Why Some Men Like A Larger Lady
For some guys, the idea of a woman being on the large side is an attractive one. For them, it simply means there’s more than enough to handle. There have even been songs dedicated to the larger frame, such as Queen’s ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ and ‘Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)’, by Mika. But, in a world where we are constantly battered by media images suggesting that thinner is better, why do some men think that flab is fab?
Fat Admirers
A recent study by the Journal of Sex presented two groups of men with 10 photographs of different body types, to see which they found most attractive. The first group of men were self-confessed ‘Fat Admirers’ (FAs), who were scouted from conventions associated with that particular subculture. The other group consisted of men with no prior knowledge of the FA subculture; these represented the ‘man on the street’.
Rejecting The Norm
Interestingly, the FAs were attracted to a wider-range of body shapes than the men in the other group. While the majority of them were attracted to a photo of a woman whose Body Mass Index bordered on obese, many of them were also attracted to the photo of a woman who’s Body Mass Index categorised her as emaciated. Dr Viren Swami, a psychologist at the University of Westminster said that these findings suggest a “rejection of the sociocultural norms of attractiveness”. He said that “most FAs understand that their ideals of beauty are not ‘mainstream’, but I don’t think it’s really perceived as something rebellious. ‘Natural’ is a word that often crept up in my conversations with FAs i.e., they viewed their preferences as ‘normal’; it was just that mainstream society didn’t accept those ideals”.
The control group, however, rated the most ‘conventional’ photos as the most attractive, giving negative votes to those either under or overweight, by comparison. In addition, the FAs were unconcerned with the health-issues related to obesity. According to Dr Swami, “others are more strongly involved with fat acceptance movements and are trying to redefine what ‘healthy’ means.” It seems that there really is somebody for somebody out there, regardless of their size.