Though Swift's career was already in pretty great shape leading up to the now-infamous Kanye West incident at this year's MTV Video Music Awards, she has been seemingly inescapable ever since; she's hosted Saturday Night Live, she's on the most recent cover of In Style magazine, she's reportedly in a tabloid-teen-dream-worthy relationship with New Moon star Taylor Lautner, and her album is currently racking up multiple end-of-the-year awards and accolades, including 4 CMA awards, 5 American Music Awards, and 8 Grammy nominations. It has been the year of many things, most of them craptacular, but as a commenter on a new profile of Swift in the New York Times' T Magazine writes, Swift is "one of the brightest stars in a really dark year."

Of course, with great success comes great scrutiny; as Kate Harding notes in a piece for Broadsheet, Swift's super wholesome image and princess-fairy-tale lyrics have made her a target of bloggers such as Sady Doyle and Amanda Hess, who feel that Swift's music and public persona "reinforce some not-so-woman-friendly stereotypes in extremely annoying ways." Yet Harding also notes that though Swift's lyrics leave something to be desired, her songwriting abilities, which allow her to have some control over her own music and career, are worth celebrating: "It will be a great day when more female artists are calling the shots, topping the charts and writing lyrics that don't make me cringe — but two out of three isn't a bad start."

My feelings toward Swift are similar to Harding's; for every aspect of her princess-fantasy image that irritates me, there's something sort of refreshing about a teen pop star who writes her own songs and doesn't feel the need to hump an ice cream truck pole in order to drum up a bit of publicity for her record. However, there's also something about icky about the fact that Taylor Swift's fame rests on an image of purity, on a perception of niceness, on her imperfect-to-the-point-of-being-relatable voice and lyrics that read like they were written in a dreamy high schooler's diary, most likely because they kind of were written in a dreamy high schooler's diary.

She's completely non-threatening to some because she doesn't rely on overt sexuality to sell records, and yet she's incredibly threatening to others because her image seems to rely on the suppression of sexuality in order to sell records. Taylor Swift, in short, is confusing the hell out of everyone. As Amanda Hess of The Sexist writes, "I don't know if Taylor Swift is a feminist role model, or a palpable pop princess sent from the Christian right to corral the youth of America into antiquated gender roles."

But what do we really want from Taylor Swift? What identity does she need to assume to make everyone happy? Attacking Swift's image at this point isn't going to do much, as the train has already left the sparkly, relatable princess station. Debates over her lyrical content and whether or not she's a feminist pop star are all quite fascinating and will mostly likely continue over the course of her career, but I'm not sure what the ultimate goal is. I'm in full agreement with Doyle that Swift's image is just as "calculated as any other pop star's personal brand, with an added noxiousness due to its edge of moral superiority and '50's-style coy submissiveness," but at the same time, I wonder if Swift herself will be a victim of this carefully crafted image: at 19 years old she's still growing and figuring things out, and I imagine it will be difficult for her to transition into her twenties, both lyrically and image-wise, without disappointing some of her fans.

We are often quick to decimate a pop star; it's a reaction brought on by legitimate concerns over that young woman's influence on other women around the world. At 19 going on 20, Swift's age, Britney Spears was already declaring that she was "not that innocent" while still pushing the story that she remained a virgin. At 19 going on 20, Lindsay Lohan debuted her "Rumors" video, writhing around in a club while complaining about paparazzi attention. At 19 going on 20, Christina Aguilera was trapped in an image she destroyed 2 years later with her "Dirrty" video, which she claimed was a reaction to being "very pushed to look a certain way and act a certain way, and it wasn't me." Who Taylor Swift is at 19 going on 20 is a reflection both of the world she has created for herself over the past 4 years or so and of the increasingly juvenile world we live in today, where nobody wants to grow up and leave the dreamy world of high school romance behind.

Is Taylor Swift a feminist? I don't know. Is Taylor Swift the Stephenie Meyer of pop stars? I don't know. All I know is that Taylor Swift is a 19-year-old who has a long career ahead of her, and perhaps we should wait and see how she evolves as an artist and a writer before making a final judgment on all she is and all she stands for. I don't think anyone wants Taylor Swift to assert herself as an adult by walking out on stage in a see-thru bodysuit with a snake draped around her shoulders, but at the same time, I think it's even more dangerous to continually hold her up as a paragon of wholesomeness, something her management should consider.

