I Do It with the Lights On

by Whitney Way Thore

  “No, fuck that,” I declared. “He can leave.”

  I was committed to standing my ground, but I was also fearful of how Luke might react the next time we were face-to-face. Neither Donna nor I knew how to physically protect ourselves should the need arise, so I called Buddy, even though he wasn’t working, to let him know what had happened. Buddy and I were just beginning to be friendly again, but I knew that since he worked there, he wouldn’t stand for incidents like this, and certainly not incidents that involved me.

  When Buddy arrived twenty minutes later, Luke had slipped out the back. A girl approached me and told me that she admired how I’d stood up to him, that she listened to me on the radio, and that I inspired her. It occurred to me that by empowering myself, I could empower other women, even those who still remained silent in moments that called for outrage. I left feeling proud, strong, and accomplished.

  The next day I woke up to an OkCupid message from some lame username with 69 on the end.

  Nice tits. Wanna fuck?

  After I wrote back, telling him he was wildly inappropriate, he sent back:

  Sorry. Your a fat bitch and it was your only good feature.

  Would it ever end?

  Several weeks later, Luke, who, it turns out, was a regular, had the audacity to show up at Buddy’s bar again. Buddy approached him with his drink order and said, “You were highly disrespectful to my friend Whitney Thore.”

  “Man,” Luke interjected. “She totally just—”

  Buddy slammed the beer down on the table. “If you ever look at her again, we’re gonna have a problem.”

  That April, Buddy came to my aid again, to help me move out of my apartment and back into my parents’ house. I’d concluded that no matter how backward and immature it felt, the smartest financial decision was to move back in with Mom and Dad. It was the only financial decision, really. I was nursing a major crush on Buddy and was elated that he’d come through for me. My parents repainted and recarpeted the playroom for me. I appreciated this gesture, as it spared me from moving back into my old bedroom, still fully furnished in my then-teenage style. The playroom was just inside the garage and would hopefully allow me to feel a little more independent.

  “Just ignore us if you want to!” they joked.

  Without rent to pay, I felt somewhat relieved, but was still struggling with the feeling that I was not only stuck, but perhaps in a downward spiral. The day after I moved back in with my parents was the eve of my twenty-ninth birthday, and I got really drunk and came home to sob myself to sleep. The next morning my mom gave me a gift that would prove to be prophetic: a necklace with a square pendant that read: “Something good is going to happen.” It was a nice gesture, but I was hyperfocused on one question: when?

  I enjoyed my job, but it wasn’t without its problems. Working in morning radio meant an unforgiving daily schedule, a consistent lack of sleep, and lots of uncomfortable situations. While I felt that Jared, Katie, and I worked almost flawlessly as a team, it could be awkward, to say the least, to share so much of your personal life with hundreds of thousands of people. While the majority of the on-air ribbing was fine, there were times for all of us when a segment could morph from funny to unexpectedly hurtful. Any conventional lines of separation between my personal life and work were blurred, if not invisible. Sometimes my friends, family, and even listeners would ask me why I put up with all the fun that was made at the expense of my weight. I reckoned that I had thick enough skin to deal with it, that it was for entertainment purposes, and that the same conversations that reeked of sexism and fat-hate would continue with or without me, so I might as well be thankful to have a voice in the conversation. But many days it all added up to hopeless tears streaming down my face as I began my drive home.

  But soon my experience with morning radio got even weirder. In addition to the Fat Girl Dancing videos, we also filmed a segment every week called Torture Tuesday, where we chose some cruel and unusual punishment to enact on our intern. Such videos included waxing his chest hair and arranging a meeting between him and a dominatrix. On one particular Tuesday we decided I’d give him a “massage.” This massage entailed me walking on his back and doing whatever I pleased. Surprisingly, the YouTube video that chronicled the event was gaining some traction online, more so than others, and we didn’t know why. Then came an email from a man in Michigan:

  Whitney, I watched your massage video and I would love a massage like that. I would be happy to have you perform a similar massage on me if you want to buy a plane ticket. I am free for this any time.

