There are so many wonderful carnivals in the blogosphere these days, I have a hard time keeping up. I did check out the latest Big Fat Carnival, dealing with a variety of blog posts on weight and culture. As a result, I found this article at AskMen: 6 Ways to Tell Your Girlfriend to Lose Weight.
The six tips range from the asinine (buy her an outfit that’s too small for her and inspire her to try and fit into it) to the manipulative (tell her you have a new female trainer at the gym, and she’ll show up just to keep tabs on you.) My first reaction, reading through them, was to make certain that it wasn’t satire. I’m fairly confident it’s not. I’ve run into many, many men who complain about the weight that their wives or girlfriends put on over the course of a relationship. Some of these guys are crass about it, while others are clearly guilt-ridden. One of my friends, "Joey", sought me out a few years ago on this very issue. "I feel like such an ass", he said, "but my wife’s weight gain is bugging the hell out of me. I love her and don’t want to hurt her — how do I talk to her about it?"
Meloukhia has an impassioned response at her place, one that begins:
First let’s start with the premise that it’s your responsibility to tell your girlfriend to lose weight as though it’s some sort of moral obligation. Clearly, you wouldn’t want to be seen dating a fat girl, so as those pounds creep up, you’ve got to take decisive action…or dump her. And you wouldn’t want to dump her, now would you? This premise also assumes that it’s totally socially acceptable and ok to tell your partner to lose weight, albeit in oh so clever and devious ways. As a self respecting man, you’ve got to take a stance somewhere, right?
Though she doesn’t expand on it, Meloukhia is dead on right that much of the issue here revolves less around issues of sexual desire and health and more about men’s homosocial status. And this reminds me of my reaction to Joey’s query. Before discussing strategies for tactfully approaching our partners about their weight, men need to cop to their real reasons for wanting their girlfriends and wives to be slender. Many men are reluctant to admit the degree to which their partner’s perceived attractiveness in the eyes of other men bolsters their confidence and their sense of status. Put bluntly, having a trim girlfriend or wife boosts one’s standing among one’s male peers. In this culture, men are taught from an early age that being with a "hot chick" conveys real and tangible benefits in the eyes of other guys.
For many American men raised to see women as a yardstick with which to measure their own masculinity quotient, a partner’s weight gain is going to be perceived as a very real threat to their own standing. We all know men who get turned on when they realize that their wives or girlfriends are objects of desire for other men. One key question we need to challenge men with: is your partner’s weight gain really turning you off, or are you worried about how other men are reacting to her as a result? Do you miss being able to use other men’s sexual desire as a crutch to stimulate your own libido?
Men are taught to find "hot" what other men find "hot." The whole notion of a "trophy girlfriend" is based on the reality that a great many men use female desireability to establish status with other men. And in our current cultural climate where thinness is idealized, a slender partner is almost always going to be worth more than a heavy one. For men who have not yet extricated themselves from homosocial competition, their own self-esteem and sense of intra-male status may decline in direct proportion to their girlfriend’s weight gain.
Let me stress that this is absolutely not women’s problem to solve! My goal is not to make women who gain weight feel bad; protecting a fragile male ego is not a woman’s responsibility. The key thing men need to do is get honest about their own desire to use female desireability to establish status in the eyes of other men. And here’s where pro-feminist men can do a terrific service by challenging one another and holding each other accountable for the ways in which we are tempted to use our wives and girlfriends as trophies. When I confronted Joey with this, he admitted that he still found his wife attractive — but he was embarrassed by her when they went out with his friends. He realized that he was angry and frustrated because he was scared of what others would think, even though he still responded sexually to his spouse. Our conversation didn’t stop his anxiety entirely, but it helped him see it in a new perspective.
Some of my friends who know my wife will point out that she is a toned, muscled triathlete/boxer/cyclist, and this it’s easy for me to come down hard on men who are upset at their wives’ weight gain. But without getting into much detail, I’ve been married to women who were considerably heavier than the cultural ideal. Though my past marriages ended for a variety of reasons, my wives’ weight gain was not ever one of them! I was fortunate to learn early on to separate my own love and desire for a woman from how other men see her. Whether or not other men think my wife is "hot " or not does not add to my longing for her, because she is not a tool that I use with which to compete with other guys! Like all of us, my wife’s body goes through periodic changes. Together we gain and lose weight (though not always in harmony). I’m grateful that I’ve learned that real sexual desire in a committed relationship is not linked to these inevitable fluctuations.
I’m glad my wife works out. I love her strong, powerful physique. But mostly, I like that she and I share the same passion for fitness. We don’t work out merely to live up to some ideal, we work out because we get high on the endorphins and on the exuberance that exercise produces. I’m glad we share that. But if my wife were to stop her exercising and gain weight, that wouldn’t be about me. If she gained weight thanks to depression or some other crisis, I would of course be gravely concerned — not with the weight gain but with what precipitated it. But while we each own each other’s body in the sense that Paul discusses ownership in 1 Corinthians, neither of us gets to demand that that body look or feel a certain way. And both of us, I’m fairly confident, are able to separate our very real physical delight in each other from the way that others perceive us.
