I showed Alan the (awesome) Honky-Tonk Badonkadonk video.
"Eugh," he said. "Now I'll have nightmares of skinny white girls shaking their asses in my face all night."
"Most boys wouldn't call that a nightmare," I said.
"No, really," he said. "That's just not my type."
For some reason, that conversation felt enlightening. I'd always thought of my body as kind of a second choice. As though all men really wanted the exact same thin white D-cup bimbo, and all women were trying to approximate that archetype, and my body was just a particularly poor approximation.
The idea that someone could actually like my body, rather than only liking it inasmuch as it sort of resembled an ideal body, was embarassingly revelatory. (Alan's the sort of guy who says what comes to mind, he's not much given to diplomacy, so I don't think it was a "not as pretty as you, honey" sort of thing.)
And the ironic thing is that I don't like the archetypal male body at all. My ideal man isn't an 18-year-old lifeguard, and I actually think overdefined muscles are kind of a turnoff. I go for more wiry strength and worn features. I like a guy who looks a little older than his age, who's got a couple scars, and I'm utterly indifferent to belly size as long as he can keep up with me.
I don't go for perfection, so it's pretty damn sexist of me to think that all men would.
I'm a skinny bisexual bimbo, and let me tell you - a little meat looks good on a girl. I wish I had some.
ReplyDelete...you know what? It actually isn't even that. It's that real people are more appealing than people who look like they've been carved out of plastic. Have you ever seen the cover for 'Nip, Tuck'? I haven't even seen the show, but the cover itself just pisses me off so much...
Aebhel - I don't think that fat always looks better than thin, I just think that different people like different things. There are men who go for skinny chicks and men who go for meaty chicks, that's all. (As opposed to the idea that all men who aren't weirdo fetishists go for skinny chicks.)
ReplyDeleteAnd, sadly, there are men who go for plastic chicks. Bastards. But it's really its own punishment.
What is funny is that I find that really thin girls make the worse bdsm partners as they can hardly take any sort of spanking. I've always preferred rounder girls but the more I play with spanking, the more I just appreciate a little padding on the bottom.
ReplyDeleteYep. I have the same issue, and I've been with a man who was born without tact for the last eight years. He shows every sign of completely sincere appreciation, and yet...
ReplyDeleteI don't particularly like the current "male ideal" much either. I like mine hairier, larger, and darker. To go for the media example, I'd still take Bruce Campbell's older self over his co-star Jeffery Donovan.
Well, in reality I know that not all men want the plastic blond, hell, I like women and I don't even like the plastic blond. But for some reason whenever a guy tells me I'm attractive I feel like it's the idea of "you're closer to the look of beauty than some other girls so there for I'm going to tell you you are good looking and hot even though you aren't the look that is really desirable"
ReplyDeleteA lot of times these guys really do find me attractive, and that just blows my mind. Maybe I just have low self esteem though...
*sorry for rambling*
"I don't go for perfection, so it's pretty damn sexist of me to think that all men would."
ReplyDeleteCool, cool, insight, Holly! Actually though, if you want to really look at how sexism just warps our entire language look at how you used "perfection" to *mean* tall/skinny/d-cup. It's like we don't even want to do it and it *still* comes out! Freaky huh?
And here's how I'm thinking it *really* screws us: we *do* go for perfection and, really, that's great as long as it's our personal ideosyncratic perfection. (Labrat doesn't go for the Bruce Campbell type for personal rather than consensus reasons. Although even I have to admit Campbell's an excellent choice.)