It may be to Swift's benefit to play the princess for now, but eventually, she's going to want to leave that tower and find another path. Perhaps Taylor Swift will be the pop star who ditches her Disney Princess exterior without running to FHM or "accidentally" leaking some pics on the internet. If the world, and Swift's management, pull back on the virginal princess image and adoration just a bit, it might allow Swift to navigate her twenties, and all the ups and downs that come with them, in a manner that shows her fans that life is very much not a fairy tale, and that there really is no such thing as a perfect princess. Even the girl-next-door has to fuck up sometimes, thank god.

Taylor Swift Wants To Ban Access To Your Lady Bits [Bitch]
Taylor Swift: Pop Princess, Feminist Villain? [Broadsheet]
Christina Aguilera, That Dirrty Girl, Cleans Up Real Nice [NYTimes]
Taylor Swift: Feminist, Princess, Avatar [TheSexist]
Little Miss Sunshine [NYTimes]

Contender: Amy Siskind

Outlet: The Daily Beast

Known Biases: Patron Saint of the PUMAs

Best Known for: Being Pro-Palin post-HRC

Can't Stand Stupak-Pitts because:

She feels like Obama has been selling out women since the campaign trail.

Women's love affair with Obama started in 2007. Some loved the idea of him-while not questioning his ideas. So when some women leaders heard the candidate say things like "sweetie" or "you're likable enough," or saw Obama's speechwriter Jon Favreau groping the breast of a cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton on Facebook (no comment), these leaders ignored the signs of subtle misogyny. The National Organization for Women (under its former leader) endorsed its first all-male ticket. And NARAL endorsed Obama over Sen. Clinton, even though she had a proven track record on reproductive rights. In January 2009, Ms. Magazine's cover featured a now-infamous image of Obama in a superman pose sporting a t-shirt that reads: This is What a Feminist Looks Like.

With these women leaders behind him, President Obama felt he could be himself. He appointed fewer women into his cabinet than President Bill Clinton. He surrounded himself with czars, more than 90% of whom are male. He appointed Larry Summers, of "girls are inferior in math and science" fame, to a key economic post. He played basketball, golfed and fished with men and men only. He had beers with Skip Gates, but ignored it when Rihanna was almost strangled to death. And so on.

The love affair started to fade with Obama's off-handed response during an MSNBC interview questioning his all-male outings: "I think this is bunk." That remark gave women a reason to take a closer look at the inner workings of Obama and his ideas. And just as Betty Friedan described the subtlety of sexism as "the problem that has no name," "bunk" revealed that the boys club was still alive and well at the White House.

Best Shot:

The sleeping giant-America's majority constituency-is awakening. Note how few men are speaking out about the fact that a major issue for women was thrown under the bus to get a deal done: That women were not valued. It is the women leaders doing the talking and the typing.

Wants to take action by:

Lesson one-we need more women in leadership roles. Women's organizations need to drop partisanship and work together to get more women into public office for both parties. Sisters, we cannot count on either party to represent our interests; we can only count on ourselves. (And when our women leaders do, on occasion, get it wrong-as Speaker Pelosi did this past weekend-we need an ample bench of women politicians surrounding her, and strong advocacy groups to steer her right).

Lesson two-with this awakening, there will be a quest to get a woman into the White House in 2012. Find us a woman leader who might have her personal beliefs, but will agree to keep them as just that, and you might just have a deal!

Contender: Kate Harding

Outlet: Salon's Broadsheet

Known Biases: Fat activism, unapologetic feminism

Best Known for: Baby flavored donuts All around awesomeness.

Best Shot:

Our supposed allies who still keep trying to convince us that one more nibble won't amount to anything much. Only this time, we're not buying it. We are ready to go there. As Smeal told Goldstein, "We didn't want to make a fuss, we agreed to a compromise that was already over-generous. And then, bango! These guys go in there like gangbusters. Pelosi was held up, like by bandits. Now the women are saying, 'That's it, it's enough.'" And it's not just the women — or just the staunchest pro-choicers — who are fed up with Democrats who act exactly like Republicans did before their party moved so far right it landed on a different planet. Kos himself (who's taken plenty of criticism over the years, including some from me quite recently, for exhorting women to ignore the nibbles for the greater good), is reminding people today that donations to the DCCC will support Democrats who "voted for the Stupak-Pitts coathanger amendment," as well as anti-healthcare reform ones. Moveon.org is also going after Democrats who voted against the bill. And gay rights activists have launched a "Don't Ask, Don't Give" campaign, encouraging progressives "to no longer donate to the DNC, Organizing for America, or the Obama campaign until the President and the Democratic party keep their promises to the gay community, our families, and our friends." Suddenly, for a host of different reasons, progressives are sending the message that we will not support these people if they keep breaking their promises and acting against our interests.

