Simply naming it.

As a fat person, the number one most common insult I've gotten isn't any reference to pigs, or to how I eat too many cheeseburgers, or how sexually unattractive I am. The most common insult is "fat." There's no implicit "you're fat, and therefore something"--just letting me know, in case I forgot or something. Fat is supposed to be bad in itself.

This is why I'm glad my boyfriend calls me fat. Don't get me wrong--he also calls me cute, smart, wonderful, adorable, sexy--but if my body shape comes up, he has no qualms in calling me fat. Affectionately. And I'm glad he does, because I think he's coming from the same place as me on this: euphemizing it would legitimize the insult. If he called me "curvy" or "solid" or "a bit larger" or simply dodged the issue altogether, the implicit message would be "but you're not fat, because fat is terrible."

This is the same reason that I hate to respond to "dyke" with "I'm not gay!" Even though I'm not--the correct answer is "so what if I am?" "Slut"--so what if I am? "Whore"--so what if I were? "Cocksucker"--yep, did that Saturday night!

So many insults in our culture consist of simply naming a thing, a morally neutral human quality, and every time you fight back by denying it, you play into the idea that the thing they described is bad. I don't think the insults can lose all their power through simple acknowledgement--sometimes the tone of voice and threatening delivery are enough to intimidate you even if all they said was "YOU ARE A MAMMAL AND YOU BREATHE AIR!" But it helps to keep the perspective--how much can someone hurt me by simply telling me what I am? I already know that. And how much can someone hurt me by telling me that I have a neutral quality that I don't happen to have? That's incorrect, but it shouldn't even hurt. I'm not yet emotionally armored to the point where the only effective insult is "YOU CAUSE SUBSTANTIVE HARM TO OTHERS!", but I hope to get there some day.

So why is the post image a sad pig? Because pigs are adorable creatures that are quite intelligent and tidy. But someone just called it a "pig" and now it feels bad, even though it knows how incredibly stupid that is.

Growing up ugly.

I was, from about the time that appearance mattered (about middle school) up until I got into the kink scene, an ugly kid. Not three-eyes-ugly, but there were some things going against me: I've been fat since I was a baby, I had no idea how to dress myself, I have really weird hair, I hit puberty relatively late, and I'd skipped so many grades I was three years younger than everyone in my class. So when I got to high school, everyone else was in hot pink belly shirts and long blond ponytails and had breasts, and I was in an XXL denim shirt with hair like a tumbleweed and two years away from even a trainer bra.

I didn't get laid in high school. (Admittedly I was fifteen when I graduated. But still, when you're twelve years old and people tell you that you're unfuckable, you don't have the perspective to go "duh, I'm a child." I was devastated.) I had a brief, clandestine, and extremely chaste thing with another girl at the absolute bottom of the social ladder and I graduated.

And now, with the gift of hindsight and the much larger gift of never having to relive those days, I'm kind of glad. Being an ugly kid taught me a lot. Things like:

I am horny.
Duh, right? But never really going through the "boys will want you now" phase means that I got to experience my own horniness as a thing completely separate from male desire. Being sexually frustrated for years on end is no fun, but it teaches you to appreciate the realness of your own sex drive like nothing else. How could I buy into crap about "girls only put out for money/emotional stuff/social status" when my own vagina was going nuts with the desire just to get some goddamn cock already?

I can make the first move.
I did eventually get laid, at age 15, which may not sound like "eventually" to you, but for me it was the culmination of an absolute lifetime of frustration. I didn't do it by sitting around looking pretty and waiting for a boy to approach me. I had a crush on a male friend and I came on to him pretty hard. Even after we were sexual, having intercourse was my decision and something that I planned. I bought the condoms and I started out on top of him. The fact that boys weren't showing up at my doorstep with Boyfriend Applications didn't mean I had to hide in a hole; I just had to bypass this whole bullshit "boys approach, girls consent" protocol and go out there to work out some handshake deals with some sexy boys.