In the end, our bodies will age and weaken — nature is nature, and perfection will slip further and further from our grasp, just as it does for everyone. If our longing for each other is built on the way in which our bodies match a cultural ideal, than our love is not worthy of that name.
I’m not so sure about the notion that being concerned about a partner gaining weight is really just desiring to have some sort of beautiful trophy to show off. Granted, I’ve never had a long term relationship, so I suppose everything I say should be taken with a hefty grain of salt.
Firstly, if you are the type who does not find overweight people to be attractive, then having a partner who gains a significant amount of weight is going to be an issue. Yes, I imagine that any relationship should be based on mutual trust and understanding. Yes, looks do fade with time, and there should be much more depth to any relationship that mere physical attraction. Yet physical attraction seems to me to be a significant aspect of a relationship and when your partner slowly turns into someone that you would not typically find attractive, it would probably put quite a strain on a relationship. I would think that if you know that your partner is not the kind of person who finds overweight people to be attractive, you would do your best to stay in decent shape, simply as a matter of respect.
I can see this going both ways. Were I to become involved with a woman who is not attacted to overweight men, you had better believe that I would be motivated to keep in shape. Not out of any concern that she would leave me if I gained a lot of weight. Rather, I would keep to my exercise regimen just out of respect for her preferences. If she is saintly enough to look past my flaws (and they are legion), then the very least I can do for her to to try to be that man she wants me to be.
Secondly, were I to have a partner who gained a significant amount of wieght and who showed no concern I would, in all honestly, think that she didn’t respect herself. I do not consider myself to be an amazing athlete or gym rat by any means. I lift freeweights twice weekly and try to get three or four 30-mintue cardio sessions in per week. I don’t see this as a great drain on time or energy. I am in pretty good shape overall but I’m certainly not in the running to be on the cover of Men’s Health. Hell, I could probably stand to lose about 10 pounds I put on over winter.
I don’t exercise to attract women or relieve stress. I do it out of a sense of self-repect. I respect myself enough to try my best to keep healthy and in shape. I know I will never again have washboard abs, be able to bench press 400 pounds or run five miles at a 6 and a half minute a mile pace. I could eight years ago, when I was an undergrad and could afford to spend several hours a day exercising. I don’t expect any potential partner to be capable of comparable feats, either. I am just looking for someone who has enough self-repect to keep themselves healthy. People who fail to respect themselves generally are not attractive to others. Sorry, but that’s life.
Like I said, I certainly do not expect a potential partner to be in the top 5% of adults in terms of physical fitness. Lord knows I am not. I do find many women who are slightly overweight to be quite attractive. What I ask of a partner, should I ever have one, is to have repect for both both themselves and me in doing what they can to stay in shape. I promise to do the same for them.
My husband claims that he likes the way I look - that I’m sexy to him even though I’m atleast 30 lbs over weight. But I know in the past when I’ve lost weight he’s really encouraging and praises me. And then mixed into that, I think he likes me being overweight because it means I’m not attracting as many other men AND it gives him permission to be overweight. Lots of things going on there.
But, good to know there might be a distinction. Growing up I’ve always assumed that men just really and truly aren’t attracted to women who are more than model thin. They will have sex with us when we’re overweight, but they wouldn’t want to be seen with us, and they certainly wouldn’t pursue a long-term relationship. I hadn’t thought about the image vs. attraction thing.
(I’m copying the comment I made at Meloukhia’s, verbatim. I’m a bit more cautious than I would normally be in my comments here — an unfamiliar community and all.)
Disclaimer: Whoever wrote this article is, indeed, asstastical and misogynist and probably deserves a flaying. The position I’m sketching below is liable to be controversial, and I’m trying to be as nuanced as possible given the space limitations; please read what I’m saying carefully and charitably before responding, otherwise this is liable to turn ugly, and that certainly isn’t my intention.
While you’re dead-on in regards to the profound misogyny of this article, you’re making some generalizations about men that just makes my inner anti-Freudian stand up and start shouting ‘Ill-founded psychoanalysis! Gross overgeneralization!’ I’m talking about this paragraph in particular:
First let’s start with the premise that it’s your responsibility to tell your girlfriend to lose weight as though it’s some sort of moral obligation. Clearly, you wouldn’t want to be seen dating a fat girl, so as those pounds creep up, you’ve got to take decisive action…or dump her. And you wouldn’t want to dump her, now would you? This premise also assumes that it’s totally socially acceptable and ok to tell your partner to lose weight, albeit in oh so clever and devious ways. As a self respecting man, you’ve got to take a stance somewhere, right?
You and Hugo are probably right in regards to the last half or so — it’s a safe bet that a lot of straight men care more about their partner’s ability to be a trophy than about her happiness and health. And certainly this conditions heavily whether they consider her ‘attractive’. But this doesn’t imply that all straight men are conditioned this way.
