Am I shallow? What do I do?

Seriously, you don't have to do anything you don't want to, and if she's enormously fat she should lose some weight anyway. If she's just a bit podgy though, I say give it a shot. A personality you click with is hard to find.

yeh, it's shallow, but dude: you can't help how you feel. chap, above, is bang OTM.

same thing with not dating ppl you're not attracted to, vs dating someone you were attracted to and could be again.

it all depends on how much you liked this girl and why she's gained weight. if she's going thru a really low period in her life, and that's behind the gain, and you can show her that you're not going to run away just because she's gotten heavier - and if you really do otherwise like this girl a lot - then i'd consider going for it. especially if you feel like her mind and personality are serious relationship or marriage material.

OTOH if she was near-anorexic when you met her before, and now she's at a weight that's normal for her, then it'd be fucked up to try to return her to that.

really you don't have to either/or this one, you can try taking things slow, spending time with her, getting more insight into what's going on and stuff. maybe she's on anti-depressants, or maybe she has a crappy job that makes her sit, or maybe someone died, or whatever.

also i think a lot of guys are weirdly afraid of hooking up w/ a 'fat girl', like it's some line that can't be crossed. but i've done it and had a damn good time doing it. she may have been joking but mandee otm, most of the best and most enthusiastic sex i've had has been with girls who were at least a little overweight. i don't say this is a universal truth, just my experience.

http://www.edrperformance.com/images/jabbaTheHut.jpg

Sound advice in most cases anyway.

(xpost!)

I think there's a lot to this, actually. The first time I hooked up with a fat girl, I was a little ...confused, I guess. My situation I guess was pretty different in that I was attracted to her when she was fat, but didn't entirely know what to do with that, whether it meant something different about myself ("chubby-chaser", etc - plus the whole idea that it must mean the actually hot girls are out of your league). Let's go to the journal excerpts (redacted to remove the naughty bits and the irrelevant tangents):

"5/15: [...] Upstairs, she without warning peeled off her shirt and slipped into a nightgown and then we talked for a bit [...] we cralwed into bed, and despite the lateness of the hour we settled in for the promised makeout, and it was lovely. [...] Funnily, as the night wore on she only got cuter to me [...] - partially the effect of seeing her up close, but I think also just me shedding a lot of culturally programmed uncertainty of what to do when you find a fat person attractive. Seriously! I was thinking on my walk to work today, cultural/media portrayals of non-skinny people haven't so much coded me to view such people as ugly - rather, I just don't know how to process internal feelings of attraction towards them. But anyway, that was swiftly a non-issue: the girl is frigging gorgeous!"

Don't know if that really helps, but I think you're better off at LEAST doing as Valerian suggests and going on some dates and feeling out how you feel. Maybe you'll have some great times and maybe you'll have some great sex, and maybe you'll EXPAND YR MIND, MAAAAN!

i have a lurking feeling that come morning (american time) someone's going to come swooping down on this thread and yell at us for making overweight women/ppl feel awful

before doing so, said hypothetical person might want to consider that the frankness and candor of the thread, though it might be painful to read here and there, is probably helping a lot of men/ppl to reevaluate their assumptions and premises

in other words, a net positive for fat-positive

(NB i know it's no consolation)

My husband is shorter than me! Hooray for me, I'm not shallow! In fact, I chose him especially so that I could claim the moral high ground in silly arguments on the internet!

As usual, Kim cuts straight to the chase.

Yeah, a lot of this thread makes me feel downright awful, too. But you know, I already feel bad enough about myself and my appearance.* I don't need other people to do that. They just reconfirm what I already know, i.e. most guys are shallow assholes.

*Though obviously, not bad enough to change it. I've been a lot happier since I stopped caring.

If you want a friendship with her, have a friendship. To attempt to fit yourself into something you obviously don't actually want will cause heartache for both of you - far more, long term, than admitting you aren't sexually attracted to her. Being attracted to someone's brain may be wonderful but if you're thinking of someone else when you're touching her body its not going to work.

Sorry, you're Calum.

xpost - ouch :(

staggeringly OTM.

Or not, as the case may be.

poor poor pitiful me
poor poor pitiful me
theese young girls wont let me be
lord have mercy on me
woe, is me

Alisa, you DOLL.

But not DeVito, he's bald. :-P

I'm tempted, and I haven't even tried to offer any advice.

In my experience, though, I *am* attracted to people's minds more than their bodies - and, moreover, people can be overweight but still physically attractive, to me at least. Then again, we all have different hang-ups.

When you get past attraction, into something deeper, that's a different matter, but the initial contact is not the same as ongoing connection. If you can't make an ongoing connection with someone's mind because they change in appearance, THAT is much more shallow.

(but there I think I'm doing the 'anyone different from me is wrong' thing again).

Hope I don't sound too smug and upset people since I'm overweight now, have been ugly at every weight, and will probably never stop wondering how differently people would treat me if I were neither. Maybe I might even be free enough from emo not to make posts which read like rejected Just 17 advice columns, even!