I am more than my looks.
So I wasn't pretty, or even socially acceptable, in high school. That didn't mean that I didn't exist. I had friends--"loser" friends, sure, but friends I loved absolutely dearly--my academic achievements were frankly amazing, and I generally had a full life that I was reasonably successful at. I didn't spend my time not-getting-laid but had a hell of a lot else to occupy myself with. I spent a summer before I'd even been kissed planting trees in clearcuts in the Cascades. I had never touched a penis when I got a 1580 (out of 1600) on the SAT. While I did feel down about not being sexy, I had a self-worth that had nothing to do with sex.

Sexy has nothing to do with sex.
When I started having sex, I was not appreciably hotter than I'd been before. Puberty had left me with small mismatched breasts and that was about it; I still had the body of a very small refrigerator with an untrimmed bush on top. And the sex was fucking amazing. Turns out that I can come from vaginal penetration just the way they claim women can't. Maybe "can come" is understating it. I can come fast, hard, and loud, over and over again. I wasn't sexy and my boyfriend wasn't sexy, but the actual sex we had was fantastic. I don't know if the sex bikini models have is good or not, but I don't think it could be much better.

When people give you shit, it's not because you deserve it, it's because they're shit-givers.
In high school, I got bullied a lot. People would openly make fun of me in the hallways. They'd chuck stuff at me from their cars when I was walking home. I have vivid memories of two guys in my freshman math class loudly discussing the money they'd pay to fuck various girls, then ending it on "Holly? Twelve cents." (Realizing how many things are fucked-up about that story is like one of those "count the triangles" pictures.) People spit in my food, they Sharpied my clothes, they threw trash in my hair, and at one point a group of kids actually threatened to set me on fire.

Then I got to college, and the relief was amazing. People in general didn't necessarily like me, but they were decent. Being unpopular meant that you didn't get invited to parties, not that you got passed love notes with "ha ha just kidding you are an ugly pig" inside. I realized this wasn't because I was better-looking or more "confident" or whatever. It was because college students are adults and they don't do that shit.

I didn't report most of the things that happened to me in high school because I was embarrassed to. I felt like any adult I told would respond with some polite version of either "and you just let them do this and didn't say anything?" or "well, things like this are going to keep happening until you get some confidence and learn to fit in better." It was only when the bullying stopped that I realized it wasn't about me. It wasn't the universe at large meting out things I had earned. It was just a bunch of fucked-up little assholes.

Some of those same kids also shot several pet bunnies and cats in my neighborhood. I'm glad I at least had the perspective not to react with "wow, those bunnies must have really sucked."

It gets better.
This isn't the Ugly Duckling story. I have a little bit more style and social skills now, but I'm no swan. I never did grow nice tits. I never did lose the weight. I didn't even get my hair under control. But nonetheless I grew up. And although I don't think I got pretty, I got to feeling pretty. I became first unafraid to wear normal clothes (i.e., the correct size instead of XXL, colors and designs other than "please don't notice me"), then unafraid to be naked when the situation called for it. I stopped trying to hide my belly during sex. I stopped apologizing for my appearance. I started expecting people to treat me decently.

For the longest time, I had this fantasy that I'd be beautiful someday. That I was just in my "awkward stage" and then one of these years I'd really get my shit together and lose 80 pounds and my hair would be straight and long and blonde and my face would be all lips and eyelashes and cheekbones. I was just a weirdo right now, but around 25 I'd have lots of friends and be married and own a house and maybe be pregnant and I'd have a good job as vice-president of something.

Well... I have lots of friends. Besides that, no, not so much. No conventionality, no perfect fitting in, not much conventional "success," and definitely no rapid settling-down into suburban placidity. I didn't get the life I wanted.

I got something way better.

Quick note on fattedness.

Like most fat people, I'm not fat because I take in more calories than I burn. I'm fat because I take in the same amount of calories that I burn. A 170-pound woman with a stable weight eats only about one slice of bread more than a 120-pound woman of the same activity level with a stable weight. I'm not 170 pounds because I overeat, but because I eat, literally, exactly as much as I need to.