I’m a straight man, but I’m also a feminist who’s sensitive to how badly our culture’s norms of thinness fuck with women’s self-esteem. Thus, I’m not going to care a bit if my (hypothetical) girlfriend goes up a few dress sizes over a couple of years, and I’m going to encourage her not to care either. On the other hand, suppose she gains not twenty or thirty pounds but on the order of a hundred. Maybe she’s suffering from some deep depression, starts eating compulsively, and is barely able to get out of bed most days. Now, I’ll still care deeply for her, and really want to help her with whatever shit that’s going on and is contributing to this weight gain in any way I can — but I also probably won’t find myself attractive to her sexually. If she’s deeply depressed, ‘I’m not attracted to you’ certainly isn’t going to help things any, so I can concede that telling her outright is generally not the best idea, but it doesn’t seem reasonable that I should be somehow required to feign sexual interest.
Hence, I want to suggest that, while it’s entirely just to reject the way subjective standards (what one person finds attractive) are turned into objective standards (standards everyone ought to live up to), it is generally unjust to reject any individual’s subjective standards. Indeed, it seems the critic who does this is making precisely the move they’re criticising.
The null hypothesis is that a significant weight gain of one partner will tend to induce an involuntary perception of reduced attractiveness in the other; said perception will occur prior to any perceived reduction in status among one’s peers. It’s not clear how men “use” female desirability to gain status among other men–there would seem to be a limit to what any individual man can attract. That goes for women too. Life is to short to spend time with anyone who justified their weight gain as a protest against perceived masculine “uses.”
Just because some men might prefer a thinner partner out of social conditioning, and that the writer of the article is an ass, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a real issue there to be addressed.
While one’s sexual tastes should mature as one matures - a man who can’t find a fit woman of his own age sexually attractive is disturbing - expecting someone to change their sexual preferences at the whim of a partner is asking too much.
As Glitch says, a significant weight gain is usually a sign of soemthing else. I dumped a girlfriend of over 4 years after she’d gained over 100 pounds, and that, plus some other issues, led me to realize that she was profoundly unambitious about almost everything, which was not something I wanted to deal with anymore. But realizing that I was turning off the lights before sex so I wouldn’t have to see her body as much was a major factor in the breakup, too.
To be fair, I don’t believe that men should be at all exempt from criticism for changes in their physical condition, either - if my partner is concerned that I’m gaining weight, or otherwise doing something unhealthy or that she dislikes, it’s her right to bring it up to me, just as bringing up some issue about specific behavior not related to physical condition would be.
Heather says:
That’s probably one of the more damaging lies girls get told growing up.
Some men really aren’t attracted to women who are more than model-thin. Probably more so among men in their teens and twenties, and among men who are themselves model-thin.
More men are attracted to women who are model-thin, and also attracted (equally or sometimes more so) to women who are somewhat larger, up to BMIs in the 25-30 range. There’s a subset of these men who are breast-fixated, and are attracted to women with large breasts, even if the rest of the woman’s body is large, too.
Some men are only attracted to “women with a little meat on their bones” - they really aren’t sexually attracted to model-thin women, but they’re usually not attracted to very large women either. This is fairly common, especially among men over 30ish, and among somewhat overweight men, but probably not as common as the groups above.
A rare few men really are indifferent to body size, and another rare few men prefer significantly obese women. These men *do* exist - I know a few.
Folks, the huge weight gains linked to depression are not what the article is talking about. If it were, one of the tips might have been “encourage your girlfriend to seek prompt professional help.” Buying a slightly smaller sized outfit also implies that the author at AskMen is not referring to extreme obesity. The way the article is written makes it clear that it is directed towards men troubled by slight amounts of weight.
Anthony, I appreciate the diversity of male sexual attraction. What role do you think the culture plays in shaping that attraction? And given that virtually everyone who researches this stuff suggests that when it comes to body type, very little of our desire is innate, what responsibility do we have over what we are attracted to?
This is a topic for another post, but I don’t buy for one cotton-pickin’ second that our attractions are set in stone, entirely beyond our control.
Indeed, let us focus on the text of the AskMen article: “One man’s lump of coal is another man’s diamond. If she is active, healthy and happy with her size, you best file your misgivings away. The worst thing you can do is swing below the belt. But if she is overindulgent and lazy, and her figure has paid the price, even our best girlfriends need a little help getting a weight loss regimen into full swing.”
Note the caveat–as even tempered as could be expected at these abysmal cognitive levels. So much for the contention that the concern is for slight increases in weight. These could fairly be called significant. With a view to further-ranging discussion, there is probably more grist for the male feminist mill out of Doc Love’s columns at Ask Men.
Hugo, well, growing up in California suburbia at about the same time you did, most of the messages I received were that women with a small waist and large breasts were the most attractive, and that overall slender women were a close second. Those messages came from my peers as well as the media. And I *do* find both those types attractive. But I also find women who are larger than the Playboy ideal to be quite attractive, and have at least since high school.
Hugo, well, growing up in California suburbia at about the same time you did, most of the messages I received were that women with a small waist and large breasts were the most attractive, and that overall slender women were a close second. Those messages came from my peers as well as the media. And I *do* find both those types attractive. But I also find women who are larger than the Playboy ideal to be quite attractive, and have at least since high school. And the only reinforcement I’ve received for that attraction has been sometimes from the recipient of that attraction.
