The Sex Lives of English Women

by Wendy Jones

  The plus-size beauty pageant is size 18 or over. I don’t know if I’m in with a chance. I’m a UK size 26. In stones – it’s too much! Over twenty. There is an acceptable plus-size shape when it comes to modelling which is a slim face and an hourglass figure, but slightly bigger, size 20 plus: bigger bust, smaller waist, bigger hips. You very rarely see the likes of someone with my body shape – I’ve got a fat chin, my belly is bigger than my boobs, my hips aren’t that big. I’ve not got the right shape for fashion – a lot of girls in the competition have – so I think they’ll win over me.

  I go to this club night in London called For Big Girls. It’s a plus-size acceptance night for girls and guys who are bigger and girls/guys who like bigger, to go and have a nice night out without all that … You can wear what you like, you can dance how you like, you can be who you are without anyone going, ‘Urgh, look at her! She’s so fat! Oh my God – what is she wearing? Oh my God, she shouldn’t wear that. She’s too fat to wear that.’ All those things you might hear in a mainstream bar. I’ve been in a group of women and someone will go, ‘Oh my God, did you see the size of her arse in that?’ I just think, ‘So what? Her arse is the size of her arse! What’s it got to do with you? How does that affect her personality? It doesn’t affect if she’s a nice person or not, does it?’ Women are very judgmental of other women – I’m so generalising here – If I go out, I would worry about what the women would say more than the men.

  I saw the pageant in previous years with a couple of friends from the club night and they said, ‘Why don’t you enter?’ and I thought, ‘No, no, I can’t do that.’ Then I just thought, ‘All right then, I will.’ So I went to model training camp to learn how to walk which, after thirty-five years, I thought I was pretty good at. I wasn’t, it turns out! It was model walking. And media training; how to speak to the media, how to deal with negative press – because that will happen. Anyone who gets through to being the winner will get negative press.

  For a lot of people there, that is their only social night out because unfortunately people are very mean, society is very mean. Saying something negative about someone because they’re fat is the last form of discrimination that is completely acceptable in society, and legal. It’s also the last discrimination that’s humorous. If you watch any stand-up comedians, it’s always fat jokes and it’s hilarious. If someone falls over and they’re fat, it’s funnier than someone skinnier falling over because, ‘Oh, they’re fat.’ There’s a whole fat-shaming society at the moment.

  Some men like big women. Definitely. You’ve got men who fantasise about having sex with fat women. Or they have this desire to make women fatter; men who like to feed women to make them fatter. That’s more of a fetish. I think a lot of men like curvy women, because they want her to have bits on her that are female! Boobs and bum and hips. Men like fat women. It’s common. When I was younger, being bigger stopped me getting a boyfriend. Because younger men are more interested in what their mates think. One of my friends had it happen to her: she had a boyfriend for a couple of months but never met his friends, never met his family, never met anybody. It turned out he really liked her, he wanted to be with her, but he was too embarrassed because she was fat. That happens a lot when people are younger. When I was younger I would never go out with men who said they liked fat girls because I thought they were weirdos because I had no body acceptance.

  There’s not a shortage of people out there that I could go on a date with now. Most of the pressure is from ourselves and other women. Men care less than we think they do. Most men would go, ‘Oh, all right then,’ if sex was offered to them. They probably wouldn’t care. A year ago when I was walking to work – I work in IT – this guy was looking across the road at me, and I thought, what’s he looking at, why is he staring? He came up to me and he said, ‘I just want to tell you that you’re looking really nice today. Have a really nice day.’ You don’t expect that, walking down the street.

  I’ve always said, I don’t meet men and then end up in bed with them and they expect underneath all my clothes I’m a size 8. They must know that I’m fat before I take my clothes off! There’s no point hiding in the dark under the bedsheets so they don’t see my fat bits, because what’s the point? Because they know that I’m fat and if they didn’t like it before, they’re not going to like it now.

  One of my friends has got a boyfriend and she’s very much, ‘Lights off, get under the covers, don’t squeeze my fat bits.’ Surely if he’s having sex with you, he likes you? He probably wants to do that, he probably wants to turn the lights on. Women are too hung up when they are in bed with someone about what they look like, because I don’t think men care. If you’re in a relationship with someone long-term, I don’t think that your partner is going to care.

