Fat4Fat: The liberatory pleasure of f*cking other fat people

Like all people raised as girls, I learned the “Laws of Desirability”—those sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken rules about what makes a person desirable to others—young. Not only did they teach me broadly what a sexist, cis-het normative, patriarchal society wants and doesn’t want from its girls, but I specifically learned a lot through the process about being fat. 

“Fat girls aren’t desirable,” was the paramount edict, followed by subsections like:

1. “Fat girls are grenades—one person needs to sacrifice themselves by jumping on them so they don’t blow everything up.”
2. “The person hooking up with the fat girl should be ashamed. Unless being a ‘chubby chaser’ is ‘their thing.’ Then, it’s grudgingly acceptable.”
3. “Hooking up with a fat girl every so often is okay, though. They’re neglected, so they’re super eager to please, and they’re actually pretty good in bed. But we don’t admit this. Ever.”
4. “Fat girls need to be aware of their undesirability, and accept their place.” 

As the token fat girl in my high school friend group, I adhered to the “Laws of Desirability.” I was properly ashamed of my body. I felt grateful to have a boyfriend or girlfriend at all. I went out of my way to please sexual partners because I felt lucky anyone wanted to fuck me. 

But I got tired of being the undesirable fat girl. So, I starved myself until I was a “hot girl.” 

After being fat for my entire adolescence, entering the world of desirability was a wild, exhilarating experience. People everywhere, not just men, were kinder, more polite, and accommodating. They actually paid attention to me, and I basked in their flattery. People wanted me, and they said so, boldly. People like the man who’s now my husband. 

I’d finally been granted the power of desirability, and I was drunk on it. 

But that power cost more than I could pay. Eating disorders aren’t sustainable, even though diet culture promised me they would deliver me the life I always dreamed of. But when I started eating again and stopped exercising, I was fat again within six months. Then, I got fatter than I’d ever been. Then, even fatter. 

Yet again, I found myself exiled from desirability. 

Though by then I’d been with my partner for years, the “fat girl subsections” of the “Laws of Desirability” were so seared in my brain, I wondered if he would find me attractive or want to have sex with me anymore. He’d fallen in love with a “hot girl,” after all. Luckily, he’s not an asshole. 

So, while of course he was still attracted to me, and we still had amazing sex, I couldn’t shake the idea that he hadn’t “chosen” me as a fat person; that maybe, if he met me fat instead of thin, he wouldn’t have found me desirable in the first place. Of course, he assured me that he loved me the person, not me the body, and his reassurances paired with countless intensive therapy sessions finally convinced me that I could be desirable, even in a fat body… at least to him.  

But seven years later, when I finally realized I’d been wearing my assigned gender as an ill-fitting costume my whole life and came out as transmasc, I discovered these fears still lurking. As I began dressing more masculine, binding my chest, and started taking testosterone, I was again plagued by the question, “Would he have ‘chosen’ me if I was transmasc, not a ‘hot girl?’” Though I felt more authentic than I ever had, I feared that this changing body, this true self, wasn't desirable to my partner, who’d always identified as straight. 

Again, this amazing man I’d married showed me what it means to love a person, not a body. He reaffirmed his love and desire, embraced my transition, came out as queer, and we continued to have incredible sex. And since we were monogamous, my desirability to anyone but him didn’t really matter. As the years passed and our relationship continued to evolve, I forgot about how my body violated the “Laws of Desirability.” Until we decided to become non-monogamous. 

As I started making profiles on the apps, the fears about my desirability flooded back in. Would anyone “choose” me, a fat person? Find me, a fat transmasc person, attractive? Want to have sex with me? 

I’d done a lot of work on body image and self-esteem, and though I’d come to love my fat trans body, especially since getting top surgery, I truly had no idea if anyone else would. 

My fears were quickly allayed as the matches rolled in. Though, there was a noticeable pattern. Nearly all my matches were fat people. Unashamed fat people. Fat people who desired other fat bodies like mine. 

And when I started fucking these fat people, my beliefs about pleasure and desire fundamentally shifted.

Seeing other fat people unabashedly strip off their clothes and display their naked fat bodies; seeing their desire when they saw my fat body; caressing their voluminous stomachs, backs, butts, and thighs; letting them caress mine; grabbing handfuls of fat and feeling fingers dig into my flesh during moments of ecstasy; watching their fat bodies tense and buck and spasm and jiggle through intense orgasms; seeing their satisfaction when my fat body did the same—these are the experiences that finally, over a decade later, fully liberated me from the “Laws of Desirability.” 

Though I’d learned to love my fat, transmasc body, before I fucked other fat people, I’d never been completely unashamed. When I fuck another fat person, I know they aren’t seeing my body as “inferior,” or “a health issue” or something that has to be “fixed.” I know I won’t be teased—or outright shamed—for my folds, cellulite, stretch marks, and jiggles, and I don’t have to be embarrassed by these natural features of my fat body. I never have to worry about how I look while we’re fucking because we’re too absorbed in the pleasure and joy of our fat bodies merging. 

When every look, every touch pulsed with desire, when every word, every breathy whisper vibrated with it, how could I continue to believe that our fat bodies were undesirable? 

We chose each other’s fat bodies, not as a last resort or a fetish, but because after decades of being told that our fat bodies weren’t desirable, didn’t deserve pleasure and joy, we all desired each other’s fat bodies. We wanted to give and receive pleasure in our fat bodies because we knew that our fat bodies deserved pleasure. We wanted to experience joy together, through our fat bodies. 

When I fuck other fat people, I get to see my fat body through the filter of their ravenous desire. This, perhaps more than anything else, has transformed me. 

Being fat in an anti-fat society like ours means enduring violence every day. That violence builds over days, years, months, decades, leaving gaping mental and emotional wounds. We can’t, and shouldn’t, heal these wounds on external validation alone. But fucking other fat people has revealed that, for me, some of these wounds can’t be healed through self-love alone either.

Cultivating the self-belief that my fat body is sexy is healing, for sure. But it’s not the same as every single fat person I’ve slept with telling me my thighs—the part of my body I’ve always hated the most—are incredibly sexy. Or feeling them grab handfuls of my ass and watching it jiggle after a hard slap. It’s not the same as experiencing their raw, rapacious desire for the body I thought could never be desired without shame. 

Every time I experience desire for my fat, transmasc body, another wound heals.