Whether I should start eating less than I need is a complicated question and one I go back and forth on. But it's not a matter of merely "stopping overeating."

The decision to diet is not to "eat healthy." It's the nontrivial question of whether to eat deliberately unhealthy in hopes of a long-term tradeoff.



(The terminology question of how to say I'm not the same height-weight ratio as the ladies in the magazines always drives me nuts. "Overweight" implies that there's some Platonic ideal Holly whom I'm fatter than. Things like "chubby" are evasive and imply I'm ashamed of myself. [And I'm really not "curvy." I'm built less like the Venus of Willendorf, more like a miniature linebacker.] So I go with "fat," even though I worry that it makes me sound fat-fat, headless ladies in news reports fat, when I'm not even a plus size. But getting too pointed about "hey, I'm not even a plus size!" is kinda undercutting to people who are, and aren't somehow worse than me. So, yeah, "fat.")

Beyond body acceptance.

Some days I look in the mirror and I just see fat and awkwardness and totally unmanageable hair. I try and tell myself that I'm beautiful, and that beauty is a totally artificial concept on top of that, and that the social pressures shaping and enforcing beauty and particularly female beauty are positively disgusting, but some days, I'm just not buying. Especially when I've got zits too.

On those days, I remind myself that, well, that person I mentioned doing CPR on a little ways back? They're alive now.

I remind myself that I graduated college at 19 and that at 12 I pulled a man having a seizure out of a swimming pool. I remind myself that I have my name in movie credits and that I once drove an ambulance lights-and-sirens hell-for-leather around a stock car track. I remind myself that I've wetted down a beached dolphin and I've explored an abandoned asylum, been on the national champion debate team (parli) and built trails in trackless wilderness, fucked a Calvin Klein model and broken into the set of "House" during filming. I remind myself that I've helped save more lives than I can even remember. And if there weren't all that going for me, even if I hadn't lived such a dramatic life, I'd still have what anybody has--a huge list of lives I've touched and things I've done, of differences I've made.

Don't you fucking dare tell me all that's nothing unless I'm a hot little hardbody too.

It's good to like your body, but you know, your body isn't the biggest deal about you. (Or rather, your beauty isn't the biggest deal, since few people insulting your body can be dissuaded by hearing how many pounds you can lift or how quickly you recover from injuries.) It's a heartbreaking waste to take a human being, a person rich in history and abilities and relationships and ideas, and judge them on how nice a decoration they make. Maybe that's inevitable when it comes to strangers, but you damn well know better when it comes to yourself. When you're judging your appearance, you're only judging one tiny part of your self.

So I don't tell myself "I'm pretty, really I am" on ugly days. I say "Maybe I am ugly. I'm still fucking awesome."

Your Kink Is Not My Kink (And Your Kink Is Pretty Fucked Up)

I had an upsetting conversation today with a guy. It started out with him just complimenting my tummy and round cheeks, actually rather charmingly. I have no problem enjoying a certain symbiosis with chubby chasers--I'm kinda chubby, they like chubby, and so goes the great Circle of Life.

Then he started talking about feeding me cake. Hey, cake, fine by me. Cake's good. I realize this is a part of the fat thing, but if me eating cake turns your weird pervert crank, well... that's not exactly a painful and demanding fetish, is it now?

Then he started talking about wanting to feed me so much all the time that I got to be huge and couldn't leave the house and he would just take care of me all the time because I would be so huge I would be helpless. He started talking about this very seriously, emphasizing several times that it was "a lifestyle, not a fantasy."

WHOA WHOA WHOA SHIT JUST GOT WEIRD.