  My weight doesn’t affect how I have sex. I go on top. Yeah. Men like that – that’s a power thing. In respect of the ergonomics of it and position-wise, I might have to move in slightly different ways. Maybe I can’t get into a certain position because I can’t get my legs over my head because my tummy’s in the way – things like that. I’ll try it. I’ll try and get in that position but I can’t guarantee my flexibility is that good. Depends what size your partner is. But I’m willing!

  My sexual fantasies are normal things. Sex outside: I suppose it’s because you could get seen by people. Sex in nature – in fields rather than in the high street. I thought about being with girls in fantasies – I don’t think that’s anything that 90 per cent of women haven’t thought about. Sex in a hot tub, which I did; that was fine. I’ve got a hot tub, it’s a blow-up one, it’s really good. It’s like a proper hot tub and you pump it up. It’s for outside. I had a gazebo over the top of it. If the neighbours are looking, that’s their problem! Shouldn’t be looking, should they, in my garden if they don’t want to see things like that.

  I don’t think a lot of people act on their sexual fantasies because I don’t think they are ever as good as you think they are going to be. I mean, sex in a hot tub is great but as a woman, sex in water is not that comfortable. It ends up being quite painful and you go, ‘Oh, this isn’t quite what I thought it would be. Oh well. Done it now. Ticked that off my list.’ The whole concept of sex is just odd. If you actually think about what we do during sex, it’s weird, isn’t it?

  I’ve got a couple of Ann Summers outfits. Got a little policewoman set. It’s got a tutu-y skirt to it. For role playing. The other person would be a prisoner. Never got to the role-playing bit, never get that far, just ends up outfit and fun. Not a very good policewoman. Rubbish! I’ve got a French maid’s outfit, which is see-through. No cleaning. It’s a bit of fun, isn’t it? Just go off and get changed and come back in an outfit. Ta da! Surprising him when he’s watching Top Gear on telly. ‘Oh! Oh, hello. All right then.’ Good fun really. With anything to do with sex, it’s got to be fun. And don’t hold back; there’s no point if you’ve got that far with someone.

  My weight is flexible. I do eat three meals a day. Yeah, I have my vices, I have a Chinese takeaway here and there, I have this, that and the other and what I want. If there’s something to do with my health that needs attention and I needed to lose weight, then I’d lose weight. There are so many other things that you are as a woman as opposed to your flesh and the size of it. It’s just packaging, isn’t it, at the end of the day? I’ve tried to starve myself, I’ve tried to make myself sick, but it was a vicious circle of self-hatred and being eternally depressed with my life and myself. In my late twenties I got fed up with berating myself for not being perfect. I just thought, ‘Why am I doing this to myself? Why don’t I either go and lose weight or accept myself as I am and get on with my life, because there’s no point stopping myself from doing things.’ I’m quite attached to my body and, as much as I probably could lose a few pounds here and there, if I want to I will, if I don’t want to, I won’t. My weight is just one part of my life. I don’t see it – pardon the pun! – as a big part of my life.

  There’s
still much more pressure to look a certain way, common to society’s views of what is attractive and sexual and beautiful. Paintings in the eighteenth century were always of women who were larger. A lot of painters apparently – I watched a programme on it – prefer to paint bigger women because there’s more fluidity. There’s more to draw, I suppose. It’s more challenging and interesting.

  Being fat is much more of a female issue than it is a male issue. Some people see someone who’s fat as very non-sexual, as in, ‘Fat people shouldn’t have sex.’ That fat people should hide themselves away. I don’t follow that rule! I don’t follow that way of thinking at all. I’m just like everyone else – why not? Why shouldn’t fat women have as much sex as everybody else? It’s never been something that’s stopped me. I don’t think you have to be thin to be sexy. I can tell you a hundred men who disagree with that. A fat woman can be sexy. Of course she can. Sexy is not about your perception of yourself necessarily, it’s about someone else’s perception of you. Attractiveness is individual. I might find a six-foot-two rugby player attractive, you may not.

