Fat beyond the fetish: toward a theory of fat-forward sexuality

ABSTRACT In the context of Western heteronormative cultures, fat bodies are coded as either symbols of comfort and nurture or they are fetishized objects of sexual (often ocular) consumption. The lattes occurs largely in insular online communities, while media portrayals of fat bodies skew heavily toward the former. Fat bodies, in this paradigm, are distinctly not bodies worthy of romantic love and attention. Without downplaying the deeply rooted fat phobias that plague many cultures, we propose that part of this issue is linguistic, and hence conceptual: we currently have no non-fetishized vocabulary for describing people, of whatever size, who are attracted to fat bodies, and therefore lack a conceptual framework for understanding how fat bodies participate in romantic relationships. We hope to show that combating the stigma of intersectional fat attraction remains ideologically difficult if we lack the critical language for describing and articulating the complexities of what we call fat-forward sexualities. This framework, we argue, reclaims fat admiration as a non-binary sexual identity, giving those who resonate with fat-forward a platform for articulating their experience that extends beyond fat fetishism.