I have this thing about people who have impractical fantasies and won't acknowledge that they're fantasy. If you acknowledge it, that's okay; I'll eat your cake and lie on your couch for an afternoon and we can play all "wow, I fed you so much you can't move, now let's have amazing sex." And after the amazing sex I will go back to eating lentil soup and walking several miles a day because c'mon, I've got my own life. But if you refuse to acknowledge the fourth wall here, if you continually insist that you really want to make me really unable to move... you creep the fuck out of me.

Maybe it's just a communication failure. I get the feeling that saying "no, it's really for real" is part of the fantasy, and I'm being too stubbornly literal by not going along with that. (Although even in this case, he's still the asshole for not being able to step out of character long enough to explain this.)

Or fuck, maybe not. Maybe he really does want to give me goddamn bedsores. In which case, dammit, he shouldn't have gotten quite so put out and "you're being mean" when I told him that was creepy. Because it is creepy. Maybe I'm closed-minded, but I don't think I can say that wanting to literally cripple someone is a okay kink. He was talking about functionally ending my life--making me unable to enjoy the outdoors, to work outside the home, to visit friends--fuck. To say nothing of what happens to the skin and general bodily function of an immobile person.

There's people out there who think what I do isn't okay. I'm sensitive to that. I know how it feels. I know that proper kink etiquette is to say "If you find a girl who consents to that and enjoys it, mazel tov to ya both." But I just couldn't. I kept thinking about all the bedsores I've seen. Some had things living in them. I told him as much.

I really hate to say something is not okay. It's not my life or my business. But fuck, man, bedsores.

Various quick thoughts.

-I know it's supposed to be insulting to women and juvenile and stuff, but "The Shocker" seems like it would actually feel pretty good. It might be awkward for your hand though.

-True fact: speculums (specula?) come in "small" and "medium." I can think of at least two different reasons everyone wanted to avoid the "nurse, I'm going to need a large here" scenario.

-Before this weekend, I had never actually been "motorboated."

-I can take much bigger, um, insertions during phone sex than I can during masturbation. Even though nothing is physically different! It's just the power of the mind! It's things like this that make me believe magic is real.

-The ratio of "how much intercourse I've been having : how happy I feel about my sex life" has never been lower. Not that I'd mind some intercourse. It would make me so happy that the ratio would actually drop further.

-For a long time, I was pretty attached to the whole "Oh, I'm not really a submissive, I just roleplay it under very specific circumstances!" thing. Which is still technically true, but I'm starting to wonder if it wouldn't be fun to expand my circumstances. Like the whole "I'll get off on it, but I won't do your dishes!" thing... I think I might get off on dishes. Maybe.

-I've mostly stopped wearing underpants. The exception is scenarios where I'm likely to take my pants off. Then I wear them because I wouldn't want to be too forward or anything.

-You know, I do like confident and attractive and highly sexual men more than the alternatives. Is this... unfair?

-I fucked a Twilight chick once. I didn't find out about the Twilight thing until the next morning. I... I don't want to talk about it.

-Sometimes I grope myself. Not like masturbation. Just like, man, I have kind of a nice smooth round ass. I should get a feel of that. Oh yeah.

-I have to get blood drawn today. I'm terrified. I spend half my life sticking needles in other people with no remorse, and the other half being voluntarily subjected to pain and humiliation, but I don't wanna do this, wahhh.

[Edit: They did the draw and I barely felt it. So much for terror.]

-Mostly, I don't want to go to the doctor at all, even though I really need to, because in my experience there's a 50% chance that the answer to everything will be "You're fat. Probably all your problems stem from being fat. Have you tried eating less and exercising more?"

-Not that this is necessarily wrong in all cases, although I do think it's over-applied by some doctors. It's just an awkward situation all around when a medical condition also happens to be one of the gravest insults in our culture. "Ma'am, I believe your illness is exacerbated by your being more [lazy and greedy and sexless and disgusting] than is appropriate for your height."

-On the whole, though, I'm feeling better than usual about my body lately. Like, I feel like I actually have something to offer boys, rather than something that hopefully they'll forgive. I'm all "you want this" instead of "you want this?"