It's an exciting moment, and there's a chance to make a real difference if this latest swell of righteous indignation doesn't lead directly to the same old shit: Some of us panic about losing a Democratic majority and start hollering at others to quit being so picky and oversensitive about our "single issues" and take one for the team. (Again. Still. Always.) If we can work together as a bona fide progressive movement, rather than a bunch of competing groups who will all ultimately settle for holding our noses and blocking the worst Republicans, we might actually force the Democrats to give us more than empty shout-outs on the campaign trail. But if some of us will sacrifice gay rights for a chance at advancing our own agendas, and others will sacrifice reproductive rights for a chance at advancing theirs, and a ludicrous number of self-identified progressives will sacrifice pretty much everything they claim to believe in, just because the words "Democratic majority" sound so much better than the alternative, then nothing will change.

Can't Stand Stupak Pitts because:

Since the healthcare reform bill passed the House with the Stupak-Pitts amendment intact on Saturday night, feminists have been up in arms about the latest assault on access to abortion, and so-called progressive men have been telling us to calm down and look at the big picture. In other words: same old, same old.

Wants to take action by:

Really, when those are the options, there's only one logical conclusion: This is not our party. We've known that for too long, and yet the Democrats have known too well that they could bank on our money and our votes as long as the GOP remained even more not our party. But something's changed. Sixty-four Democrats voted to block women's access to legal medical services. That may not be quite as repulsive as some Republican shenanigans, but the difference is only one of degree. If the point of women voting for "moderate" Democrats is to avoid a majority that's actively hostile to women, then those who voted for the Stupak-Pitts amendment just proved that there's no point at all. And progressive women have finally had enough. We are ready to go there. Are Democrats ready to try getting elected without us?

Judge's Call: Siskind goes for body blows, but has no artistic savoir faire. All her moves are recycled. Harding plows in with passion, wearing down her opponent before trying for the TKO.

Winner: Kate Harding, for taking the long view of both problem and solution.

Loser: The Democratic Party - because when two different factions of women are calling for blood, there's going to be some drama at election time.

How Obama Sold Women Out [Daily Beast]
Face it: The Democratic Party is not for women [Salon]

As Margaret wrote, Crystal Renn is the highest-paid plus-sized model in America. Discovered at 14 and told to basically change her body, Renn went on to a successful modeling career - but also a serious struggle with anorexia and bulimia. Eventually, Renn - and her body - couldn't take it anymore, and with her agency's support, she segued into plus-size modeling, where she's a major star. And while I'm generally skeptical of 23-year-old's memoirs, as a Salon interview with our friend Kate Harding shows, she's got some important things to say in Hungry: A Young Model's Story of Appetite, Ambition, and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves .

Asked how the industry can change, Renn says,

I think, ideally, it starts with sample sizes. A Size 10 for the sample sizes would be a great start — up from, like, what? A 2? A 0? That's a huge step. Then they could pin the clothes to very thin girls, the ones who are naturally thin, but curvier girls, like a size 14, could get into them. I know that, because I'm a 12, and I've been able to get into sample sizes — you know, with a lot of effort [laughs] — but I do editorials all the time, and sometimes we have to work with it. And you can absolutely pin the clothes down. I have size 24s pinned to me all the time. So I think a 10 would be a great starting place so no one could say, "Oh, well, the sample sizes are the reason we don't hire bigger girls."

As to her ultimate hopes, Renn is pragmatic.

Nobody should look on the runway and see only 14s. That's ridiculous. I think there should be all different sizes on the runway, and I think that should be what's modern. Let's stop making one body type cool for a decade and start to say all shapes and sizes are accepted — and not only accepted, but absolutely ideal, the most beautiful. Health! Health is the most beautiful.

