I prefer the term thick, but I’m a heavy set woman. Ive not always been over weight, so I understand the basicsm I’m very curious to why some guys are ashamed of their attraction to bigger women. Are they ashamed because of what others think or say?
That’s at least 80% of it right there. Society has also conditioned people into thinking there are things they should and should not desire.
Fortunately these days more and more people are able to overcome that and find what they really desire.
Moved to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Toxic Masculinity. Men are fed from a young age right and wrong ways to be a man and those values become embedded and reinforced by society. One of those ways that men are taught is that there’s a rigid and narrow range of feminine beauty and anything outside of that range is deviance and fetishism. Men who never let go of their toxic masculinity upbringing thus feel shame at their abnormal deviance and seek to hide it from their peers.
Well, that makes me a wonderful Mom, My son liked and is married to a thick woman. I guess I beat down his toxic masculinity. I did talk to him incessantly about how to treat women. Yay! me!
How do you define heavyset? An extra 40 pounds or super morbidly obese? Its not the same thing.
I think part of it is that as a society how attractive and desirable you are can be determined by how attractive and desirable your mate is. So if guys are chasing women that society deems undesirable, then that makes the guy undesirable too since if he were more desirable he could do better.
I’m sure some women are ashamed of the fact that they date or are attracted to guys who are unemployed or extremely short for the same reason. The unconscious belief that if she had more to offer she’d be dating a taller guy with a job.
As someone who likes heavy set women - yes, that is a factor. Societal opinion does play a big role. If a lot of people think it odd or gross or mock-able, then it is hard for that not to affect how a man thinks about the subject.
Big girls and mopeds–both are a lot of fun, until your friends see you with one.
Wesley Clark got it I think. Everybody thinks they know what will make them happy, and societal approval can be a curiously important factor in that happiness. As a wimpy little bitch, I’ve been more concerned with how a lady is going to treat me than with how desirable her appearance might be to someone else. Eye candy is nice, but gets old fast when it treats you like crap.
Not morbidly, but yes about 30-40 pounds over weight.
I don’t see how you could be ashamed of something one finds appealing. Yeah, actions are shame worthy, a prison record, maybe even how one treats others but idk. If I like something, I’m owning everything about my liking.
That’s only society, and what society says we should desire. We live our lives daily not with society as a whole but as individuals. So this is where I disagree. Sculpting ourselves, our desires, based upon false truths would be something I would be ashamed of.
I’m pretty sure I wasn’t raised in a “Toxic Masculinity” environment. I would hope this holds true for all but a very small number of men.
It’s perfectly possible for someone to feel ashamed about what they like, even if they don’t act on their likings. There’s a reason most people don’t want society to be able to read their mind’s thoughts or see their porn browsing history.
Also - without diverting the thread - a lot of what you wrote in post #9 is projection. Yes, you may be bold and not feel ashamed of what you like, but when you are essentially saying, “I don’t feel this way, so I don’t understand why other people could feel that way” - you are projecting.
I get that. Perhaps I should have clarified. Hell I’m a recovering addict and do you think I volunteer that information when I’m applying for jobs? NO!
Ashamed of ones likings which aren’t illegal, unhealthy, immoral, etc.
Suppose your correct. Seeking an understanding of allowing others to deem ones likings when they have nothing more involved except their personal opinion. Same as my opinion swaying your presidential vote. Maybe I’m a heavy gal and I’m accustomed, with no intentions of maintaining my size. But im still gonna say be who you are 100% all the time. After all said and done what other people think about me is none of my business. Thanks
And good for you (no snark, I mean that), a lot of people never realize that kind of confidence. That may be difficult to grasp, and it is certainly frustrating when you realize the vast majority of “adults” you run into are simply old 7th graders who don’t know it or can’t admit it. Advertising counts on people having unresolved doubts and insecurities.
30-40 pounds overweight isn’t really heavy set. That is the average bodytype in modern society.
People who work in fast food aren’t going to be as proud of their careers as physicians because one career has more status than the other and shows you bring more value to the economic marketplace. Its just the way it is. One has more prestige than the other. Humans are social animals, and the ones with the highest status tend to have the best survival outcomes. So people are very status conscious and always will be. Doing things that imply you lack status or value are things people will generally hide.
I know that many “devotees”, or people who are sexually attracted to certain aspects of disability, are actually very ashamed of their attractions. I have spoken to one such person who started crying, saying she felt so terrible being attracted to what amounted to basically the disabled person’s biggest tragedy.
I think there are actual conflicting ideals within an individual of what is attractive, not just “what attracts you” against “what others think should attract you” (though certainly that’s part of it.
I don’t think it’s as simple as skin-deep beauty vs the other kind of beauty either, though again that’s certainly part of it.
There are, at the least:
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attraction (real attraction) based on the status value of a certain appearance
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attraction based on the observer’s sexual desire, or lust if you prefer that term
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attraction based on the observer’s (flawed) perception of the sexual desire being felt by the one observed
I’m sure there are more, and also sure that the reality is not a choice between discrete states, but rather some kind of combination or overlap that might be unique to each person.
Except that we live in society, meaning that we need to develop certain inhibitions that smooth or facilitate amicable relations. I.e. there are things one might think and believe but in the interest of peace and harmony, one is often better off not sharing such sentiments. Being 100% you is sometimes exactly what is NOT called for. Write this down: everything is a matter of balance.
Lost girl, I’d like to know more about what you’re seeing/hearing/experiencing that you feel expresses shame in the men who are attracted to you (I assume they’re not explicitly telling you so). Not to diminish your assessment, it’s certainly what my favorite professor would have called “cogitable” but sometimes men are just clods, for selfish or sexist or neurotic or idiosyncratic reasons that you won’t know about until you have talked to them enough to dig it out. Fortunately, while most men lie a lot, almost none of them do it with any skill whatever, so this step doesn’t take long.
Not introducing you to his friends and family is something skinny girls complain about too. Acting weird and cryptic is something guys with wives or other girlfriends or hang-ups about long-term relationships do, regardless of the size of the woman to whom they’re attracted. Watching porn is something guys do…period, apparently. But the porn they watch has little or nothing to do with the sex they expect (you know why, right?).
Full disclosure: I married a heavy woman and for twenty years (that’s wrong: I mean I still could) I could tell her truthfully that I thought she was beautiful. When she got stressed out about her weight (which was often) I either encouraged her to exercise, or, alternately, I bought her books that encouraged the idea that fat wasn’t necessarily unhealthy, as long as good nutrition and a little exercise was part of our lives. I was never once ashamed of her: she was beautiful and smart and talented and charming. But sometimes, when she felt down, she would tell me she felt unloved because she was overweight. Maybe it was something I did, but she could never tell me what. I’d kind of like to have that back, and try harder this time.
Eventually she had (not at my advice) an operation and lost a lot of weight and a while later started getting a lot of attention from men who suddenly saw what I had seen for a long time. I was not being a very good husband at the time, and we were divorced a short time later. This does not mean she had become more beautiful.
Relationships succeed and fail all the time. We tend to blame ourselves (in my case that’s probably correct), and one of the most pernicious ways to do that is to blow up a perceived flaw in ourselves and guess that our significant other has suddenly discovered it, when in reality they either didn’t notice at all or saw it at first glance and didn’t care.
In any event, good luck with your future relationships.