-Some of this is because of something I realized lately: I haven't been insulted much recently. (Well, some at work, but that never counts; if someone says that they're Zorblax of Mars or that they had "just two beers," I don't take the rest of their opinions to heart.) I feel like I used to get much more flak about my appearance, and now it's been a long time since anyone's described me as anything other than a reasonably cute young woman.

-This is partly because I've gotten better at choosing who I associate with--trying to get the approval of assholes is almost as addictive as it is pointless--and partly because I think I've changed how I present myself. I used to do a lot of either seeking approval ("do you think I'm fat?") or trying to hide myself ("if no one can see my body under this XXXL men's outfit, no one can hate it!"), and these days I tend to go out with the assumption that I'm a reasonably cute young woman, and should conduct myself accordingly. I think that assumption is contagious, even to assholes.

-Although clearly I'm not 100% cured of body-image issues, since I still write things like this.

-Wow, the "random thoughts" format kinda broke down there, didn't it?

-Is it weird that my emotional reaction to people with polyamorous and/or kinky households is much less "so hot" and much more "aww, warm fuzzies!"? Because it is. It appeals less to my "oh yeah lots of fucking" impulses and much more to my "big happy family!" ones.

-I get crushes on Internet sketch comedy members alarmingly often. Michael Swaim, Zach Weiner, Trevor Moore--SO HOT.

Fat Acceptance A La Carte.

I've mentioned the fat acceptance movement in passing many times--I'm kinda fat, they say nice things about people like me, sounds great--but I don't think I've ever really dedicated a post to it. There's some things they say that I agree with, and some I don't.

There is no excuse to be uncivil or discriminatory against someone because they are fat.
Completely, 100% agree, and the main reason I read Shapely Prose. The level of schoolyard bullying that fat people are subject to, from grown adults who should seriously know better, is insane. And the media is fully in the "ha ha, fatty" dogpile--when they're not leading it. Professional news sources that bite their nails about using the proper "-American" for every other group post articles about obesity with hilarious "a rapidly expanding problem" puns and undisguised disgust. Even if you disagree with every other thing on this list, even if you think every fat person can and should diet down to a BMI of 20, at least don't be a dick.

Fat people are people and deserve respect, ditto fat people who don't diet or exercise, ditto really super-fat people, et cetera.

Fat hatred is a feminist issue.
Yes. Women are held to far more stringent skinniness standards and subject to far more shit when they don't meet them. Hell, women who aren't even fat are still expected to be obsessed with their weight! And it's all because of the idea that a woman's attractiveness to men is her worth, because what else are broads good for?

The BMI standards are screwed up.
Reserved agree. BMI itself is just a way of generating a number, but the "25 is overweight, 30 is obese" rule is too simplified and too stringent. The ideal weight is way too low for tall people--6' and 185 is considered overweight!--and for muscular people. That said, when I'm 5'1" and *cough* pounds and not a champion bodybuilder, the fact that my BMI is over 30 is a pretty good indicator that I really am fat. BMI is screwy, but that doesn't mean that overweight simply doesn't exist. You can't draw the "this is okay, this is too fat" line with a single equation for everyone--but wide and fuzzy though it may be, there is a line.

Weight loss shouldn't be a moral issue.
Completely agree. Talk about good and bad foods, about being sinful or naughty when you eat, about how exercise is a virtue and cake a vice, is bullshit and makes weight loss way too much of a crazy-making emotional issue. (As does the idea that virtuous food has to taste bad--I realize that I've dropped out of a lot of diets because they demanded I eat bland health foods or horrible food replacement substances. I would rather eat smaller amounts of delicious food.) Nor is being fat a sign that you've committed the Sin of Gluttony--or the related Sin of Needing Healthcare--and should be subject to guilt and shame.