And that's a crucial point: the idea is not merely a token spread per year featuring only plus-size models (like the upcoming Glamour shoot, in which Renn features) but to showcase a range of healthy body types. It's important to remember, of course, that Renn is still a model: at size 12, she's not large by average American standards, and her proportions are, of course, "conventional." She has the genetic gift of being photogenic that few women possess. And the message to take away should not necessarily be, "ooh, I should be a model, too!" -I'd hate for this story to glamorize another unrealistic scenario - but that a few more young girls could be, and make a success, without needing to starve themselves. (And as an interview with Glamour insta-star Lizzie Miller shows, the typical plus-size experience is less exalted.) My point is, this should still not necessarily be the dream - and that's a bigger issue - but it's wonderful that she's shown one can be healthy and true to one's self, and achieve hers.

Dying To Be The Next Gisele [Salon]

Lizzie Miller's Glamour Shot [LA Times]

Related: Crystal Renn Battles Anorexia, Finds Success As "Plus-Size" Model
Coming This Fall: More Naked Fat Ladies In Glamour!

Kate is also a regular contributor to the Broadsheet section of Salon. When she is not knocking Jez editors' socks off and inspiring millions of readers with her intelligent, humorous, and decisive writing about all manner of issues pertaining to women and body image, she is chilling out at home in Chicago with her husband and two dogs. Please give her a warm welcome.

Shapely Prose [Official Site]
Kate Harding Writes Stuff [Official Site]
Kate Harding's Twitter [Twitter]
Lessons From The Fat-O-Sphere: Quit Dieting And Declare A Truce [Amazon]
Yes Means Yes: Visions Of Female Sexual Power And A World Without Rape [Powell's]

Writer Mandy Katz's analysis of the zeitgeist is a little silly (is the show More to Love really an example of Fat Acceptance? Is Oprah, with her public confessions of "embarrassment" about her weight, really a paragon of Health At Every Size?), but the basic message of her article is worth repeating. "A loose alliance of therapists, scientists and others," she writes, believe,

that all people, "even" fat people, can eat whatever they want and, in the process, improve their physical and mental health and stabilize their weight. The aim is to behave as if you have reached your "goal weight" and to act on ambitions postponed while trying to become thin, everything from buying new clothes to changing careers. Regular exercise should be for fun, not for slimming.

It's not a new concept, as Katz acknowledges, but it's still a controversial one. Katz quotes Walter Willett, chair of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, who says,

Virtually everyone who is overweight would be better off at a lower weight. There's been this misconception, fostered by the weight-is-beautiful groups, that weight doesn't matter. But the data are clear.

Leaving aside his dismissive tone, Willett doesn't mention how "everyone who is overweight" is supposed to get to "a lower weight" and stay there, probably because there's no reliable answer. Given the fact that trying to change your weight often leads to yo-yo dieting (Kathryn Griffith, interviewed in the article, has been through Weight Watchers 27 times), it's no wonder a variety of people have decided to just eat what they want already — that is, to choose "intuitive eating." A companion article, also by Katz, defines intuitive eating thus:

Intuitive eating involves returning to basic drives, dispensing with the notion of "good" or "bad" foods and rules about when to eat. Absent a fear of deprivation, the philosophy holds, one's hunger and taste cues - rather than cognitive rules - provide the most trustworthy guide toward balanced, healthy eating.

Some claim (this is Corinna Tomrley's critique of Susie Orbach) that this kind of eating will make you thin. But Kate Harding of Shapely Prose tells Katz that when she quit dieting,

I thought, ‘O.K., maybe I could be a size 10, and it won't be so bad.' As it turned out, I ended up as roughly an 18, which was exactly where I started.

Really quitting dieting may mean not just letting that Weight Watchers subscription lapse, but also giving up thinness as a goal. It's still incredibly difficult, because people like Willett (and every women's magazine ever) continue to insist that it must be everyone's goal. But psychologist and eating disorder specialist Deb Burgard says, "the pursuit of thinness as a dream is a place holder. It gets in the way of asking, ‘What is it I am dreaming of?' "

This may be true not just for individual dieters, but for our diet-obsessed society in general. Also in the Times, Roger Cohen writes about the recent study that shows that calorie-restricted monkeys live longer. The child of a primate expert, he examines a now-famous photo of two monkeys, Owen and Canto — and thinks Owen, the well-fed one, is probably happier. He writes,

It's the difference between the guy who got the marbleized rib-eye and the guy who got the oh-so-lean filet. Or between the guy who got a Château Grand Pontet St. Emilion with his brie and the guy who got water. As Edgar notes in King Lear, "Ripeness is all." You don't get to ripeness by eating apple peel for breakfast.

