Are fat girls REALLY less attactive than thin ones?

Great Debates
1

Woo hoo, my first time posting! This board looked really interesting so I just had to join. Anyway, I was trying to think of a good topic to talk about and I decided to bring up something that’s been on my mind for a long time. I’m the kinda person who always wonders what other people are thinking and I have found myself many times wondering what guys REALLY think of big girls.

I’ll use myself as an example. I’m 24, of average height, been told often that I have a pretty face (I find it lacking, though ), by people other than my parents. I’m clean, and smell nice (er, most of the time). Redeeming qualities: wacky (so I’ve been told) sense of humor, easygoing, cares about others. Apparently all these things have worked to my advantage because I’m getting married to a great guy in June.

Ok, now here’s the kicker, I’m built like an Amazon. And not really by choice. Let me explain. I’m not really “fat”; I do have a few pounds I don’t need, but I have, and have always had, a stocky build. I don’t eat junk food - it’s always disagreed with my seemingly delicate bowels - I tend to gravitate towards what my fiance calls “weird organic crap”. I also hate being sedentatry, I bike or walk wherever possible. My legs are solid muscle. I have an hourglass figure, but like I said, it’s Amazonian - Boobs that could punch holes through drywall (I think they’re TOO big, actually) I taper down in the waist although my waist is short and thick, then I widen out into full hips and the aforementioned She-Hulk legs. I AM very feminine though; I always wear makeup and jewellry, and skirts a lot.

Growing up, boys always told me I was ugly and fat, and that nobody would ever love me, and they even beat me up. It was always a gang of them against me, so I could never fight back because I was usually being held down by someone. This was a rotten time for me and it’s never really left my mind. Even as a teenager boys never showed any interest in me and showed disgust if I showed interest in them. Sometimes I really don’t know what my guy sees in me if I’m really that vile a creature, but I feel pretty lucky to have him.

What I guess I want to know from all you guys here is, honest opinion, if a girl is big or fat or whatever, as long as she has a decent personality and takes care of herself, would you still find her attractive? Or, do girls have to be skinny, perfect supermodels to warrant any attention? I think in my heart I’m hoping that people aren’t as shallow as society on the whole seems to be.

2

You can contanct a moderator to close one the two identical threads you opened with different titles.

3

Personally, I like girls who are interesting, and kind, and fun to be around. Looks are secondary. I’d honestly prefer interesting-with-facial-scars to beautiful-but-vacant.

Having said that, the classic supermodel combination of skinny with no muscle tone doesn’t do a lot for me. If I have a “type” I’m attacted to, I guess it would be “sporty,” which covers a wide range of body types and they all look better to me than supermodels. I’ve dated a couple of physically active fat girls, and they were gorgeous. I’ve also dated a gymnast who was petite and muscular with no boobs to speak of, and she too was gorgeous.

You sound cute as hell to me! He’s lucky to have you.

4

If I were forced to choose at gunpoint, I would rather have a fat girl than a really skinny one. Those anarexic runway models just don’t do it for me :frowning:

5

I’ve always been attracted to women who can punch holes in drywall with their tits. :cool:

6

Do you take their word for it, or demand proof?

7

It depends a lot on your culture too. Personally I prefer women who are full figured (not necessarily fat) to skinny women. The skinny women super model thing I think is a European thing that also has a big following with a segment of the US and in Japan. Any self respecting hispanic boy prefers his women with some bottom. :cool:

This is always a big plus also. :wink:

I find women attractive on a case by case basis. Mostly its a combination of factors from intellegence, personality, how we mesh together, and whether I’m physically attracted to her or not (if we are going to be more than ‘just friends’). Again, there are different cultures out there, so different men are looking for and attracted to different factors in women. The super model attraction isn’t universal…personally I’m a bit repelled by it sometimes, from a physical perspective (and from seeing some of the interviews I’m repelled by a lot of their personalities).

BTW, welcome to the SDMB. :slight_smile:

-XT

8

Yep, I got nothin against fat girls, really skinny ones freak me out though. But when it comes down to it, it really is 90% personality, self confidence, attitudes.

Oh, and if they smoke, I just walk away.

9

Solidly-plump, busty, and hourglass-curvy gets my attention over skinny every time. :slight_smile:

To the OP’s question: oh, definitely. I suspect that if I met you, I’d find you unforgettable.

10

Skinny women kinda freak me out also. To be honest, I don’t think that overweight women are as attractive as thinner women. But if they really take care of themselves I would consinder them pretty attractive.

11

Warm in the winter,
Shady in the summertime.
That’s what I like about
That fat gal o’ mine!