Sorry for the double post. For some reason, posting comments to your blog, the page never finishes loading. It’s not a typepad thing, I think.
Here’s the thing that seems to seep in after a while “You’re not beautiful anymore. Your beauty is conditional. Your intrinsic value to this world is based on your body size and the way that measures up with a fluxuating standard.”
This is the lie. This the lie that swirls around and seeps into the concious of most women if not faught head on. Liking your body is so subversive these days. I noticed the other day that if a woman says “well, I’m beautiful” every woman in ear shot raises an eyebrow. Seems our culture is less about saying “yes! you are” and more about saying “you think so? Well, not as beautiful as __________) THIS is tragic.
I think if you’re truly loving someone…you see their soul more than you see their body…and that is what you love. Love shouldn’t be so conditional.
“If she’s overindulgent and lazy”
Chances are that either she’s always been overindulgent and lazy, it just hadn’t affected her figure yet, and then, yeah… you’re still shallow for not caring as long as it doesn’t touch her figure.
Or else something happened in her life that changed her, or changed her priorities. Maybe she’s “lazy” about her figure because she’s devoting her time and attention to other things, like other people. Either way, if you don’t like her any more, you’re not doing her a favor by sticking around.
Indeed, Tara — when we love someone, we do challenge them on their character flaws. We don’t however, judge a character flaw by how its manifestations affect us. We don’t get to say “your overindulgence with food bothers me because it has made you gain weight” but “your overindulgence with cocaine doesn’t bother me”. When we call someone on their sin, we call them on the sin itself, not on the way it manifests itself.
Gluttony is a sin. But not every person who is heavy is gluttonous, and not every thin person is abstemious.
I sometimes masochistically dive into the comments at fark.com and there is a recurring conversation where most men (and the farkettes, who seem as misogynistic as the general fark reader) will talk about how they should not have to feel guilty about leaving a partner who gains weight. What is this relationship based on, exactly? You love her…but not if there’s 20 more pounds of her. How could you not forgive and understand whatever circumstances lead to something as inconsequential as weight gain? And, for that matter, I think attraction is made out to be more rigidly defined than it really needs to be. Before I met my husband, I was kind of grossed out by hairy chests. Now that I’ve been with him for five years, I find it attractive. It reminds me of all the kind, sexy, and pleasant things he’s done for me, and now the hairy chest is amongst the things that I love about him. If a committed sexual relationship is about expressing love for each other through physical interaction, then it’s a good idea to remember that your partner’s body is the only thing through which this kind of communication can take place - and that they can only have so much control over what happens to it. If your girlfriend is depressed and gaining weight, worry about the depression, not the weight. She can decide what is appropriate for her health and her body.
They will have sex with us when we’re overweight, but they wouldn’t want to be seen with us, and they certainly wouldn’t pursue a long-term relationship.
Actually, I was model thin when I was young, and I still got the impression that most men who pursued me wanted sex, but not a long-term relationship.
Sara, you write
If a committed sexual relationship is about expressing love for each other through physical interaction, then it’s a good idea to remember that your partner’s body is the only thing through which this kind of communication can take place - and that they can only have so much control over what happens to it.
Indeed. And it’s also important to remember that our physical love manifests something much deeper, the soul love of which Kristie was talking about. The changes our bodies display, for better or worse, are part and parcel of our human condition. Come the resurrection, we may well all have perfect bodies — but not in this life, not for any length of time. True erotic passion is not just a response to the body but to the person inside of it.
True erotic passion is not just a response to the body but to the person inside of it.
But so often the body reflects what’s going on with the person.
Of course the body sometimes reflects inner conflicts/private behaviors. But weight gain can happen for any of a vast number of reasons, not all within our control. And ageing is the best example of this. If a man can trade in his spouse cause she’s packed on a few pounds, is that any more justifiable than trading her in because her hair has gone gray, or she’s gotten wrinkles?
No. But when “a few pounds” is 100 pounds in less than 4 years, the answer is yes. Where’s the cut-off? I don’t know.
Oh, and significant weight gain with age is *not* inevitable.
were I to have a partner who gained a significant amount of wieght and who showed no concern I would, in all honestly, think that she didn’t respect herself.
The “Oh, it’s not the fat, it’s the self-respect!” thing is absolutely classic, and hilarious. When someone says this, what he means is that he would not respect her. Because he can’t respect a fat woman, it is absolutely inconceivable to him that she would respect herself, and because he doesn’t respect her enough to tell her the truth - that he isn’t sexually attracted to her - he makes it about her self-esteem, rather than about her appearance. Also because he can’t say “If you respected me, you’d be sexier” with a straight face.
Yuck. If you’ve put on 100 pounds then you don’t need round-about hints from the man in your life to figure that out. 100 pounds is pretty significant weight gain. That AskMen article isn’t about 100 pounds or 50 pounds or even 20 pounds. That’s for the kind of totally shallow loser that would bug a woman for 5 or 10 pounds. Surely, we’ve all met That Guy, right? The one that bitches about his gf’s “pot belly” because she’s went from a size 8 to a 6 over the course of a two year relationship?
er, from a 6 to an 8.