  And the messages kept coming. Soon I was getting friend requests from all over the U.S. and the world. We interviewed an Italian guy named Manuel who said I had the most beautiful body he’d ever seen and would love if I’d join him next month in Colorado when he would be there for a vacation. Then there was the guy who called in to tell us about a “bash” that was being held exclusively for fat women and their admirers and extended an invitation to me.

  “Their admirers.” Let that sink in. We had admirers? I had a flashback to the photos Owen had sent me. I was so confused and turned off by this, but enjoyed the radio fodder it provided. Then came the message from Matt. To be completely transparent, the first thing that caught my attention about Matt’s message was his appearance. At over six feet, with a perfectly muscled body, smooth dark skin, and bright white teeth, he was not the typical man who messaged me online looking for a date. He made no mention of sex or other inappropriate suggestions in his message. He appeared smart and we had easy conversation. After sending several messages back and forth, my curiosity got the best of me.

  Not that it matters really, but how did you find me? Our YouTube channel was not well known by any means (right now, the subscriber list barely tops 17K), and the digital material we created was mostly intended for our listening audience.

  I really don’t want to creep you out, Matt answered. But I demanded to know the information and promised I wouldn’t be weird about it. The next message included a link to a forum where men posted photos of women they lusted after. I knew you’d find us someday, he added.

  The next click led me down a rabbit hole. It took me to a thread devoted entirely to me. All my dance videos were there. There were before and after photos of me, chronicling my weight gain, and the comment sections were littered with users who pointed out my physical perfection (yes, sister, perfection) and moaned about their wishes for me to keep gaining, as well as what they would do during a night alone with me. Their fantasies ranged from having good old-fashioned sex with me, to me “squashing” them, to them feeding me. I didn’t have the guts to specifically research every act that was listed, but deductive reasoning and context clues gave me a clear insight into the initially frightening world of fat fetishism.

  I’m not a prude by any means, and my sexual history would surely elicit a flushed face and a horrified “Whee-it-ney!” from Babs (my mother), but my experimental tendencies have faded and I’ve realized that I’m largely okay with a vanilla sex life. Blindfolds, fuzzy handcuffs, and sex toys within a monogamous sexual or romantic relationship? Bring it on. But bring it once every few months, please. I’m basic and that’s fine, but being suddenly thrust into the fetish world without having done anything to purposefully put myself there was dizzying.

  There were so many emotions to deal with. There was utter surprise, as I was still digesting the concept that there were men in the world who preferred fat women specifically. Then there was an element of flattery, as I had felt almost completely deprived of positive sexual attention for all of my adult life. But the emotion that demanded my attention the most was mild disgust. My knee-jerk reaction is that it’s gross and sleazy to saddle an unwilling or unknowing participant on the Internet with overt sexual attention. After all, I hadn’t intended any photos or videos of me to be used in anyone’s spank bank, so a forum designed to share this type of material made me feel violated. I felt objectified. It was the same feeling I h
ad when I was walking down a sidewalk at age thirteen, on my way into a store to meet my dad, and there was a grown man pedaling his bike in the parking lot.

  “Those are a delicious pair of britches!” he’d called out. Followed by, “The next time I see you, I’m going to hug you like I know you!” I was too young to identify this interaction as sexual harassment, but I knew by the way my dad bolted out of the store in search of the guy that it was wrong.

  The attention from the forum also reminded me of my junior and senior years of high school, when I was small enough to be conventionally pretty and drove a Jaguar. Stoplights were a place of supreme discomfort, filled with catcalls and suggestive flicks of the tongue above car windows rolled halfway down. All the weight I had gained afforded me a certain amount of protection from a lot of this kind of harassment, but I began to be harassed in a different way. It seemed men either wanted me to satisfy their sexual urges or wanted to tell me they were mad at me for not being attractive enough to them to satisfy their sexual urges. What a lose/lose! I’d never imagined that my current figure would have men salivating, but hey.

  One Saturday night I attended a friend’s wedding and brought Donna along as my date. There, at the wedding, an incredibly significant event unfolded that no one else would notice but me. This interaction marked the beginning of my rapid ascent into the fluffy, shiny nirvana of body-positivity.

