Sharron Matthews

This author has written 131 articles

Is   love   meant   for  B I G ( f a t )  w o m e n ? Or just s e x?

 

*Disclaimer: This is the first time I will be frank about SEX on here…but not right away…I kinda ease into it. (winks) It was a frigging thrill to write about it, who knew? I don’t get into particulars…but I DO talk about it…so…I guess this is basically a warning to NOT read this to your kid and also to alert you that, yes, I have the sex. (shrugs) ALSO, if  THEY are going to try to take away a woman’s right to choose? I am gonna talk about SEX. 

Let’s start at the very beginning, before we go THERE, with just a short history of me and the word fat.

I hate the word FAT.

End of history lesson.

I HAAAAAAAATE the word FAT.

That VERY collection of words were the FIRST FIVE words I wrote to begin a story that bore the same title, in a cabaret I created for young people that was about body positivity, anxiety, and loving yourself exactly the way you are.

AND as a grown ass woman, standing onstage performing this cabaret for the youngs, in FRONT of ACTUAL youngs, knowing the part of the show was coming, the part where I would say those words, “ I HATE THE WORD FAT”, made my stomach turn…at the age of 49…and it was a show ABOUT acceptance.

JESUS FREAKIN’ WEPT.

After almost 50 years (at the time I performed this show) of wrestling with that word, it STILL made me feel not right in my skin.

But now, after writing about weight, shape, size, inclusion and representation so much that it makes me exhausted (I’m sure it makes some other people exhausted too, but fuck it till it’s not an issue anymore I WILL write about it), it shockingly seems that I’m almost acclimatized to the word due to repeated exposure.

ALMOST.

My spirit has eased up on the word, it does not hit me straight in the gut when I hear it like it did my WHOLE life…which makes me feel, well, I don’t totally know how it makes me feel…but I DO know that I’m NOT as upset about it as I would have been five years ago…and I’m not sure if that’s a win, a loss…or maybe it just is.

I ALSO know it’s not who I am.

I’m not a fat person.
BUT SOME might label and see me that way, and I think honouring that weird, annoying and ironically minimizing fact might make writing this AND maybe reading all these collected thoughts easier.

Yes, at the risk of boring you all with the pronouncement, I’m considered a fat person.

AND I know this because in the past, throughout my long journey in this precious body, a body that I’ve quite frankly put through hell, when I’ve become a certain weight people stop saying the word FAT around me…and THIS is how I know I’ve gained an amount of weight that makes me other in the eyes of…others.

Yes.

Read that again.

When people decide that I might be offended by the word, they stop saying it when I’m around…but continue to say it when they think I’m not.

Huh.

And I know I’m not the only one to experience this phenomenon OR realize it, and quietly keep it inside.

The day I clocked that people said or didn’t say the word fat around me depending on my size, the day that sinking discovery wrapped itself up in a messy, fleshy bow inside my brain was the day my REAL journey through the dark, challenging, and odd implications of the word FAT kicked into high gear.

And you know what?

If I weren’t a writer, an actor, as well as someone who admittedly and gratefully is ALWAYS searching for answers, I could probably HAPPILY walk purposefully through the rest of my life and never address my body at all to anyone other than me.

There are many humans out there who don’t.

What a fucking joy that would be, right?

A fucking unadulterated joy.

Then there are the seemingly unflappable militant warriors who are doing the righteous work of rounding every corner of the vicious and stinking internet, pointing out injustices based on body shape or size, fighting the MULTITUDES of assholes who feel like they can comment on ANYONE’S body other than their own, fighting the people who hold onto the use of the word FAT to describe UNDESIRABLES like it’s their god given right and addressing the fact that it STILL seems that joking about a person’s size has not yet been cancelled.

HOW THE HIGH HOLY FUCK HAS IT NOT BEEN CANCELLED!?!?

But as we both know (you and me, reader), I’m not totally militant but I do talk and write about big bodies a lot…and I do this because dealing with weight, self worth, and how it’s affected my general work, my life, my fitness, clothing myself, auditioning, working onstage, working in TV, relationships, friendships, self confidence, and now in this weird ass dating world I’ve found myself in, has been a BIG (all puns intended) part of work the I’ve been doing on myself for the last many years. It’s woven into almost every part of my continued healing (from whatever part of my life I’m confronting) and growing.

I believe that talking about it, writing about it, yelling about it, and being frustrated as fuck about it might lead to a world where someone’s size does not indicate the content of their character, the level of their fitness, their willingness to seize the fucking day, the amount of fried chicken they eat or that anything I just mentioned IS ANYONE ELSES FUCKING BUSINESS.

AGAIN, I’m considered a fat person…and I’m going to tell you the truth, THAT fact has really fucked me up when it comes to thinking about the prospect of meeting someone and/or falling in love while shelled in a big body.

There. I said it. And no one died.

So, we move on.

In PREPARATION for writing this, I read through a BUNCH of other articles on the subject, to take the temperature on how far we’ve come in terms of body acceptance and/or body neutrality…and love and the big girl.

Well, you guys, not very fucking far, it turns out.

While I read the multitudes of meditations on fat women in regard to love/lust/desire, I:

A: Had to lie down a number of times

B: Almost threw up twice

C: Once ran a fever so hot I had to put an ice pack on my head and, see A

D: Generally, ended up fairly furious at the entire gross, patriarchal world in general.

D: Brewed up a bone deep compulsion in my gut to drive to the hills somewhere to write romance novels for big girls (featuring words like heaving and throbbing) OR write novels where there is an island where amazon big women live and love and learn to kick ass, kinda like Wonder Woman’s island but with WIFI, Netflix and ALL ROUND big women who are joyously overflow their fighting bikinis…yes, I wanted to write about these never come back.

Honestly, I think I would be good at that.

THIS  is just the beginning of what I saw when I googled my title for this piece…THIS is what came up…

Barf worthy, right?

Anyhow, the reason I’m sitting in my condo on this not winter but not spring day in March, on my blue leather couch, with my rescue dog sleeping against my leg in silent somnambulist support, finally taking a crack at writing about love and fat women is because I have a dirty secret.

I’ve spent the last year and a half really and finally taking care of and nurturing all the parts of me that I’ve been neglecting my entire life (I’m grateful as fuck to be able to do this) and while a great deal of the work has been JUST for me and future me…a very small slice of this care that I have pretended was not a fact…fuck…was that I wanted to widen my dating pool.

I know.

It’s disgusting, right?

I hate admitting it BUT I hate even worse that it’s true…which is why I decided to talk about it because I’m pretty damn fucking sure I’m not the only one…and I want to STOP this line of thinking.

If I see one more bio that says that someone is looking for fit, athletic, thin, or (insert word that IMPLIES thin here) I will expire a little.
And yes, I know people are welcome and entitled to their preferences and that’s fine really and it’s good to know up front what people are looking for…BUT imagine if you will being a big human, scrolling through the doomsday machine that is the dating app… because it seems to be the only way to meet people who can help you carry your kayak, share gas money to drive to hike somewhere…and past all the jokes about why anyone is on a dating app…to have someone to tell your stories to…who you also get to kiss…and listen to their stories right back…and maybe mess around a bit with
…what was I saying…oh yah!…imagine scrolling through the faces of person after person and seeing the CODE for NOT HERE FOR FAT CHICKS expressed in almost every bio.

For true real.

Even for a gal like me, who is 78% of the way to totally loving her form, it can take the wind out of your sails.

SIDEBAR:
HERE I feel the need to say…
I LOVE MY LIFE.
LIKE, A LOT.
Actually, I’m

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