12

I was always attracted to larger women when I was dating. Call it the result of the part of my lineage that trekked across the plains, but I don’t like a woman who’s not solidly put together. I sometimes wondered if I did it out of lack of self-assuredness. Eventually I was “lucky” enough for three years to date and live with a woman who was not a model but could have been one in a heartbeat.

The horror… the horror…

I had always sensed something I didn’t quite like in skinny women’s personalities, and living close to one for that long showed how astoundingly insecure and petty they can be.

I am now happily married to a Latina who, by her own description, has “an ass you could serve tea on”.

13

Welcome to the SDMB.

Allow me to to take your SDMB virginity.

Cite?
:wink:

Honest opinion? Big != fat. Skinny != attractive.

I am both old enough to be your father, and too happily married to be able to start the requisite flirting thread, but a physically active and (ahem) well-developed female is the type that haunted my fevered imagination from roughly age twelve. Your boyfriend is a lucky guy.

Regards,
Shodan

14

Hi, Satyricon. Nice user name, welcome to the SDMB. You will fit in fine here!

First, it sounds as though nothing is wrong with your bod; every kid gets teased for something or other in life.

Still, the OP is a little mixed up. It sounds as though you are trying to:

  1. Work out some old issues about your own looks, which sound different from the real obesity that makes a “fat girl” fat.

  2. Ask why guys are so shallow and don’t just love women for what really counts: the beauty within.

  3. Ask whether obesity is really an issue with guys.

In other words, you’re saying, “Hey, I’m not really one of those fat girls, you know, but why did dudes give me such a hard time when I really wasn’t a fatty–and do those shallow dudes really care about fatness, and why do they?”

Posters are responding with a key point: Most guys don’t want to get together with an anorexic.

Let’s be plain about another thing, however: truly obese women (and men) are gross-looking and typically get to do the hog bounce only with another hog. Personally speaking, women who walk around dripping lipids and complaining about how shallow men are because they don’t dig the flab are clueless self-kidders.

Men usually don’t think this way. Men know that either they have to have extreme sex appeal and personality OR lots of money to bag a hot one. This is our fate, and I have yet to meet a dude that did not accept it.

Another thing: the “supermodel” body type really isn’t all that thin. These women tend to be big-busted, big-butted, and at least semi-voluptuous. They’re not obsese, but they’re certainly not skinny, either. It’s the “Eurowaifs” (see them all the time in Tokyo) that are the true exemplars of “anorexia fashionosa.”

As many posters also indicate, not all men go for the supermodel body type. For one thing, you never see people who look like this in real life, since it’s not just the body but the clothes they wear, the way they are styled, and the way the camera makes them look. Hence, this image seems to exist only as a fantasy. And they call them “supermodels” also because there are few models that actually try to do this. Real models, on the other hand, tend to be skinny and unattractive when you see them in real life–the camera adds weight after all. Also, they only have to wear the clothes, so there is no reason why they can’t be short and small, another negative for a man who wants to ride some real meat.

To conclude,

  1. I’m OK, you’re OK.

  2. Too fat is too bad.

  3. Congratulations on bagging a good man.

15

So can I order someone like you from Amazon.com? :smiley:

Well, the way you’ve described yourself is not what I think of when I think of “fat” women. On the one hand, there are those (like yourself) who are stocky, muscular, large-framed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this whatsoever. It’s part of the wonderful variety of sizes and shapes that people’s bodies come in. Personally I’m attracted to a pretty wide variety of body types within the range of what’s healthy, and I’m glad that there is such variety among womankind; it’d be boring if everyone were built exactly the same.

On the other hand, a woman who is flabby, morbidly obese, who doesn’t take care of herself, doesn’t do anything for me. I’m just not physically attracted. Plus it may be a sign that she’s lazy or gluttonous (and doesn’t have the genes to let her get away with it), or doesn’t care about her health or appearance, or has some issues that are causing her, consciously or unconsciously, to use her weight to turn people off. (On the other hand, skinny or fit women may be vain, or spoiled, or anorexic, or obsessed with their own appearance.)

In regard to “skinny, perfect supermodels”: when it comes to looks, there’s no such thing as perfect. There’s no single, ideal “look” where a woman’s attractiveness can be measured by how closely she conforms to that look. Different people find different things attractive. Personally, actual supermodels bore the hell out of me.

16

To complicate matters, women have no idea what men like due to media indoctrination. Several years ago an Australian magazine ran an article about “what women think men like”. The article had pages of photos of naked women from the neck down. The photos were evaluated by groups of men and women. The women were trying to predict what men would think but had no idea at all. They would dismiss some woman as being overweight and the men would think she was perfect. They would say “I wish I looked like that,” but men would say “Fart too skinny.”