Weight loss isn't easy.
Completely agree. Saying "calories in, calories out, it's simple!" ignores the fact that some people's bodies really screw them over with a tremendous hunger for calories in and a tremendous miserliness about letting calories out. It'll work at extremes, if you starve yourself and run all day you'll lose weight, but you'll also hate your life and possibly end up in the hospital. Figuring out a lifestyle that leads to a healthy rate of loss, doesn't make you intolerably uncomfortable, and that you can maintain for years--not simple.

And saying "just stop eating so many donuts"--dude, you have no idea how few donuts (or cake, or cheeseburgers, or bacon, or whatever) I eat. Like most fat people, I have a problem with chronically eating a little more ordinary food than I burn, not with indulging myself with super-rich reward foods all the time.

Weight loss is impossible.
This is where I start disagreeing. It seems to be an article of faith in the fat acceptance community that it's not possible to lose weight, that your set point is genetically coded and that practically no one loses weight and keeps it off. But I personally know people who've done just that. I think most people do.

Saying "diets don't work" also smacks of an excuse, when not-dieting ought to be, in a fat acceptance framework, something that requires no excuse.

Eating disorders are a serious risk of weight loss attempts.
No. Eating disorders are a risk of self-hating and perfectionist attempts at weight loss, and of pressuring children or teens to lose weight before they're fully developed. But I don't think that an emotionally stable adult following a reasonable diet and exercise plan is likely to accidentally slip into anorexia or bulimia.

Being fat isn't unhealthy.
This is the big one. And I disagree. I agree that being a little fat isn't a big deal and the research is inconclusive, but I think that significant fat--even the amount I have--can lead to health problems. I don't think I'm guaranteed to get diabetes and a heart attack at fifty, but I'm convinced it's a higher risk than if I were at my ideal weight.

And I think the fat acceptance movement really drops the ball when it comes to people who are at very high weights. There's a lot of people out there claiming that "health at every size" encompasses literally every size, and it really doesn't. In my job I saw people who were very overweight and had severe joint, cardiovascular, and blood-sugar problems at very young ages.

It shouldn't matter on the decent-person level, there is no weight that makes a person fair game for mockery, and a 200-pound person going "well, at least I'm not one of those 400-pound freaks" is being a jerk. But physically it does matter how fat you are.

Fat isn't a disease.
I wish fat was treated like a disease. No one hates people with diseases or rubs their nose in how unsexy the disease makes them. Very few people yell "sicky!" at coughing strangers or write articles on how the flu epidemic is all the fault of those fucking stupid flu sufferers who were too lazy to wash their damn hands. Doctors try to help people with diseases, they don't resignedly tsk at them to "be less sick and you wouldn't have all these problems." It's not a good idea to go around with an untreated (noncontagious) disease, but it's not a selfish or antisocial thing to do.

There's no good reason to lose weight.
Disagree. I know that even within the relatively modest weight fluctuations I've been through, I just felt worse at 190 pounds than I do at 170. I tired out faster and I was physically uncomfortable. I like to sleep on my stomach and that's hard to do with a big belly; I like to hike and that's hard to do with extra weight. The sex was worse and--accursed Society and all that--I felt embarrassed of my body more often.

These are all valid reasons, but there's a bigger one: I want to. I want to do something with my body and it's my decision. End of discussion.

Everything's gotta be good or bad for you these days.

iPhone app measures calories burned during sex

I dunno, man. I don't have sex to burn calories. I eat calories so I'll have the energy to have sex.

Also he seems pretty skinny in the photo, so while he might benefit from strength or cardio, he really doesn't have a desperate need to burn more calories.

Also this silly thing obviously wouldn't be very accurate and I'm taking it way too seriously. I guess I'm just annoyed by the idea that everything you do in your life has to be in service of your health and thereby worth. Some things are just ways to enjoy being alive, you know? It's like eating a delicious salad with really crisp fresh vegetables, then having some jerk come up and go "Good for you, that's so healthy!"




