Dating is Already Hard, and Being Fat Just Adds That “Extra Layer”

Dating 101 from self-proclaimed fat women — sifting through fat kink and body shaming.

Dating is complicated. Dating when you’re fat provides an added layer (pardon the pun) to the complication.

You see, to put yourself out there in the dating world to someone new each time is a nerve-wracking experience, but to do that when you’re fat is more so. There are already a lot of prejudices pitted against you, especially if you’re a woman, and you have to overcome all that and try to have a decent time, whenever you do get the time to go on a date.

I’m a fat girl, and when you’re a fat girl, you inherently feel pretty bad about yourself, thanks to society’s conditioning that thin is beautiful, fat is not. So even before we begin dating, we have to consciously build ourselves up from the pile of garbage that we think we are, to the actual lovely, functional human beings that we really are.

But your perception of yourself really does not change how people see you.

I was lucky enough to be in one serious relationship in my life, where my weight or my physical appearance mattered very little to the guy I was with. And that’s rare, even in the “normal body” dating space.

Casual dating, on the other hand, has been quite an interesting journey. I’ve been dating on and off for two years now, and as a fat girl, the pattern of how guys usually go out with girls like me has become very predictable.

To begin with, many men you meet will fetish-ise your fatness. Many opening statements during dates have been, “I’m only into bigger girls,” or “I love me some BBWs (Big Beautiful Woman).”

Way to reduce a person purely on the basis of their physicality! I wonder if this is the guy’s way of telling you that not only am I okay with you being fat, I am going to celebrate that by telling you that your weight turns me on, point blank.

If you believe that being a certain body type is a kink, then well, you might as well date a cow, because as far as I’m concerned, that’s a pretty big girl right there.

Then there are men who very naturally assume that fat women are just hyper sexual beings, and they seek nothing more than a quick and easy one night stand. If that’s not what we want, and we tell them that, they end up feeling offended.

I think they (men) think that as a fat woman, I should feel obliged and thankful for whatever attention I am getting because technically I shouldn’t be getting any attention at all. Oh, the honour of being noticed by a man, who could have chosen a hot thin girl, but instead chose me as the object of their horny affection.

Some guys will just not want to be seen with you in public as a romantic partner, because they subscribe to the “log kya kahenge” school of thought. If life was a romantic comedy, fat girls are the romantic interest’s best friend, not the girl the guy is falling for.

So most dates with these guys are positioned in a way that they end up being indoors. There is only so much Narcos and chill you can do before you begin to wonder if you really want to be with someone who won’t even address you as his girlfriend.

What we need to realise is that fat women are not any different from a regular, standard woman. To consider dating women like me a ‘different’ experience is to exclude us from what is considered normal. We’ll get there, someday, I hope. But for now, let’s go out to dinner and talk about Narcos instead of staying in. If women like me can exist and thrive in a world which doesn’t like us too much, what makes you so hesitant to take us for what we are not what we look like?

(Supriya Joshi is a Mumbai-based Creative Writer at ‘All India Bakchod.’She also moonlights as a stand up comic and dabbles in rocket science (only when no one's looking). According to the Myers–Briggs personality test, she is an ISFJ. In her free time, she likes long walks on the beach, binge watching Bojack Horseman and wallowing in an existential crisis of her own making.)