I just want you to know:
Fat people have sex and it is awesome.
A friend of mine, last night, mentioned that there was an artist working on a series of paintings depicting her having sex with each President of the United States of America, in order of service.
Of course the immediate joke was Taft.
And it bothered me quite a lot. As I looked stuff up online about this artist and her project, called Join or Die, it didn’t surprise me at all to find that, oh look, the consistent joke is Taft.
Because, you know, fat dudes are gross and thinking about them having sex is gross.
*eyeroll*
Justine Lai is only 18 presidents in, so there actually doesn’t exist a Taft painting yet. But, browsing her other examples (it should go without saying that clicking the “works” link on her site will pull up images that are not really safe for work unless the medium of oil painting makes picture of sex okay where ever you might be), when she gets around to our 27th president, I think it will be an interesting work.
Her statement:
In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order. I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated.
I approach the spectacle of sex and politics with a certain playfulness. It would be easy to let the images slide into territory that’s strictly pornographic—the lurid and hardcore, the predictably “controversial.” One could also imagine a series preoccupied with wearing its “Fuck the Man” symbolism on its sleeve. But I wish to move beyond these things and make something playful and tender and maybe a little ambiguous, but exuberantly so. This, I feel, is the most humanizing act I can do.
March 2009
William Howard Taft was born in 1857. He was groomed for the presidency by Teddy Roosevelt. I do not think it can be argued that he was a great president but part of that seems to be a failing of personality – Taft was always more interested in the law than in politics and any president coming after Roosevelt was almost guaranteed to be a let-down anyway. He pushed Dollar Diplomacy but he also pushed mediation and arbitration instead of war. Taft is the only person to have held both the office of the presidency and the office of chief justice – a position which suited him far more.
William Howard Taft was also a fat man. No discussion of him, it would seem, is complete without giving his stats – people seem fascinated by them. He was 6 feet tall and averaged between 300 and 340 pounds during the 4 years he was in office.
Taft was always a fat man, always big. He was the butt of fat jokes even when he was president. He dieted, like we all do, and he had limited success (read: none) with keeping off the weight he had lost in the long term (read: like we all do). In fact, after his diet, he gained back what he had lost and then some! QUELLE SURPRISE! Taft weighed around 250 when he graduated college and weighed close to that again when he died. It’s almost like that was the weight his body was comfortable at…. Taft was an active man but became less so as he aged (and lost weight). I think he was 72 (I don’t have my references with me!) when he died – from cerebral arteriosclerosis, if I remember correctly.
When people talk about how gross it is for Justine Lai to paint herself having sex with Taft, the natural implication is that it is disgusting for me to have sex. After all, I weigh 300+ pounds. And Taft was 6 feet tall! I’m only 5′4″! He had 8 inches on me! If it’s gross for Taft to get it on (and he had a wife with a very strong personality and a lot of ambition with whom he had 3 kids so I don’t think it was a marriage in name only by a long shot), then what must people grossed out by Taft think about me?
This is where the waters get difficult to navigate sometimes with friends. Because one person’s preference isn’t the issue. No one has to want to have sex with me or think I’m sexually attractive. The problem is that not only is Taft ridiculed as an object of desire (and I will tell you straight up that I think he was a good looking dude) but so is the concept that ANYONE would find him sexually attractive.
It isn’t just that person x is not attracted to me sexually, it’s that the implication is it’s gross for fat people to have sex across the board.
Some of this is, I think, based on no one being able to accurately guess someone else’s weight. The people around you forget, because they are your friends, that when they are talking in a derogatory fashion about fat people they are also talking about you. And people who don’t have fat friends (or fat friends who are fat positive) don’t even have that little bit of information!
This is one reason why I think visibility is so important. The more I am fat and totally okay with that, the more I am able to challenge people’s unexamined thinking about fat and fat people.
I am interested in watching Justine Lai’s project develop. I don’t know if she is achieving her goals – I haven’t decided yet what I think on a critical level. But her statement moves me – her statement makes me want to see what she does, makes me curious about how she’s going to imagine Taft in her efforts to “make something playful and tender and maybe a little ambiguous, but exuberantly so.”
And in doing so, I hope, part of the humanizing message that comes through is that, yeah, fat people have sex, just like any other people.
So, as long as we’re rehashing the basics like “fat acceptance means ACCEPTING fat” I figured we ought to cover another basic topic.
Sex.
Yeah, I said it.
SEX.
Fat people do it. With other fat people, with thin people, with themselves, with whomever they want to do it with who wants to do it with them, too.
Now, I don’t generally talk about my own sex life for a number of reasons but, y’all, come on. I am totally having sex.
It’s pretty damn awesome, too. Not to, you know, brag or anything.
So, yes, I say to the disbelieving public who cannot fathom that anyone would find my loathsome fat body acceptable (or even arousing, perish the thought!) for sexual situations and to the self-loathing fatties who cannot imagine disrobing in front of another human being or even their dog because their dog has knowing eyes (I wish I were making that up), yes, fat people have sex.
Some fat people, as many people think all fat women do, have sex for validation or in an effort to make someone love them. Interestingly enough, thin people do the same thing.
Some fat people, as many people think all fat women must be, are butch lesbians. Interestingly enough, thin people are also butch lesbians.
Some fat people, as many people think all fat people must be no matter what, are virgins. Interestingly enough, thin people have also been known to be virgins.
Any stereotype that is applied to fat people when it comes to sex is true of the rest of the human population as well.
And it isn’t difficult for fat people to do it, so to speak. There might be some adjustment for bellies or, in some cases, mobility, but those same accommodations get made for thin people, too! I bet you never would have guessed that. *grin*
Now, obviously, some people who dig fat people are fetishists. This is not necessarily a deal-breaker. It depends on you. But some people just dig fatties. In fact, many people just dig fatties!
The thing that amazes me is that, even when I was bemoaning how difficult it was to get a date or make a connection with someone, I was still interacting on a romantic or potentially romantic level with way more people than many of my conventionally attractive friends were even before the whole concept of internet dating really entered my sphere. And that’s just the stuff I knew about and participated in! The stuff I found out about after the fact, the crushes that were confessed, the interest that was maybe there and I didn’t realize because I was so convinced I was a troll….
Yeah, how many of us are missing perfectly good opportunities to get busy just because we’re already convinced no one would want to get busy with us?
This happens for thin people, too. Fancy that!
Here is what I want to say to people of all sizes, particularly women: You do not have to be a sexual object. You do not have to be pretty. But you also don’t have to swear off sexual contact or abandon hope for love or even a fuck buddy.
Fat people have sex.
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