat-shamers be damned.
title: “Lindy West Feels Invisible In Her Mixed Size Marriage” ShowToc: true date: “2024-10-02” author: “Charles Perry”
Fat acceptance writer and activist Lindy West knows these catch-22s all too well. In a recent interview with Australia’s No Filter podcast, the 35-year-old spoke candidly about how she and her husband are perceived in public. “There’s this attitude that something’s gone wrong. He’s been duped. Something’s broken in the universe,” she said. “I get this vibe that sometimes women are hitting on him as if he’ll be so relieved to move on to another option and get someone that’s his number on the ratings scale, that matches him.” While there’s nothing wrong with someone having a fetish, the idea that conventionally attractive men are only fetishizing larger women devalues the relationship and the plus-size woman in it. It renders fat women invisible. Unfortunately, this has been an issue West has been confronted with time and time again, as she detailed in an essay for The Guardian. “There are long, manic message board threads devoted to comparing photos of me with photos of my fiancé’s thin, conventionally pretty ex-wife, and dissecting what personality disorder could possibly have caused him to downgrade so egregiously,” she wrote. “I can’t tell you how many women hit on him right in front of me – and how many late-night Facebook messages he gets.” Now, West gets to represent an endless stream of relationship possibilities for fat girls — fat-shamers be damned.
