Do y’all watch the MTV programme Catfish? I’m a recent convert. I can’t even remember how I stumbled across it but to the dismay of my boy, who’s having to negotiate hard for TV time, I’m currently binge-watching my way through the first one hundred episodes ahead of their season seven airing next week. As far as mini-obsessions go, it’s not bad…it doesn’t involve eating so that’s a win, right? My boy’s perspective is bloody hell Mum, for an intelligent woman you don’t half watch some crap…
If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a show based around on-line relationships, with a couple of cool guys flushing out folk who are stringing other folk along with fake dating profiles. For someone like me, who’s endlessly fascinated with people – aka nosey – it’s irresistible.
Sometimes, like one time out of twenty, the person on the end of the dodgy profile turns out to be the real deal, but more often than not some rogue with questionable morals and a wild imagination has posted fake pictures to entice their poor unsuspecting victim into an on-line relationship.
Now, I’m probably thirty or forty episodes in at this point, right? And fascinating as it is, there’s a theme that I’ve noticed. It never ends well for the fat ones.
It’s a bit formulaic, and the story always unfolds like this; boy (or girl) meets utterly gorgeous girl (or boy) on-line and falls in love. Months pass, sometimes even years pass and despite endless texts/emails/telephone conversations the two never meet, so the one being strung along gets suspicious.
Along come the two cool guys and after a bit of detective work, utterly gorgeous girl (or boy) is rumbled, and generally persuaded to ‘fess up in front of their poor unsuspecting love interest.
Sometimes the person behind the fake profile is a bloke posing as a woman or a woman pretending to be a bloke. Sometimes it’s a woman who just looks like a bloke. Sometimes they have eyes that look in two different directions at the same time but mostly they’re none of the above…nine times out of ten they’re just fat.
And on some level you know, I get why they do what they do. As a fat girl, I totally understand the appeal of pretending to be somebody you’re not, and showing a gorgeous face to the world. It must be lovely, having members of the opposite sex falling at your feet declaring undying love at first sight. The truth is, It doesn’t really matter how warm or funny or bright you are, or how much love you have to give, if you’re fat you’re pretty much invisible.
This programme demonstrates the point beautifully. For all the victims’ chatter about being desperate to meet the person behind the pictures, and how what they look like doesn’t really matter anyway because they’ve fallen in love with the personality, as soon as an arse the size of South East Asia lumbers around the corner it’s pretty much game over, you know?
Now, being invisible to members of the opposite sex doesn’t actually bother me at all, because I’m not in the market for a love-interest for all the reasons we’ve discussed at length in these pages. If you missed those conversations I’ll summarise for you…I can’t be feckin arsed. Too much hassle and anyway I’m safer as a singleton. But if I was feeling fruity and in need of a good seeing to, I wouldn’t imagine that my fat photo would drum up much interest at all.
I reckon that maybe one in a hundred fat folk would regard themselves as fat and fabulous…I envy the ones who do. Me, I’m definitely one of the other ninety nine 🙂
“I can’t be fecking arsed” … I love you, I swear. Can I just say that many different cultures find larger women not only acceptable but preferable? Here in California, which is very diverse, you see many larger women with men who are thrilled to be with them. Latinos, Blacks, just to name a few. I’ve been with my husband for 44 years, so definitely not in the market, but on a serious note, even though I could stand to lose a LOT of weight I still think I’m capable of attracting men. Confidence is everything. I think you are already lovely. You should think it too.
Aw Paula that’s kind of you, and I’m not unconfident as such, I just don’t find my kind of fat attractive! I wish I did. And yes, I’m aware that in some corners of the globe, fat is where it’s at…in one of my very earliest blog posts I remember giving serious consideration to binning the diet, uprooting my life and relocating to the island of Tonga, where fat is considered to be the be all and end all of beauty!! 😍
I could move there LOL. I guess at this point of life I just don’t want to be consumed with worry over how many calories I ate or if I did enough exercise. Of course being a proper weight is healthier and we should all keep trying but I hate to see anybody make themselves feel terrible over it. I guess you don’t want me for your diet partner eh?
I suspect we are very similar Paula!!
I think we are long lost sisters to be honest
It’s a good thing i wasn’t drinking anything when i read “if I was feeling fruity and in need of a good seeing to,“ because it would have been all over the place!
It’s a sad truth, people can deny it all they wish, still they have certain judgments about those who are very overweight and they are deep and stubborn judgments that do not give way to logic. If i could do something about it, i would.
It’s deep rooted Mimi isn’t it? I watched one episode of Catfish where this girl had been photoshopping her own pictures to make herself look smaller before she sent them to the guy she was talking to on line. She was worried he wouldn’t like her when they met because she was much bigger than he’d been led to believe.
When they eventually met, he didn’t care because he was a really big bloke, but this came as a shock to the girl, who rejected him on the basis that he was too fat!!! You couldn’t bloody write it could you?
Yes! Yes, You touched on these nuances of life in our Fat coccoon, over the months (and years!) of noodling out your journey – you, & all of us, have discussed a lot of ticklish truths.
It isn’t unmixed regret, I really need to face a lot of extraneous insights, pos., neg., indifferent. On this RR, we have the advantage of, you know, paying attention!
Isn’t it funny Fleury, I don’t get mad at this uncomfortable reality, I feel like an objective observer, even though I am that fat girl! I guess what these pages have done over the last what, two and a half years, is taken the tears out of this peeled onion. And I love that lots of my friends have quietly jumped to my defence with compliments and reassurance about how bloody gorgeous I am…I wasn’t fishing, but it’s lovely when your special people see only the inside. But I’m comfortable with where I fit in this big wide unforgiving world! And besides, the skinny girl has to break out eventually, right?! 😘
Reading this just makes me sad. No advise to give. See you next week have a great weekend!
Thanks Susan, you too 😘