Equally, though, I don't want to bitch at the thread-starter and say "stop being so shallow, you bastard." *I* wouldn't have any problems going out with someone who was overweight. I wouldn't have any problems going out with someone whose weight kept yoyoing. I've done both, and both times the weight wasn't an issue at all for me - but that's my own personal tastes.

xpost - Rebecca sounds rather OTM. You don't fancy her, you fancy your own mental image of her.

(I'm speaking as someone here who had to go away on a trip without his partner for 6 weeks once, and came back to suddenly realise that she didn't look that much like the image he'd had in his head the whole trip.)

masonic boom, why is it not ok for a guy to not be attracted to a girl because she's fat, but ok for a girl to not be attracted to a guy because of [insert physical reason here]?

also i don't think women are any less shallow than men, it's just that you have no reason to care about the ways in which women are shallow, do you? the belief that women are any 'better' than men on this front is, i'm afraid, completely delusional (though i'll give you that gay men are generally much more hung up on looks than lesbian women).

(try being a short, homely, poor guy in your next life. ain't no diet can do anything about short.)

grimly fiendish: thanks for the props. i can't help but suspect that a lot of the ppl claiming the high moral ground in this argument still go after the 'hot chicks/guys' in their daily life. in which case, where do they get off etc.

xpost with two very good posts

i often wonder about this, whether a lot of old ppl just, well, stop wanting each other physically

we're given the image that they pair-bond and never could look anywhere else but that's hollywood, i don't know that it's always, or usually, reality

it's a very sad thought

-- Forest Pines (il...), July 10th, 2006.

It is pretty easy to do this about someone's personality, too. Of course, its also easier to look for facts that back up your preconception of what someone is going to be like, and become even more convinced that you're correct. I remember falling for someone's personality that I think I more or less manufactured out of my own mind.

Caligula, over here, likes the fatties.

That's all I was trying to get across with the "extensive sexual pantheon" line; in addition to a wonderful friend and some really hot times, I also got turned on to a whole new category of people to potentially be attracted to. That's a net benefit to my life in the long term and worth giving it a chance by itself.

Of course I agree with those who say the poster shouldn't force his feelings into place out of some feeling of doing right or whatever, but it doesn't have to be that black and white - again, go on some dates, have some laughs, try jacking off thinking about her and see whether it clicks. If it doesn't, it's not like you've done any harm or necessarily wasted any time. Jeez.

Earlier, I actually started composing a reply saying something to the effect of... well... I probably shouldn't carry on with the tack I was on, because it was meant as a parody of the attitudes described in the first post. And that someone, invariably, was going to not recognise that it was comic exaggeration for purposes of making a "turnabout is fair play" point - and use it as some kind of example of "Look, Kate is being just as shallow as the original poster, therefore the original post is excusable!"

I wanted to turn it around, reverse the genders, and see how comfortable males were with being having their attractiveness judged on a single, reducable option. The answer being - they're not.

Sexuality and fetishisation/objectification is a very complex and personal issue, and everyone has their own individual turnons/turnoffs. One size does not fit all, WRT fat or baldness or whatever.

It's one thing to say "Sorry, but fat is a deal-clencher for me" but quite another to generalise and say "Fat is just a horrific deal-clencher for *everyone*, go ahead and list your fatty fucks before you condemn me!" That attitude, I find utterly revolting and contemptible.

However, what it always comes down to, to me, is that being attracted to someone (rather than just finding them physically attractive) is a complex process, which involves *more* than just the physical attractiveness. (See also, Tracer's comments on the "out of my league" thread).

I think that Rebecca is right though. If a man has met a woman who seems to be perfect in every other way, but he is dismissing her out of hand because she's put on a few pounds, either 1) he is a shallow bastard or 2) this is about his mental image, not about the woman in the first place.

Either way, I think this woman, frankly, deserves better. Though honestly, I don't know why I'm continuing to post on a Calum thread, so I'll withdraw.

Advice for the ages.

actually, i'm totally comfortable with that: it's the reverse hypocrisy i object to. it's totally ok for a fat girl to say 'i don't date short men', as long as she admits that she gives up the right to complain about ppl not wanting to date her because she's fat. i'm neither short nor fat, but i have other physical things about me that someone might not want, and that's ok.

It's one thing to say "Sorry, but fat is a deal-clencher for me" but quite another to generalise and say "Fat is just a horrific deal-clencher for *everyone*, go ahead and list your fatty fucks before you condemn me!" That attitude, I find utterly revolting and contemptible.

no, what i'm saying is 'anyone who condemns this guy for feeling ambivalent about dating someone overweight, but who wears a [metaphorical] "no fat chicks" shirt in their real life, is a fuckface'.

no one said fat was a 'horrific deal-clencher' (don't you mean 'deal-breaker'?) for 'everyone', but there's no denying that mainstream culture looks askance at heavier women, so if you're going to come down on someone for not 'rising above the fray' you damn well better be doing it yourself. or else, again, yr a fuckface hypocrite.

do you have any actual evidence that this is 'a calum thread'?

xpost wow!

'i seem to be having a...problem...'