It’s not really self-respect, it’s a question of values. Most people actually do have the capacity to make significant changes in their weight. A certain amount of what the doctors consider “overweight” doesn’t bother me, because it says that has an interest in maintaining a healthy body, but allows some other things to take priority. (Which is about where I am. I get to the gym intermittently, and don’t make a lot of effort to diet, and I’m somewhat overweight.) If a woman takes no interest in maintianing a healthy body, there’s a mismatch of values that’s too large for me to enter/remain in a relationship with.
(And regarding respect, I did tell the girlfriend who added 100+ pounds that one reason I was leaving her was that I was no longer sexually attracted to her because of her weight. That was the respectful thing to do, right, Sophonisba?)
It’s not really self-respect, it’s a question of values.
I really don’t see how “self-respect” is different from “values”. Either way, the issue is that she doesn’t see her body the way that you do and that’s a problem.
Anthony, we’re talking past each other. A woman can be healthy and be overweight; thin does not automatically equal healthy, as Ampersand so frequently points out. “Lazy” and “unhealthy” are more socially acceptable epithets than “undesirable” or “makes ME look bad to the fellas”, though the latter are more likely to be true.
(Heck, speaking of weight, when I was at my fastest in races a few years ago, I was twenty pounds below where I am now. I could blast strong 5Ks, but staying so lean compromised my immune system time and again — I was always sick, with no defenses.)
And regarding respect, I did tell the girlfriend who added 100+ pounds that one reason I was leaving her was that I was no longer sexually attracted to her because of her weight. That was the respectful thing to do, right, Sophonisba?)
If you don’t want to be with somebody for any reason, breaking up with them is the respectful thing to do, yes. Obviously. You don’t need a “good” reason. What you say to them in the course of the breakup is a question of how unpleasant you wish to be and how hard they press you for reasons, and as such the appropriate behavior varies from breakup to breakup.
However, you may have forgotten that you already posted this:
But realizing that I was turning off the lights before sex so I wouldn’t have to see her body as much
which is disgusting and disrespectful and entirely indefensible by any standards. If you’d simply stopped sleeping with her and broken up with her when you were no longer physically attracted, you’d have been fine. But that’s not what you did.
And the question is missing the point. The point is that if the “truth” (i.e., that you don’t respect or aren’t attracted to the same woman when she’s fatter than she used to be) is impolite or disrespectful to say in so many words, it does not magically become polite by dressing it up in the language of “values” and “respect”, as if the woman is the one with the problem with her body. She isn’t, or she’d be working on it. You are.
Either rejecting somebody for getting fat is ok, or it isn’t. If it’s ok, you should be willing to say so. If you think that saying so is true, but cruel, you should realize that accusing someone of lacking self-respect is just as cruel. Particularly considering that women are smart enough to know that men use “lack of self-respect” as code for “fat”. If someone’s ashamed and scared to admit a fact about himself - that he’s not attracted to his girlfriend anymore - the time-honored way of weaseling out of it is to cite vague irreconcilable differences and leave gracefully. Everybody has the right to leave, and nobody is obligated to be aroused on command. Pretending that sexual disinterest in fat people is somehow a question of “values” is just pathetic.
Well said, Hugo. But we should make sure not to forget to attack the problem from the other end, as well. You and I and Joey need to make sure that we’re not (consciously or unconsciously) judging other men by the attractiveness of their girlfriends/wives, and that we call out men who we see doing that. Joining in in disparaging ugly women and the men who date them can be just as much of a homosocial status strategy as finding a thin girlfriend of your own.
Stentor, absolutely right.
Why is it that it’s not okay for women to gain weight over the years or after marriage, yet it seems perfectly acceptable for men to put on the pounds?! I’m getting married in May and have been going to the gym for 2 months now out of a desire to be healthy and fit for myself but also to bring pleasure to my fiance on our wedding night… he on the other hand, has definately gained weight over the past year of our relationship and has no intention of going to the gym and doesn’t see it as a priority? Does the same hold true for women and being able to tell their man to shape up? Shouldn’t we care enough about ourselves to keep ourselves healthy and fit? The world doesn’t need more skinny people out there to make others feel bad, but what’s wrong with being a normal healthy size?!
Carissa, one lie we perpetuate is that women are unconcerned with male appearance. After all, you’re not visual creatures, right? Heh.
The problem is that for lots of folks a woman who mentions her husband’s weight is a nag, while a man who mentions is it entitled to do so because he “needs” her to be slender and sexy.
We all owe it to ourselves and to our spouses to be good stewards of our body — but that means overall healthfulness rather than adhering to one particular standard.
If a woman takes no interest in maintianing a healthy body
Oh, now, don’t go changing horses in midstream and hoping nobody notices.
You’re talking about gaining weight, i.e., gaining body fat. That is not a synonym for “maintaining a healthy body”. Maintaining a healthy body involves exercise, healthy eating, giving up toxic habits like smoking, and so on. You can’t really be pretending that this article is for guys to celebrate the fact that Girlfriend gained 20 pounds because she quit smoking or stopped taking meth.