17

Not too long ago I started a thread on fashion magazines and how women readers reacted to what I think of as the overtly sexual posing of the fashion models. (Did women also see them as being overtly sexually posed? Take it for granted that fashionable clothing is “about sex”? So used to women being sexually posed everywhere and anywhere that they don’t really notice? Or is it just that when you photograph fairly attractive women in fairly attractive clothing they’re going to be perceived as sexy by men because of how men are wired? And do women react by rejoicing as females to see women looking so pretty, or do they experience it as a putdown to whatever extent they don’t resemble the fashion models? etc.)

Anyhow…one thing that’s been running through my head: whatever it is that makes those poses overtly sexual, I’ll wager the ad industry has done some serious investigation over the years to figure out how to push guys’ buttons, i.e., it’s extremely deliberate. And, significantly, the sexiness is not an aspect of the models themselves — none of the respondents on my thread went with “it’s just photos of attractive women, who are selling apparel to us; if you horndog guys find them sexy it’s all you, the photos aren’t intrinsically sexed up”. So I’m thinking:

• While I don’t know why they go with models who are particularly tall and skinny (note the tall part — they aren’t simply going with the female form currently regarded as most desirable, since that may include slender but generally not tall), I’m going to guess that it’s easier to design clothes for people shaped like that and make them look nice, and they want to show their wares off in the best possible light.

• The poses they put the models in, which, as I said, they’ve researched for effectiveness, would work for women of other body structures, or variations on them would. And it is the posing and displaying technique that causes us to perceive them as sexy. Nor is it by any means just the fashion industry — the ad industry overall tends to be affected by the fashion trends (even if only because they’ll want to dress their models in clothing which the designers designed around tall slinky models*).

• Given sufficient exposure to such photos, we accomodate and acclimate, i.e., as males we develop a predisposition towards seeing women as attractive to the extent that they resemble women who have been posed in such a way as to attract us. Not that it overrides all other factors, but it at least becomes a factor. So if the trend in models chosen for ads and fashion design were fatter gals, and we’d seen a few zillion more photos of such such women winking and flirting with us, we’d no doubt find such women sexier when we encountered them in real life, due to association.

  • It is also true that models chosen for certain products do differ from the ad norm; if the product is consumed primarily by males, the models will be a bit less slinky and more breastacular, generally speaking. For some reason this seems particularly true for beer advertisements. Again, this may tie back to the kinds of clothes one is draping on the models — if you’re going with jeans or shorts and a t-shirt instead of a tailored blouse, you can go with a plumper model, and probably if the fit and hang of the clothing is less of a concern a rounder female turns out to be more provocative when posed. Make of that what you will.
18

Depends on what you mean by fat … I think you really mean BIG :slight_smile:
I too am of amazonian proportions - 6’2", 40DD, and yes my bum does look big in that …
Unlike yourself, I’m single. Apparently I intimidate some men, others have a “mommy” fetish <bleurgh>, others seem to have that “I may be small but look at the size of my woman” thing, and yet more others think I’m either a lesbian or a man in drag …
So to some men I am fantastically attractive and to others I’m hideously repulsive …

19

I see there being so many different kinds of attractiveness, but all of them require self-confidence, which I think means taking what you have and running with it.

Sporty girls are extremely sexy.
Girls with a normal body and a beautiful face are cool too, but in a different way.
Amazonian-like girls have another quality that is a little difficult for me to describe, but you gals have something going for you too, no doubt. As for fatness, I can’t really go for that. Especially if the ass is a little malformed. Of course this has nothing to do with personality witch is another form of attractiveness.

Big asses aren’t bad at all, it just depends on the shape for me. Your description of yourself sure sounds attractive to me. :smiley: :eek:

Sounds like you already have a great fiancee, but if you still want to turn heads, then you just have to take what you have and not be scared to work it. Its what makes you different, and if someone is going to find you attractive, then the more of the certain characteristics you emphasize then the more attractive to them you’ll be. That’s just my personal little opinion on women.

20

60% of women are overweight, and many of them are dating or married.

Do men find overweight women attractive? I guess it varies by person and on a variety of levels, plus depends on how you define overweight. Like others have said, looks start attraction but personality keeps it going. Id be more attracted to a 180 lb woman who i had alot in common with than a 120 lb supercilious bitch. Not at first mind you, but after a couple of days i certainly would be.

However if a woman was over 200 lbs, and even if she had a really good personality and other physical traits i found desirable i think i would have problems being sexually attracted to her.