in appreciation
by elizabeth hall

“Perfectly beautiful bodies are not composed of angular parts.” Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)

I had incredible sex last night. Incredible as in “incredible-amazing,” but also incredible in the literal sense, meaning “hardly believable.”

The sex itself wasn’t the incredible part. The incredible part was that I had found a modern American man who openly professed his, not just fondness, but actual preference for full-figured women.

I am young (twenty-five, to be exact), and I have what I like to call a classic female body. Proportionately, I’m an hourglass (full breasts, soft arms, narrow waist, ample hips, big butt and thighs). Am I beautiful? Hmm. That depends on what time period and culture we’re talking about.

Had I lived in Fiji a thousand years ago (and as recently as ten years ago, when Western culture began taking hold), I probably would have been heralded as a near-goddess. Had I lived in Belgium circa 1614, perhaps a painter named Peter Paul Rubens would have chosen me as a subject for one of his oils.

In the Latin American realm, I would be considered la chica gordita (literally “fat girl”) and probably lusted after by every red-blooded Hispanic male in sight.
In African-American circles, I might be labeled a “thick” woman, possibly “bootylicious,” and also lusted after by every red-blooded African-American male in sight.

Finally, we arrive at white mainstream America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, the land I grew up in and continue, for the most part, to inhabit. I don’t have to guess at what label my native culture would pin on me, because I’ve lived here long enough to know. I’m fat.

Not only fat, but lazy, unhealthy, undisciplined, and unattractive. I am probably deeply depressed about all my “excess baggage.” I’ve probably tried a zillion diets and they haven’t worked (but have I tried South Beach? It just might be the answer!) I’ll probably “settle” for a fat man, since he, too, will be deeply unhappy about all that ugly fat weighing him down, and, together, we can wallow in our sorrow and self-pity like two hippos in the mud.

I probably wear a lot of black, since it hides fat rolls, and my slim younger sister will probably get married before me, have children before me, and have a happier life than me. If I lose the weight, friends and relatives will probably get really happy and think my life is finally on track. If I gain it back, friends and relatives will be deeply saddened and troubled by my mysterious inability to stay contained in x-size or x-pounds or x-calories per day (but she has such a lovely face!).

I wish with all my heart that this harmful social construct was not an adopted reality for so many American women, but for many—even the brightest, most thoughtful ones—it is.

It was a reality for me up until quite recently. Before that, I was subject to many of the same dramatic weight fluctuations and body obsessions that run so rampant in our culture.

It all started around puberty. Until then, I viewed my body strictly in terms of what it could do. It could do backbends on gymnastics mats, flips on trampolines, and cannonballs off diving boards. It ran tan-lined and naked through backyard sprinklers with my younger sister and cousins. Then I turned eleven and started thinking that running through the sprinkler naked might not such a good idea. This was right around the time I started shaving my legs and wearing a training bra. This was also around the time that I began accumulating more fat around my hips and waist. My mother had said this was normal when we had “The Talk”. The book she presented me after “The Talk” said this was normal. But Teen and Seventeen and YM and every other girl in the sixth grade didn’t think it was normal. Fat was an excess and a nuisance, boys didn’t like it, and we had to do everything in our power to get rid of it. So we did. Some of us were more successful than others, but, by golly, we tried And so began fifteen years of tortuous yo-yo dieting.

The madness reached its peak when I was twenty, while taking massive amounts of ephedrine, suffering from exercise bulimia, and having very self-conscious sex with my boyfriend. The irony: while my body, in those days, was closest to what our society deems “sexy,” my self-esteem was the lowest it had ever been in my life.

I had a “perfect body,” and I was scared to death of losing it. Because I restricted my caloric intake so much, I frequently “slipped” and—God forbid!—ate a candy bar, a plate of French fries, whatever “bad food” it happened to be. The only penance for this was to log in 500 calories or so on the treadmill, pop another ephedrine, and pray I hadn’t gained any weight.

As the weight started to creep back on again (as it always will when the body is forcibly diminished and deprived), I became increasingly distant from my boyfriend, allowing him to touch me only in certain places or at certain times when I had been “good.” We eventually broke up, most likely because I was so down on myself all the time. Shortly after, I began experiencing heart palpitations, kicked the ephedrine, and sank into a deep depression. But, damn. I sure looked good.

Over the next five years, my weight continued to fluctuate. In leaner times, I was open to lovers because I had managed to whittle myself down (again) to an “acceptable” size. In heavier times, I sealed myself shut like an envelope, ashamed of—what?—a little padding?

Finally, about a year ago, I was in the dressing room at a department store, and discovered that I had gone up a size. My first impulse was to crumple up into a ball and sob. Here we go again, I thought. Here comes another diet. So long, chocolate! So long, cheese! But, suddenly, a little voice popped into my head. I would like to think it was the voice of the true goddess that dwells within every woman. She said, “This is crazy! Stop seeing what they want you to see. See yourself as I see you: a Wonder of Creation.”

Reluctantly, I took another look. Much to my surprise, I saw, not the superimposed “flaws” of a f***ed-up society, but a radiant, opulent, curvaceous body that was healthy and fit and oozing with sensuality. I saw my body. And I fell in love with it.
Fast-forward to the present. I am fresh on the heels of, quite possibly, the most intensely pleasurable sexual encounter of my life. Incredible sex, incredible because I can barely believe I could let myself go that fully with a man who is at least thirty pounds lighter than me, and shorter, to boot. Incredible because he wasn’t just into my “lovely face,” my “great personality”—whatever mass delusions the media would have us believe about how men view full-figured women. He was horny, and he was horny for my body. For my full-breasted, big-bootied, belly-shaking, creamy-thighed, plump-faced, shapely-armed SELF. Finally, what I have long-suspected on a conceptual level has been proven to me on a physical one: Men like meaty women.

And so, my well-nourished sisters, it is time. Time to restore pride to our bodies, to command the space we take instead of cowering from it. It’s time to get back to the backyard sprinklers and back to keeping it real. Oh, yes—and back to incredible sex.

Elizabeth Hall lives in Asheville.