Why is this an issue of “values” and “respect?” It’s a health issue, and I personally don’t lose respect for someone if they catch a cold (They could have been washing their hands more often!) or if they catch herpes (What is a dental dam?) or even if they catch the dreaded fat. A woman with severe hay fever is not the hottest thing you’ve ever seen, but you don’t see men wincing whenever their girlfriends sneeze.
Hugo,
There’s also the other side of the coin as well. Those men who flip out when their female counterparts begin to lose weight. I myself experienced a bit of this after losing a chunk of weight, and I’ve spoken with other women who’ve had drastic weight loss who’ve also experienced similar negative reactions from their men as well. I’ve a few theories on it, but none of them are too pleasant either.
Also note- many men who claim to want their wives/gfs to lose weight are also some of the worst sabbotagers. Externally they say they’d like to see weight loss, but internally or subconsciously some of them work to jimmy the results…
In the end, if I had been told to lose weight, my reaction would DEFINETLY be to go out and gain about 30 lbs on the spot.
Well, the classic reason, Leila, is insecurity — men worrying about losing an increasingly attractive wife/gf to other men. Homosocial competition, agin and agin… that’s one I see often, but of course dramatic and unhealthy weight loss could stimulate more genuine concern.
Well, professor Hugo, all depth comments on the issue aside (I believe I’ve left them scattered on other sites across the blogosphere), permit me to extend my copious gratitude to you for actually CALLING THIS SCREWED-UP ACCULTURATION WHAT IT IS instead of dancing around it like EVERY other man I’ve EVER met, including my own father and S.O. Not to unduly damn your homosocial rituals and all, but God, the relief. You have nailed it.
Because really, what this particular form of objectification does is turn women — in the eyes of the men who are supposed to LOVE us — from PEOPLE to ACCESSORIES.
And I know you guys just HATE it when we women do that (you know, the “walking wallet” thing and all the variations on that theme? Not to speak of women becoming more *ahem* visual) to YOU.
“However, you may have forgotten that you already posted this:
But realizing that I was turning off the lights before sex so I wouldn’t have to see her body as much
which is disgusting and disrespectful and entirely indefensible by any standards. If you’d simply stopped sleeping with her and broken up with her when you were no longer physically attracted, you’d have been fine. But that’s not what you did.”
Posted by: sophonisba
Very well said sophonisba.
There’s also a bleak poem in there: about a woman watching her lover turn off the lights when he never used to. And the woman shrinking into herself in the dark, waiting for his disapproving hands to measure out her lack of value.
(Sometimes you don’t want to wander into people’s forlorn bedrooms on blogs.)
I dated a man who made it very clear that if I gained any weight I wouldn’t be attractive to him at all. In fact, he often hinted that I weighed too much already. He often said many of the same excuses expounded upon here, “It’s your health I’d be worried about.” “it’s not good for your self esteem.” I knew though, that if I got in a car wreck or something that significantly changed my looks he would loose interest in me. I eventually became terrified of the idea of loosing my looks. I had never looked at his behavior from a homosocial perspective before but it’s painfully clear that his biggest concern was what his friends thought of him because of how I looked. He was in the Air Force and felt that in order to move up the chain of command he had to have the attractive wife to fit the part. He felt that men wouldn’t take orders from him if he had an unattractive wife. Sometimes I still can’t believe that I mustered up the self-esteem to leave him.
Reasonably speaking, men have a right to choose. And if they choose women who are physically fit then that is their choice and it needs to be respected.
Why, alexander?
Hugo, I’m sure you’ve heard the term “moped” for an ‘overweight’ woman.
Wow. So this who blog-storm hits quite close to home for me. I’ve been struggling with sexual issues with my in-general-wonderful boyfriend for a good part of the 3 years we’ve been together (I’d say 2 at least). I heard a million different excuses for why he never wanted it anymore…but finally he came clean. I’ve gained a lot of weight, and it makes it hard for him to get interested. Great. I was never skinny, and he doesn’t expect me to be skinny (I went from a very curvy size 12 to a very curvy 16, but it was a good 50 pounds gain)…and quite frankly I’m out of shape and feel unhealthy and hate it. So I’m working on losing weight, for me and with his feelings as a motivator to not slack.
The thing is, though…yes, I need to lose some weight, and I’ll be happy for a million reasons when its accomplished…and I can understand that he didn’t say anything he said to be hurtful or petty, and he feels bad having to say anything about it at all…I just don’t know if its worth staying with him when our happiness hinges on how much I weigh. That I lose the weight, everything’s great…and then someday I find myself with a new baby and a husband who doesn’t want to touch me. (and his response to this concern is ‘I’m not going to love you any less, just like I don’t now…it will just make having a sex life difficult’) I’m not sure it matters if the dislike of the weight is justified or coming from a place that isn’t meant to be mean, because a lot of the discussion centers around whether its okay for a guy to feel less attracted to their partner when they gain weight…its just scary to me to know that if I don’t worry about my weight for the rest of my life, I might find myself in this position again. And I love the guy, we’ve been through a lot, but I don’t know if love is worth…well…I hate to feel like his physical affection is conditional.
Bryna: its just scary to me to know that if I don’t worry about my weight for the rest of my life, I might find myself in this position again.