"When life extension supplants life quality as a goal," he continues, "you get the desolation of Canto the monkey." Long life and even health have become goals in themselves, and we seemed forgotten that a long healthy life is for something — enjoyment. When we take health, longevity, or thinness for that matter, as ends rather than means, we get our priorities screwed up. We think it's acceptable to tell people to starve themselves so that they can fit Willett's definition of what's healthy — or Vogue's definition of what's attractive. We'd be better off remembering that health is about being able to do things with your life — including eat — and that thinness is about, well what is in thinness about exactly? If you look at a women's magazine, it's about health, yes, but also attractiveness, happiness, and personal empowerment — all of which can be achieved at any size.

Tossing Out The Diet And Embracing The Fat [NYT]
To Eat Well, Be Instinctive [NYT]
The Meaning Of Life [NYT]

Harding's slideshow depicts women of all shapes and sizes, with their BMI classification printed beneath their image: it's an arresting visual that certainly challenges the viewer to reconsider what they believe about the Body Mass Index and it's tendency to view people as lumps of flesh as opposed to complex beings whose actual body makeup can not simply be determined by the number on a scale.

BMI Project [Kate Harding's Shapely Prose]

One of Harding's complaints is that several items, while called dresses, are decidedly too short to be worn in public as such. In this we are agreed. That said, there are some pieces that look good… although, for sure, there are more items that look bad.

The Good:


It isn't exactly earth-shattering, but this tiger-striped tee has just enough glitz to be interesting. And V-necks generally flatter plus sizes.

This black lace top looks a wee too clingy for my tastes, but certainly a cool basic that could be dressed up or down.

While possibly too short, props for the cool pattern; the kimono shape skims the body and camouflages lots of areas.

Pencil skirt = yum.

Will you be constantly tugging at this blouse, or searching for safety pins, trying to keep it closed so as not to show the entire office your bra? Maybe. But nice, flattering wrap style. Flutter sleeves are great for slimming the upper arm.

The Bad:


Ick. Too short, and... yuck. Really? Plus-sized teens want a dress which constricts and pushes together their thighs?

If it's not flattering this poor model, imagine what will happen to mere mortals.

Most plus-sized ladies need a decent, supportive bra; this top renders wearing one impossible.

Ditto, add "looks cheap."

Another dress so short it could be a tunic. This one, as an added bonus, ends up looking like maternity wear if you're not careful.

100% sheer polyester? DO NOT WANT.

See above.


Of course, the biggest problem Harding has with Faith21 is that, as we've mentioned before, it's not really plus sized. For the largest size — XXL — the measurements are that of a 15/16. That means Kate (who is a size 18) and many others are "too big" for Faith21 clothing. (Just a reminder: the "average" American woman is a 14.)

Still, the fact that a popular, affordable chain is trying to be inclusive is worth noting. And at Sunday's New York Times event, Tyra Banks reportedly said that a plus-size cycle of America's Next Top Model is a possibility. "That would be fantastic," she said, "if only they would come out to the auditions! I don't think plus size girls know they could be on Top Model. We've just gotta get them coming out to the auditions!" Well, first they've got to have something decent to wear.

Faith 21: I Give It 3 Months [Shapely Prose]
4 Important Things I Learned From Marc Jacobs And Tyra Banks Yesterday [Glamour]

Related: Faith 21 [Forever 21]

Earlier: Big Problems Arise With Plus-Size Clothing For Teens
How Do We Solve The Plus-Sized Clothing Crisis?
Kate Harding Isn't Going To Take Shit Because She's Not A Size 4
Also: Alloy: The Secret Weapon Of The Broke & Plus-Sized

Harding tells Schoenberg:

"Maybe what I'm most angry about is the assumption that we're ignorant," Harding says of fat people (her term). "All these people are saying, you just need to do X, Y and Z. As if we've never thought of X, Y and Z! As if we haven't all tried restricting calories and exercising our brains out.

"A lot of us have lost weight — and gained it back. Everyone thinks that there's a simple solution we've somehow managed to be unaware of. Or we're not aware that fruits and vegetables are better for you than fast food. A lot of these things assume that you're downright stupid or living on another planet."

I have a feeling that some of the lovely women I stood in line with to try out for More to Love feel her on that one.

Harding has an entire manifesto for the people who just can't stop themselves from reminding her that she's going to get sick and die if she doesn't get back down to the more socially-acceptable size 4 she once managed to squeeze into. Go read the entire thing yourself the next time you feel that familiar urge rising in your throat to tell someone who isn't perfectly thin that they'll die — as though skinniness is some fountain of youth that will stave off death itself— but it goes more or less like this.