You obv. don't fancy her now so just be friends. Easy. (Alternatively you can try and get around stigma re her weight and if you do well done - but everyone's entitled to their preferences anyway).

yes, this is very true ... BUT similarly you can't be expected to say "must ... overcome ... own preferences and western societal mores ... and fancy this girl even though i don't". and whaling on the OP for being shallow/"a typical man"/etc when he was actually just being honest is frankly bizarre.

of course different people are attracted to different types; however, there are fairly basic standards of attractiveness in western culture, and it's hardly "shallow" or "wrong" to admit that, you know, you're in a bit of a quandary when you really like someone's mind BUT don't like their face/body/big ears/whatever.

sure, once you're well into an established relationship, these things cease to matter; or, at least, to matter as much. but FFS, in the tentative beginning stages of a relationship, even a new haircut can be a deal-breaker.

I don't see what the big deal is here. Men and women are always judging people on appearance, unless TV etc. have been lying to me all this time.

er, yes. absolutely. IT'S NOT A CRIME, PEOPLES.

If physical attraction in fact remains but the OP just has a mental block due to societal expectations/what he has built up the girl to be in his head, then there may be some hope.

I think we may be agreeing here, unless that was an x-post.

i know that's a really shaky distinction but still i think we all do this: figuring out the difference between what we want and what we're TOLD we should want. everyone says little suzie is funny-looking and you go along with it and then it dawns on you 'actually i think she's totally cute'

this is pretty much the perfect situation, in a way, for figuring out some of that stuff - as long as it's handled in a REALLY low-key way and no one gets led on or hurt

(haha as if)

but the thing about constructing an image is totally true, we all do that but it's a big danger if you haven't seen someone in ages and turn them into someone who doesn't exist and never did

xpost ailsa OTM, as long as we assume that the initial interest was completely, er, 'authentic'

i've totally done the idealizing-a-person-over-the-summer thing, so, you know, fat may really not be the issue in this case

(methinks questioner is making excuses)

xxpost - yeah, Dan, I know, but I'm onto the wider issues here. Actually I'm just standing here going "hurrah I'm marvellous, worship me and my non-shallow-ness because I'm happily married to someone who isn't the type of person I'd have looked twice at a few years ago".

'you seem to have caught on fire, sir!'
'PUT ME OUT you fucking british firefighting nancy'

otm, i wish i was articulate enough to have said this.

http://s129178457.onlinehome.us/celebritieseating/uploaded_images/81-791403.jpg

oh germans could you be any more german...

but wait, i don't want to derail this thread

I realize that the original poster asked us to judge him and that therein lies a crucial difference between his judging of this woman he doesn't really know and our judging of this guy we don't really know; aside from that, the judgements flying here are just as "superficial" as the judgement described in the opening post.

http://www.nme.com/images/84_thomyorke_radiohead_L210306.jpg

(You have to derail Calum threads, it is The Law.)

Anyway, who's to say that this girl is into superficial guys? Maybe this exposes more to her about him that makes *him* unattractive to her.

Wanting to date somebody because you find them physically attractive and charmed by the surface attributes of their personality in itself is pretty normal; not wanting to date someone because you aren't physically attracted to them or their surface personality seems to be the norm also. There are millions, if not billions, of people who aren't interested in dating me for precisely these reasons and I don't think that makes them bad people. It's not basing your entire valuation of a person's worth on whether or not you want to date them, it's just about wanting to date somebody or not.

Your (David) situation is fucked because you already laid your cards out on the table and there's no way to get around the fact that the situation has changed. If you truly feel the same way about her outside of the physical issue them you'll want to be in her life no matter what, and you'll find a way to make that happen. If not, then it was just a casual dating thing anyway.

+ I don't think saying you've slept with someone short or plus-sized means anything. Who you'll bang is much different than who you'll date. Also, "plus size" = US size 12+. Someone who is a size 12 isn't at all fat, so yeah.

take a wild guess

i have posted here before, under a different name - never much, but a little bit here and there, a little while back. enough to know the ilx memes, not enough to really get involved. lurked for a while, then decided to post when i saw this thread. ok?

this is definitely true (and a distinction i made in my own posts).

Also, "plus size" = US size 12+. Someone who is a size 12 isn't at all fat, so yeah.

also true! many women look their foxiest at sizes 12 and above (what size depends on the girl).

a lot of this for me is about faces - some ppl's facial features really work best at a particular weight range, and it ain't always the thin part of the spectrum. i've heard ppl say 'oh she'd be so pretty if she were thinner' - but some girls are prettiest when they're 'fat', and tend to look pointy or severe when they're 'thin'. (same goes for boys, of course.) when i went to hawaii i found that the native hawaiians often looked really stunning with some extra pounds.

maybe it has to be self-diagnostic: you meet someone, you think they're cute and really like their personality, but you're put off by their weight. if you think 'you know, this person just doesn't work for me, physically, at this weight', then that's one thing. but if your mind steers towards thoughts of status and embarrassment - 'what would my mates/co-workers think?' - then it's time for some soul-searching.

Alright, thanks again.

Peace

If she's no longer his type then there no reason he shouldn't not want to start a relationship with her (it does help if you find your SO physically attractive, at least at the beginning of a relationship) - Of course, maybe he should expand the boundaries on what his type is, but that's part of growing up.