  The girls I’ve been hanging around with over the last couple of years promote body confidence and that has made me better at accepting myself. On stage in the beauty pageant, I just think, ‘I’m here, that’s it.’ And I enjoy myself as a woman. I like to make an effort with how I look. I have days when I think I look shit; everyone does. But mostly I love the clothes I wear. I’m really into skater dresses. And leggings and boots. I don’t try and hide. I dress how I like to dress and how I think looks good. When I go to club nights, I wear a black corset and tutu; that’s really cool. I went to a music festival recently and I wore that outfit, which was fun. I look in the mirror and think, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m hot to trot!’

  I’ve always wanted bigger boobs. Men like them. I often see myself with bigger boobs. More like a mermaid! Really shapely. All men like mermaids. Mermaids sing and lure men in with their songs: that’s the myth. And mermaids get what they want. I’ll come back as a mermaid.’

  20

  Pianist

  Farah, 20, London

  ‘I’m not cheating on him but …’

  ‘I’ve got a boyfriend. I’ve been in a bit of a funny situation in the last few months: I’ve been re-evaluating my relationship. He’s a couple of years older than me, so roughly my age. Fairly tall, skinny. Kind of got long blond hair down to the neck. He was in the year above me at uni doing music as well. I like him, yeah. Not that I’m going to do anything with anyone else. He’s a cuddly person and I thought I was, but he’s definitely very cuddly! I’m not blaming my boyfriend but it’s like a barrier between cuddly and sexual. Whenever we talk about our relationship in a sexual way we end up arguing and it doesn’t go anywhere. There’s something about the undertones that I don’t like when he starts talking about women.

  He doesn’t understand. Foreplay. Lack of. And I’m not wanting to ask for it because I don’t want to have to ask for it every time. Why doesn’t he just know what I want? He pretty much wants to have penetrative sex. He doesn’t mind me doing foreplay on him, and that’s the annoying thing. Whenever I get annoyed with specific behaviours or things that he’s said, he doesn’t get why I get wound up. He just says, ‘I said I’m sorry. I can’t help it. That was me being stupid.’ I’m like, ‘Stop. Being. Stupid. And start getting it.’ He seems not that experienced. We’ve worked in a certain way for two years and now I suppose I have to decide. I can’t imagine that he would start doing foreplay. Maybe I’m just demanding. Maybe I was ready to commit before. But then I was, ‘Hold on; this is the only guy I’ve had sex with. I can’t imagine the rest of my life with only one person.’

  I feel bad now. I feel so bad. Oh man! I’m not cheating on him but … Well, yeah, I kind of know someone else. It’s just a recent development and we had a one-off. I didn’t fully sleep with him. We’ve been friends for the last year at uni. I don’t know if I like him a lot. I know that sounds bad! There’s always the thing if you want something you shouldn’t have, it’s going to escalate, so I’m trying to keep cool about it.

  He’s older, maybe in his forties. When he was younger he was a goth. He’s always had a vampire persona kind of thing. Because of the goth thing I thought he would be into something kinky. Yeah, I was curious and excited to get to know him in another way. He says when he tells people, sometimes they step away because they find it weird or they don’t like blood. I think that you bite or scratch until you bleed. I was like, ‘I know the sex stuff you’re into. Whatever. That’s cool.’ I knew if I asked him questions he would answer. So I asked the questions – and I knew that was going down a bad path. I texted him about the vampire thing. He told me what he did to his ex – like screaming, biting her. I texted back saying, ‘I don’t think I would scream.’ That was a bit of a bold move.

  We went to the pub and he was like, ‘Okay, one drink.’ He’s told me he’s autistic. Maybe that’s why he thinks quite clearly about stuff. And I genuinely wasn’t trying to offer him drinks but then we kept drinking and chatting. So we walked back and got outside his house – and I can’t believe I even said it – I just said to him, really deadpan, ‘So you’re not going to invite me in, then?’ and he was like, ‘Okay.’ I didn’t even try to seduce him. It was like, ‘Well, this is what you were texting about Saturday.’ But when I got to his room it was really different from what I was expecting because I was expecting more of a dark theme, and it wasn’t. It looked normal; it could be my room, with lots of books and CDs. I said, ‘I can’t be leaving here with bite marks, otherwise it’s going to show!’ He did bite me on my neck, but in a normal way. It hurt a little bit but not really. Yeah. I think what I had in my head was a bit exaggerated. I’d like to do the vampire stuff. I want to try so much sexually that I haven’t tried before.