I've been reading Kate Harding's blog a lot recently, and while I don't agree with everything she says (she rejects deliberate weight loss entirely and has no problem with indefinite weight gain; I think weight loss is a valid--but not mandatory--choice and gaining weight is more concerning than just being stably fat), I like her and the community on that blog. In a world where I'm constantly being told I'm both the victim and perpetrator of a horrible epidemic, it's a place to hear that I'm really okay.

Man, I'm like a hippie vampire. I don't have nearly the niceness or the loopiness to be "accepting" of everyone, I just like to hang out with hippies so they'll accept me. It's terrible.

The Complinsult.

If I say "ugh, I'm so fat" to a guy, I certainly appreciate a "hey, I think you're hot" in return.

But if I don't say anything of the sort (and I try pretty hard not to), if I'm just going about my day tra la la like I'm a normal person... it really weirds me out when guys come out of nowhere with "you know, I actually like your body" or "I don't mind a curvy girl one bit." I mean, gosh, thanks.

Hint: statements like that translate into "I assume you think you're ugly, and I assume a lot of people agree, and I was just now thinking about how generally-considered-ugly you are, but hey, I'm willing to tolerate your flaws, aren't you lucky?"



If you want to compliment a fat girl, tell her that she's pretty. Don't tell her that she's pretty anyway.

Mommy Issues.

temporarily locked post, sorry

The problem with BBW.

I guess I'm a BBW? I'm never sure if I really count. I'm pretty fat, but if I Google "BBW" they're all way bigger than me. (Except for the depressing few who are tagged "BBW" and are, like, 135.) More importantly, they're not really shaped like me. It seems like a lot of the appeal is "they may be fat, but hey, big ol' titties," and I don't work that way. My titties are extremely moderate in scope. And my ass, although not precisely small, fails to provide the desirable "bubble" effect as it isn't really round and it's not much wider than my waist. My fat is mostly belly. I'm like 38-38-38.

So even though it's relegated to the ghetto of shameful fetish interest to begin with, I don't find much solace in the BBW label. It's not acceptance of fat chicks, it's just another, larger beauty standard. I can't measure up to 40DDDs and big shakin' booties any more than I can measure up to 32Ds and lithe little waists. I'm a third creature entirely.

(It sucks buying clothes too. Tops that are cut to gracefully cover a belly are always also cut to display ginormous boobs that I don't have. All those square-neckline "peasant" tops would be great if they didn't display a giant square of flat ribcage on me.)

Then again, I can't ask society to create the Holly Pervocracy Beauty Standard in which short big-bellied B-cup girls with weightlifter biceps and frizzy red hair are the most sexiest thing ever. There's not enough girls like me, and anyway, where would that leave girls with frizzy blonde hair? You can't make the beauty standard cover everyone or it stops being a standard.

So I'd rather raise the question, why do we need a standard anyway? It's hardly fair to demand a breed standard in the shows when the breeding is random. More importantly, though no group has ever held my type up as a paragon, plenty of individuals have been quite enthusiastic about it. There may not be Holly-type porn sites, but I know a few guys who liked my naked pictures just fine.

Individual preference isn't the only problem with standards. The other problem is that it's really unhealthy to create the idea of the perfect mate in your head and then try to find humans who match. I didn't know that short blond men were sexy to me until I met Tommy. In fact I still don't know that they are--I just know that Tommy is, and I think a tall dark Tommy would appeal to me more than a short blond random guy. We don't live in a world of types but people.

So "standards" suck, but that doesn't mean everyone has to find everyone equally attractive. That's silly and it's not going to happen. Plus it leads to creepers going "you can't find me unattractive, that's discrimination!" This also doesn't mean that "everyone's got someone"; the vast majority of people do but I can't make you promises. What it really means is that sexiness is the chemistry between individuals. "Society" isn't going to date me no matter how thin and busty I am; the intersection of one person's unique appearance and one person's unique and malleable preferences is all that matters.

Asking if I'm "sexy" is, ultimately, like asking if I'm "a friend." The answer isn't yes, no, kinda, or even "depends by what standards"; it's "to whom?"