There is a certain class of guy who, well-intentioned as he might be, thinks that reassuring an individual fat woman that HE likes fat chicks and thinks they are sexy. And, you know, I really do understand that this is supposed to be a compliment.

However.

This is really just another example of “Acceptable Fat is the fat I want to fuck.”

And, lemme tell you: You acceptability and worth as a person is NOT determined by whether or not some random dude would tap that.

I mean, I don’t usually bust out with the feminist polemics but when men try to offer that reassurance – or try to insist that fat is unattractive because of hip-to-waist ratio and that means it is unhealthy and socially unacceptable (while inviting reasoned arguments to the contrary – yes, spammed comment, I am looking at you) – it really grosses me out.

That sort of thing makes too many assumptions. Assumptions like, oh, I don’t know, the value of women being determined by their fuckability. And not their fuckability in general – their perceived fuckability by white, middle class, mainstream guys.

Do I even have to throw the word patriarchy out there?

It also assumes that all women are performing attractiveness for the benefit, specifically, of the mens. Maybe that’s why lesbians are both super attractive and scary to so many straight men? The idea that men are not, strictly speaking, necessary?

In any event, it is not the job of women to be attractive. We have shit to do that does not include providing, for example, entertainment for construction workers as we walk down the road. We have things to accomplish that are more important than being eye/arm candy, than being fantasy objects, than being representations of what the dominant cultural paradigm tells us we should be even if that image is completely unrelated to the reality of our physical being.

And, you know, this is not to say that women need to reject “looking nice”, for whatever value of nice they prefer, out of hand! I mean, I love me the hell out of some makeup, which I may have mentioned a time or two here. And I like pretty dresses and fancy shoes and I spend more time thinking about shoes than I do about, like, calculus.

But I also don’t NEED that stuff to make me acceptable. None of us do.

So if I don’t meet up with some random guy’s notion of fuckable, that’s actually okay.

Because you don’t have to want to have sex with every woman in the world, dude. Women have value that is not tied to your penis.

I’m not offended that you don’t want to pork me. (See what I did there?)

In fact, I probably don’t want to have sex with you either.

And that’s okay – you still have value as a person. I’m not going to harass you or make assumptions about your lifestyle or try to force you into a mold that would make you more sexually attractive to me (I’m just saying, men in black eyeliner = A++). I’m not going to treat you as though you are subhuman or somehow a waste of space and societal resources. Hey, we can even hang out in a friendly fashion and then go back to our respective personal spaces and have sex with people who DO find us each attractive and whom we find attractive in return! Our personal relationship doesn’t have to involve that dynamic – or the desire for that dynamic.

Just… Guys, get it through your heads. Your cock doesn’t determine my worth as a person. Not if you think I’m hot and not if you think I’m disgusting.