7. Human beings deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Fat people are human beings.

8. Even fat people who are unhealthy still deserve dignity and respect. Still human beings. See how that works?

9. In any case, shaming teh fatties for being "unhealthy" doesn't fucking help. If shame made people thin, there wouldn't be a fat person in this country, trust me. I wish I could remember who said this, 'cause it's one of my favorite quotes of all time: "You cannot hate people for their own good."

And for all that, Harding doesn't point fingers in the way that I am about to: people who feel it necessary to mock, shame or embarrass people who don't conform to a socially acceptable body type are simply acting out their own insecurities and self loathing. There are lots of ways to be beautiful and lots of ways to be healthy — and Harding is both, by all accounts — but none of them involve spending one's time mocking the bodies of others. That's just sort of always ugly, no matter what the package.

The Queen Of Fat Bloggers Takes No Prisoners [Chicago Tribune]
Behold The Queen of Fats [Shapely Prose]
Don't You Realize Fat Is Unhealthy? [Shapely Prose]

Related: Kate Harding [Salon]

Earlier: Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places: A Reality Show Audition

Unless she's trained them otherwise, Harding says, people tend "to respond to any mention of my weight with 'You're not fat!'" But she says what they really mean is, "You're not a dozen nasty things I associate with the word fat." She lists the nasty things, and they include ugly, unhealthy, smelly, lazy, ignorant, undisciplined, unlovable, and just plain icky. Harding says "I want to be called fat because it's the simple truth" and points out that "the vast majority of people classified as obese are about as fat as I am, in the BMI 30-35 range." But her larger point is that being fat shouldn't actually associated with any of the nasty things she lists. It should be a neutral descriptor, like "tall" (not that this, or any visual descriptor, is actually entirely neutral), not a value judgment. "I am a kindhearted, intelligent, attractive, person, and I am fat," she says. "There is no paradox there."

But there's another side to the reflexive "You're not fat!" response. We're trained to say it, not just because we have negative cultural associations with fatness, but because saying, "I'm so fat" has become part of an ingrained cultural script. When someone complains that they're fat, they often mean that they feel unattractive or undisciplined or any number of the other qualities on Harding's list. And so we learn to contradict them, because we want them to know we don't think they are any of those bad things. If you grew up in America, no matter what your BMI, you're probably not used to people like Harding who speak of their own fatness in a value-neutral way.

Harding is awesome for teaching her friends that fat ≠ gross, but in order for the lesson to work, we all have to watch the way we talk about our bodies. Just as we shouldn't assume that a fat person is smelly or lonely, we shouldn't complain about our bellies or our thighs when what we really mean is that we're feeling down on ourselves. There's a world of difference between "I'm so fat!" and "I'm feeling bad about my body," and we'd all do well to learn it.

Does my butt look fat? [Salon]

Though the explanation may be unclear, this research is the epitome of a "no shit" study to many female bloggers in the Fatosphere. Kate Harding at fat acceptance blog Shapely Prose posted an awesome rant about attractiveness earlier this year, and how unfortunate and untrue the equation thin = sexually attractive is.

Kate writes:

The world is not full of Attractive People and Unattractive People. It’s full of people who are attractive to some and not to others. I hear from trolls all the time who complain that they don’t want to be “forced” to find nasty, ugly fat women attractive–which utterly baffles me, since the last thing I want to do is encourage fat-hating dicks to date fat women. You don’t find fat people attractive? Fabulous. Don’t date them. I will find a way to pick myself up and move on without your love. But to assume your lack of sexual interest in fat chicks must be universal–or that the mere existence of self-confident fat people having healthy relationships somehow “forces” you to find fat attractive–is the height of fucking narcissism.

Rant on! It's sort of bizarre to me that researchers would choose to study this in the first place. "This study indicates that all women deserve diligence in counseling on unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease prevention, regardless of body mass index," Dr. Kaneshiro said. Uh, no shit? I mean, did they really need to do a study to prove that all women need to learn about their bodies, even if they're fat? I guess when the news "World's heaviest man marries in Mexico" makes headlines the world over, many people are still baffled by the idea that fat and sexuality can go together.

Overweight Women have More Sex [UPI]
In Which I Ramble About Attraction [Shapely Prose]

Earlier: Tyra Tackles The Weighty Issue Of Fatsploitation