  As Donna and I were posing for a photo, I instructed the photographer—as I always did: “More face, less fat!” But then, without even realizing it, I corrected myself.

  “Actually, do full body, please!”

  Dancing at my friend’s wedding with bald spots showing and sweat dripping (2013).

  As I examined the photos on the way home, I felt a jolt. I still critiqued the photo in my mind, thinking I should have worn a shawl to cover my arms and employed some body language tricks to visually slim myself, but I didn’t say these thoughts out loud. Because saying them out loud would validate them and I was having a bit of an a-ha moment. Far from becoming a fire, the spark was fragile and wavering. But it was definitely lit.

  When we got back to my parents’ home, my mother had uncharacteristically cooked some food and left it in the fridge. Babs is a better cook than she will ever take credit for, but Hunter and I departing for college signaled a shift (perhaps a relief, really) in her that meant meals became basically soups and sandwiches unless it was Christmas Eve. Boo Boo and I were starving; neither of us had eaten at the wedding, so we were giddy over the mashed potatoes, meat loaf, and broccoli casserole we’d happened upon at midnight. When Matt texted me and asked what I was eating, I sent him a picture.

  Mmm. I bet you love to eat that Southern cooking, he replied. I responded honestly and without thinking.

  Actually, I rarely eat food like this. I’m sure I eat waaaaay healthier than my figure would cause you to believe.

  This statement was true, but it was also intended to preserve my image the way I had always wanted to be seen, which was not as a caricature of a fat person who stuffs her face and sits on her ass all day. Once I hit send, it dawned on me. Matt wasn’t “mmming” over my meat loaf the same way people do on Instagram. He most likely didn’t have a proclivity for the Food Network. He was turned on! He wanted me to agree with him and tell him about how I loved indulging myself in copious amounts of buttery, fatty food. Whoa.

  I had to sit down to evaluate. Against all my better judgment and my instinct to shut all of this down, I was…turned on? No, I couldn’t be. This was weird. Why did it kind of feel good?

  It’s easy for me to see why now. After a decade of being hated, humiliated, and ostracized because of my body, having it appreciated and viewed as sexy was disarming and somehow felt safe. Afraid to look like a pig, I’d be committed with any other guy to denying that I ate at all. I had been, for ten years, the stereotypical girl eating only a salad on the first date.

  Matt later called in to the radio to explain his attraction to me. He described my bouncing belly, my jiggling thighs, the overall vastness of my body and how there were unlimited areas to explore. When Matt said I was soft, it took on a different meaning. There was no connotation of weakness. He eroticized every part of my body; each fold of fat multiplied pleasure, and he was as excited by love handles as he was by breasts. Matt had an uncanny way of turning everything I’d been taught to believe and perceive on its head, resulting in a total paradigm shift. A flaw became fabulous, depending on the beholder. Even stretch marks signified improvement rather than decline.

  And the thing about feeling beautiful is that it is important. Beauty is subjective and will always be, but when we feel attractive as people, it impacts the way we go about our lives. It impacts the way we view the world and the way the world views us. My point: while physical preferences are definitely a thing, how attractive we feel greatly determines how attractive others perceive us to be.

  Matt equated publicly expressing interest in fat women with coming out of the closet. Obviously, oppressions aren’t comparable and, while he would have been looked down upon for liking fat women, Matt would have always been legally able to marry one. But still, when he told me about the serious flak he received from family and friends, my heart ached for him. I thought about the lengths men from my past had gone to in order to distance themselves from me, to hide or diminish our relationship. None of them had dated anyone my size before, and their browser history would corroborate that it was thin women, not fat women, who turned them on. And yet, all of them made some kind of exception for me.

  Men had previously told me: “I’ve never liked a big girl, but…” But what? Was it my personality that drew them in? Was it my pretty face that made me attractive enough? I didn’t want to be someone’s exception or experiment anymore.

