Ew. As a skinny chick I love seeing fat women in bikinis. My girlfriend in particular, but all of them because I want people wearing clothes they’re happy in.

Like it just pisses me off that there’s this deep idea that if you look fat or trans or disabled you’re inherently ugly. When like, nah, I’ve seen some drop dead gorgeous obese women, some stunningly beautiful trans women, and hot as fuck visibly disabled women. Maybe you’ll never find yourself attracted to someone with one of these body types, that’s fine, but quite a few of us will and it’s important to understand that that’s the case. And that’s not even touching on their idea that ugly people need to hide or something. No be ugly in public. Ugly people have just as much right as beautiful people to be out and about and dressed how they want

[–] gnomicutterance@hachyderm.io 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Your last bit there still feels radical to me, every day. The fact that some non-conventionally attractive people are stunningly gorgeous ought to be obvious, but the fact that people have a right to be ugly and happy in public still always feels transgressive. Some people (including young, abled, thin, gender-conforming folks) are just unattractive sometimes, and so the fuck what?

It feels transgressive, like it's our job to not force other people to see something hard to look at.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yeah it is. It’s one of the more radical ideas I got from feminist theory, but it’s also one of the ones that I think is most directly and easily actionable.

Most people want to be beautiful in some way. It’s understandable and I’ve got no issue with it. I exercise for that purpose and I choose to wear makeup sometimes as well in part for that reason. But I do it for me because I want to feel beautiful in the way that makes me happy and comfortable.

If someone genuinely doesn’t care that’s fine. And it’s also fine if nothing they can do will make them beautiful.There’s a lot of feminist discussion on a lot of the finer points I could make around that, but the blunt point is that the people of Walmart have the same right to be in public as the people of Hollywood. Andrea Dworkin (who was mocked on national television for her appearance) deserves for her face to be associated with her work just as much as Gloria Steinem (who was famously conventionally attractive). A kind man who dresses poorly and has a neckbeard and is badly balding is still worthy of being treated as just as much of a person as everyone else.

I also refuse to judge those who sound or smell somewhat unpleasantly. They’re people too. They have any number of reasons why they do as such. I find it strange that certain smells are treated as socially acceptable even if they absolutely reek in my experience, but others aren’t. Hell there are people who I’d much rather smell their bo than their lunch or their smoke. That’s not all something I expect of others, but it’s a related standard I try to hold myself to.

[–] locallynonlinear@awful.systems 8 points 10 months ago

I had a friend for many years who would do this. To be clear, this person was otherwise a decent friend and I had good times with them. But they would constantly declare, loudly, to everyone, how fat they were. They would make constant comments on how fat, their relatives were. They'd insist that other people were making special arrangements for them because of their fatness.

No matter how many times people would assure this person that we largely did not care or consider their weight as any factor in hanging out with them or interacting with them, they would deny it. No matter how many times I or anyone else carefully suggested that there may be some value in speaking to a therapist about their anxiety around their weight, they would not listen.

This same person would also complain how much fat shame society as a whole inflicts. But they refused to acknowledge their own.

It is sad, and infuriating, and it eventually pushed me and many other people away.