From someone who has been with the same woman for 25 years, I have bad news for all of you. You are all going to get older (if you are lucky). Your looks, your figures are going to fade with time. Some of you will get heavier, some will lose their hair. Some will lose a lot of that sex drive. All sorts of changes are going to happen there, some good, most bad.
The point is, if you feel that your man (or woman) is losing interest in you now when you are young, or your relationship is young, over a relatively minor thing like a little weight gain, it’s not going to improve down the road. Run, don’t walk, to the nearest exit.
If you are going the long haul with your mate, there has to be *a lot* more there than attraction with your physical appearance. A whole lot! If someone were to leave me over weight gain, I’d say good riddance and count myself very fortunate to have not wasted my time.
I don’t mean to upset you, Uzzah, but I couldn’t agree more. :)
And, bryna? The boyfriend isn’t wonderful, and you seem to have some self-esteem problems. By all means, eat healthy and exercise in moderation, because those will keep you alive and in good health for many years. But his interest in you should not be conditional.
Alexander, you also have a right to burn a flag. But, if you exercise that right, I’ll call you an asshole, and I sure as hell don’t have to “respect” you.
What I wonder is, why do people who expect their partner to maintain the same weight, never have gray hair, always look perfect, etc. get married in the first place? Marriage is the anti-novelty. If one wants a sexual partner who is young, thin and perfect, move to Los Angeles and date, but never marry. Then if Miss Right puts on a few pounds or has the audacity to stop looking 21, you can ditch her and replace her.
I dunno, perhaps I’m a weirdo, but I see my spouse’s slightly more relaxed middle-aged figure and gray hairs as a sign that we are growing old together, not as a turn-off.
I married my husband for better or worse, and even if he should end up paralyzed from the waist down, we’d be getting it on in some way. We’ve joked about sneaking into each other’s rooms in the old age home - and we’ll be OLD. I feel really sorry for those people whose sexual expression hinge on an unmaintainable standard. I don’t find liver spots sexy; but I will when it’s my partner who’s got them.
Alexander: You have a right to respect your own choices, and leave a partner if they are less attractive because they grow too old or fat or lose a leg in a car accident or end up with only one breast from a mastectomy. I’d suggest that you’d need to state that pretty much up front, though, to a potential partner, in order to be respectful of them.
Regarding “homosociality” and the weight issue Hugo, you honestly don’t think women don’t take a man’s weight into consideration? That women don’t brag about their hot boyfriend or his “washboard abs”? That they don’t judge men on their weight? Hell, I once had a woman who was far fatter than me judge me as too fat. Yes, men can be shallow. So can women. Welcome to the real world Neo. People can/are/will be juvenile when it comes to beauty, sex and relationships.
Hell, I don’t see how people can take askmen.com seriously at all. I mean they clearly speak for all men… Just like cosmo does for women.
I have to say that I’ve never heard another woman brag about her man’s “washboard abs”. Penis size, sure.
The phenomenon of men leaving their girlfriends/wives after substantial weight gain (recently dubbed “false advertising” in the context of marriage), for personal or social (”trophy”) reasons, might sound horrible, but what would a woman think if a rich and succesful man she married would leave his job, give his money to the poor and start a simple life of ascetism and yoga?
Sophonisba and Mythago, you’re both acting as if this is an all-or-nothing thing - that if a man isn’t willing to stay with a partner no matter what changes she goes through, he’s a shallow asshole.
Certainly a guy who gets upset because his girlfriend gained 5 pounds is an asshole, but that doesn’t mean that a guy who’se upset that his girlfriend has gained 100 pounds is also an asshole. And if you can’t make that distinction, your commentary is not useful.
Hugo - you’re saying that the reason men want their partner to be physically good-looking is to gain social status among other men, when the simple matter is that men want their partner to be physically good-looking, by their own standards, because that’s what turns them on.
While they may exist, I don’t know any men who would look at that “Ask Men” article for advice over a small weight gain, though I could see men I know reading it if their partner had gained a lot of weight, trying to figure out how to broach the subject, knoing that it’s an emotional minefield. (I wouldn’t look to “Ask Men” for advice, because I’d expect it to be as bad as Hugo reported it to be.)
but what would a woman think if a rich and succesful man she married would leave his job, give his money to the poor
Is that his money he’s giving to the poor, or the community property? If it’s their joint money he’s giving away, she gets equal say over it.
and start a simple life of ascetism and yoga?
Is that a Gandhi-style ascetism, where he includes a dedication to brahmacharya (it’s virtuous for him to never have sex again, and his wife better also never have sex again)?
Seriously, what changes it’s OK to break up over, man or woman, depends on how much of a commitment you’ve made in the first place. If the commitment was in sickness and in health, as long as you both shall live, then I kind of expect it to stretch through her extra pounds or his inability to work. And I say that as a woman who had to take the role of sole breadwinner when her bright, competent husband became too ill to work. (Early on, it can be wise to get out fast over far smaller differences, on grounds that they’ll only get worse after marriage.)
