*disclaimer: this post discusses various NSFW topics*
Hey guys, welcome back to TNTH!
Let’s start this post with a bang: I’ve always been overweight. I have always been the fat girl in the group of skinny friends, also known as the fat girl who never had boys actually look at her as “attractive” or “sexy” or “beautiful”. Even though I was sucked into this mindset where “fat = ugly”, I still liked myself for who I was. I still do, but when it came to other people liking me romantically, I became insecure about my body and image.
When I finally had a man look at me and call me sexy, beautiful, funny, smart, etc – I was in shock, I can’t lie. I mean, what were the odds that the boy I liked would actually look at me the same way? I thought it was too good to be true, and when the years passed by and the same boy (now man) was still around for all of me, that’s when I realized that yeah, men are going to be attracted to girls, no matter what shape or size. But even then, I kept questioning my looks and my image next to my partner. I kept asking myself do I look good standing by his side? Is it weird for a skinny man to be with a fat girl? Do couples like us really exist without it being a “fat girl fetish” thing?
Every now and then, I feel insecure about my body and my image, even when there’s someone in my life who likes me for the way I am. What do you expect? We live in a world where #RelationshipGoals is a glorified trending tag on social media showing those how “real relationships” should be like. A fit couple working out in the gym? #RelationshipGoals. A couple with a newborn baby and the girlfriend is super snatched after giving birth? #RelationshipGoals. Interracial couples that are aesthetically pleasing to the eye? #RelationshipGoals. Everything is such a “relationship goal” that people begin to believe that what they offer in a relationship and how they physically look isn’t worthy or good enough. Anyone in the situation where their body is considered ugly is always left to wonder damn, where’s the relationship goal where a fat girl feels great in her body and the man loves her for your body and her confidence? Isn’t that a relationship goal?
To society, no.
For most of the time being with my partner, I’ve always brushed those thoughts away. I didn’t mind that what I have with my partner wasn’t a social media “relationship goal.” I was still very happy with what we have, what we share, and we always have fun being together. After trying to be unapologetic about my looks and image, I began realizing that most of my “me” problems stemmed from the fact that I still didn’t accept my body for what it is. Weight is weight, sure, but I still found it so hard to accept the skin that covers this meat on my bones. I guess I was sucked into this universe where I was so traumatized as a young teenager and being called fat and ugly and not good enough, that I always had that inner image of myself; I was never good enough for this fucked-up society.
Then, something funny happened.
As I was on Twitter earlier, someone tried to make a joke about this Twitter account promoting its pornography subscription. I mean, I’m a 23-year-old woman, when something like that pops up on my timeline, it sticks out as a sore thumb and I’m curious as fuck as to why it’s on my timeline. So this subscription porn site thing has real-life adult and consenting couples who decide to share their sex lives through this service. I mean, the person who retweeted this made some dumb joke about not wanting to see “normal people have sex” (???), but I wasn’t even paying attention to the response; I was more intrigued about the idea of this subscription site. There’s a whole industry of pornography where the “sexiest” men and women get all hot and worked up for pleasure; whatever, we all know the idea of porn, and the idea of a service being made about real-life couples wanting to show their sex lives on camera isn’t even what baffled me. It was the little advertising video attached to this damn tweet. These were regular ass people. These were different people with different interests, different attractions, different ideas of what sex should be, and most importantly, there were couples who were physically polar opposites or “non-traditional” couples. There were gay couples, lesbian couples, gothic couples, hippie couples, white couples, black couples, interracial couples, fat couples, and everything in between.
Now, you’re probably wondering like Liz, what the hell does this have to do with your self-confidence? And for the most part, it doesn’t. Sex is such a natural thing that that aspect of this tweet wasn’t even that much of a big deal. For the most part, this service exposes pornography and its unrealistic expectations of a sex life; that you have to be slamming hot and blonde and the man has to be athletic and fit and strong to have an amazing sex life, blah blah blah. Seeing some of these fat girls with their skinny partners explaining how amazing their partner makes them feel inside and outside the bedroom made me realize a very important thing: confidence doesn’t have a size.
These women who I immediately identified with allowed me to finally begin this process of accepting myself in my own skin. What’s truly beautiful is knowing that in real life, there are people who look just like me and just like you and even if they are polar opposites, something truly deep down connects them both. What’s beautiful is that this misconception of fat girls being “too ugly for relationships” is dying out in the real world. I mean, it’s always going to live on through the eyes of those who think life is just a fantasy land of one type of person, but at least we are making some progress and showing the world that confidence is not a size, but it’s a one size fits all ordeal.
-Liz. (:
Letters From Liz. 