  Matt was attracted to me, and because my fatness was openly discussed and not avoided, I felt more at ease. The more I saw how much fortitude it took for him, especially as a living Ken doll, to publicly honor his natural desires for fat women, the more I started to respect and draw strength from him. Having the strength to rip Cindy Crawford and Pamela Anderson off the bedroom walls of his brain in favor of what turned him on was admirable. But to be clear, I’m not out to martyr Matt for seeking fat women to satisfy his natural sexual urges, and anything negative he experiences as a result of liking fat women doesn’t compare to what I experience being a fat woman, but I am always down for people being unashamed of who they are and what they like.

  Matt was the first inside look I had at men who loved fat women, but there were plenty more to come. I was no longer even half surprised by the strange and unorthodox requests that came my way. I even signed up for a website specifically designed for feeders, feedees, and fat admirers, though I specified in my profile that I was fat but not interested in being fed or fattened up. I’d hoped some decent guys would be on that site, more so because they’d find fat women there, and less because they had a fetish. But I was sorely disappointed. I would start talking to a guy who seemed cool only to have him skip straight from his favorite color straight to his desire to strap me to a bed and force-feed me ice cream.

  Although my experience with Matt had made me consider men with a fat fetish as viable dating options, I was quickly forced to reconsider. Let me be clear: there’s a lot going on here and I don’t pretend to have it all figured out. When does a sexual preference become a fetish? Why do we demonize men who strictly like fat women but think nothing of men who strictly like skinny women? Do we label one group of men as having a fetish and the other not, based on what the cultural norm is? Did the men who painted Rubenesque women of the 1900s have a fetish? Why do we allow men less threatening fetishes, like foot fetishes, but lose our shit when a man wants to sample sex with women of a plumper variety?

  Further still, does the ridicule men who like fat women endure force them into an isolation that breeds closeted desires and fetishistic tendencies? All the men I came to know from the forums and sites (and there were many
) told me stories like Matt’s: for as long as they could remember, they’d been attracted to fat women. Inevitably, there was some pivotal playground or lunchroom moment when their peers found out and mockery and public embarrassment followed. And so began the pattern of keeping it secret, of dating thin women so no one would suspect what they were actually into, some going so far as to carry this facade into marriage, all the while scouring the Internet for big women who would fulfill their desires while their wives slept. I heard stories of breakups caused by conventionally attractive thin women stumbling upon images in their boyfriends’ computers that forced them to question whether the entire basis of their relationship—their presumed mutual attraction—had been a lie. Apparently, to realize that your boyfriend wanted to fuck fat women is to realize that he is sick and perverse and you’d better get out as soon as possible.

  I knew some things: it was possible for me to love my body and genuinely find it attractive. Even though I had spent my whole life fighting against the notion that fat could be attractive, I had somehow arrived at that very conclusion. It was almost as if all I’d had to do was really consider it, and then—once I knew it was possible—I could believe it was true about myself. But that didn’t mean entering into a relationship with a self-identified fat fetishizer was the solution for me, either. I couldn’t get down with a man’s desire to control me or manipulate my body for his pleasure.

  While I was becoming progressively less concerned with the number on the scale, I didn’t want to limit my mobility any further. In fact, I wanted to improve it. I was so excited about dancing again that I fantasized about my body becoming more fit and able to do all the physical things I wanted to do. Being strapped to a bed and gaining weight until I couldn’t move held zero appeal for me and revealed extremely questionable intentions on the part of the men who wanted to do it. While I loved the security and candidness surrounding food and my body that I reaped while dating a man who liked fat girls, I didn’t enjoy the thought of a man physically feeding me. It screamed of infantilism and definitely didn’t arouse me. Yes, it was awesome and liberating to feel beautiful and desired in the eyes of a man because of my fat body, but ultimately I didn’t want to be solely objectified, either. And I definitely didn’t like the tone some of these men adopted when they messaged me, as if they were bestowing the gift of sexual attraction upon me. Having a man say he was mostly interested in my belly was no different than when I was thin and knowing a man was mostly interested in a svelte waistline. Being encouraged to gain weight for a man’s sexual pleasure was no different than being asked to lose it for the same reason. I have no problem with men and women mutually engaging in whatever makes them happy—feeding, squashing, gaining—go for it, but it’s just not for me.