But if you do divorce over irreconcilable differences, it would be better to admit that you both have irreconcilable differences than to pretend that one of you is a bad person who engaged in “false advertising.” (And of course, if your problem is the kind of stuff that happens to everyone with age, then there wasn’t much point in marrying in the first place.)
Sophonisba and Mythago, you’re both acting as if this is an all-or-nothing thing - that if a man isn’t willing to stay with a partner no matter what changes she goes through, he’s a shallow asshole.
No, you haven’t read what I’ve said. What I said was that any partner in any relationship has the right to leave at any time, for any reason. Whether he or she is shallow or an asshole depends on a number of factors: how serious the relationship is, whether promises have been made, whether he or she has claimed to love the other partner, and so on. But I said quite clearly that if a man is repulsed by his lover’s body, let alone if he’s unable to sustain respect or affection for her, he should leave. Not, he can leave - he should leave.
Staying with her and insulting her looks, or screwing her with the lights out so he doesn’t have to look at her, or trying to shame or bully her into slimming down, that’s what makes him a shallow asshole. Leaving is much, much better than any of that.
Anthony, it’s true that men want their partners to be sexy to them. It’s also true that plenty of men are concerned about how hot their wife/girlfriend is perceived by other men. Do you really believe the two are incompatible? Have you really never heard the slang term ‘moped’ for an overweight woman?
you’re both acting as if this is an all-or-nothing thing
The subject of Hugo’s post was not an article about how to deal with your girlfriend turning morbidly obese, giving up regular bathing, or any serious changes: it’s how to get her to lose weight, period. You may not personally know any men so shallow, but does that mean no AskMen reader is?
(For that matter, I don’t think women who fuss about their husband/boyfriend gaining a few pounds are any less assholish.)
Fact of the matter remains that if 2 people truly love each other, all of this stuff just simply won’t matter. Love is a choice, it is a way that we behave towards one another. It is all the things that 1 Corintians 13 says it is: patient, kind, not selfish…etc. When we recieve and give love in an active sort of way, these conditional clauses aren’t even in the same catagory. Seems that this whole thing of leaving someone because they gain weight has more to do with the end of infatuation…not love. They are different.
Interesting. I wonder how any of these girls would react if their man dropped about twenty or thirty pounds–off his checkbook. I know many women who are considered level-headed who would leave their man in a heartbeat if he lost his job or something like that, even if he was working hard to find a new one, or indeed, found a new one that paid less than the previous job.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
It’s interesting how people have started using a man’s wealth as the male analogue of female beauty. Nothing new about that idea, of course, but it comes from a lot of nasty stereotypes, not least the one that men are interested in sex, while women are interested in material things. Looking at reality for a moment, of course most people are interested in both those things and everything inbetween, regardless of their gender. It’s insulting to both sexes to suggest that women are greedy sexless gold-diggers, and that men are helpless victims of their sex drive.
The equivalent of a woman gaining weight is not a man losing his job or his money. The equivalent of a woman gaining weight is a man gaining weight.
Sarah, realize that those people are the same ones who buy into the idea that the desire of men to want supermodels is somehow hard-coded into our genes. If you buy that, then you also have to buy the other sociobiological arguments–namely, that all women care about is money, and the reason that teenage girls go bonkers over Orlando Bloom is purely about his net worth.
“It’s insulting to both sexes to suggest that women are greedy sexless gold-diggers, and that men are helpless victims of their sex drive.”
I agree. Certainly, SOME people fit these stereotypes, but I’d just as soon not be placed in a box with them.
boy genteel
End violence against women AND men.
http://www.safe4all.org
How come no one is allowed to discuss the subject of weight with a spouse! Everytime the subject is brought up the person that dare ask about a spouses weight is attacked on forums and or anywhere the subject is brought up on the internet?
I suspect that the reason is censorship..we have enough overweight people in this country who are afraid of the subject hitting home that they are attempting to take the subject off the table and eliminate any debate.
I start http://www.myfatspouse.com because of this to give these people a forum where they won’t be attacked for dare bringing up the subject. If they do have a valid arguement they don’t have to worry about someone nit picking every piece of grammer and spelling because the nit picker knows the post is correct!
No one wants to acknowledge the fact that attractiveness is greatly based on physical appearances and to deny it would be denying reality. But this doesn’t even go into the bigger issue of the health implications of weight and what it does.
I like what Mayer says:
“In this highly technological and complicated world, most men are feeling incompetent and scared. And women are paying the price. Amidst their agony, men have made women, their one potential ally, their enemies. Men are also going through a major crisis of sexual identity. The last thing they need is any challenges to their masculinity. Trying to keep women physically small and feeble, (emphasis mine) uncertain about their own sexual identity, and preoccupied with their body image is just what the doctor ordered (literally). One way that women might reclaim their bodies from the tyranny of male whim and social propriety is to free themselves of the chains of dieting. Becoming bigger and stronger violates taboos, but these taboos are patrolled by men and the financial interests of the fashion industry, not by the health and well-being of women. How could we have traveled so far down the wrong road? This is not a health issue. It never was. Our physically-endowed women are labeled obese, sick, while being told to idolize shriveled creatures comprised of only skin, hair, bones and an attitude, who actually are medically the sick ones.”