  Oh God. This is where I start digging a hole for myself. My ex was older as well. This was the one before my boyfriend. He was in his fifties. I was seventeen. He was my piano teacher. It just kind of started. We would talk a lot about music and stuff and send a lot of emails. I knew of him for one year, and for the second year he was my piano teacher. It was a few months of just talking and beginning to feel stuff but not acting on it and not saying anything to him. It was May; it was the last term of school. We were chatting outside the lessons so, because that was happening, I asked him upfront whether he had feelings for me and then, yeah, we started meeting outside of the lessons. That was nice. I wasn’t happy doing my A Levels and I don’t think he was that happy doing his job. I was cross with my dad just in general but that’s another story, so it was probably as a bit of escapism for both of us. I think I was in love with him. Yeah. He was in love with me. The age difference mattered because I knew other people were going to judge and criticise, but for us it didn’t seem to matter.

  Once I went really early in the morning to his house, the earliest I could get there, before five. That was the one time I actually got into bed with him – because I was exhausted. I didn’t sleep the night before so I fell asleep, which was nice. It wasn’t even staying overnight in a sexual way; it was cuddling up to him in bed. I wasn’t really sexually scared; maybe there were a lot of nerves from both of us. He wasn’t married. He hadn’t slept with other students, it was just me. I liked him, and he liked me. I didn’t sleep with him, not properly. We decided not to sleep together. Because if anything happened and it came out – which it did – then it would make it worse. I was waiting to finish school and then I was going to be open about it – or I was going to try.

  It was a secret. It all came out in the end. My dad looked at my phone so, yeah … chaos happened. I’m being so melodramatic here! My dad was going ape-shit. My mum said nothing. She knew. I haven’t talked to her about it. My mum was away in Iran for a couple of weeks. I wasn’t going to talk to anyone. I mean, I didn’t even know where to start. My dad contacted my school and it was a nightmare. The piano teacher got sacked, there were police investigations and all sorts of crazy
stuff. I don’t know what happened to him, but probably he won’t be able to get a job now. It ended abruptly, very much so. I had no contact with him because I wasn’t allowed to and then I was starting uni so I thought, ‘I need to move on.’ So I didn’t contact him again and that was it, really. He was upset – yeah.

  When it ended, I did fantasise because I missed the piano teacher. I suppose you fantasise about what you can’t have. Maybe I’m imagining fantasies to be specific images. I latch more onto memories and feeling and touch. I don’t really remember sexual fantasies. They just come into my mind and I forget about them because I don’t think I’m going to live it out. When I was younger and on long car journeys I used to fantasise I was doing it in a field. Maybe that ties in with going away or abroad and imagining finding someone different there. That’s an early teenage fantasy. I was fairly late having my first boyfriend. I was sixteen; everyone else had a boyfriend before that. I felt sexually ready to go but no one was there. I don’t really fantasise now – now I’m having sex. The more I’m doing it the less I have to imagine it.

  I ended up feeling so much more guilt over the piano teacher – although he was single and I was single. But now I feel like I’m doing something that’s morally more wrong. No one would bat an eyelid because people cheat all the time and I’m no different, but I had to deal with a lot more guilt with my ex. It’s really weird. I know that seeing the goth is worse and I should feel worse. I fantasise about sleeping with the goth. I want to see the goth guy again. I’m not planning to. It was a one-off but if it continues, it’s just cheating. Maybe I’m not in two minds as much as I was because normally with affairs you’re kind of, ‘Oh, it just happened.’ But this didn’t, I was very decisive about it. I wanted to be sexual with the goth. In some ways I don’t know who I like but if someone likes me I like them back.