So, a long while back – I am hoping it was one year, but fear it may be two! – you had a bit of a series on BFD about fat women in art – Venus of Willendorf and others. And since then, I’ve wanted to send you this statue, in the FDR Post Office in Manhattan, at 53rd and 3rd. She’s placed next to the escalator, so it’s hard to get a good picture of her – and this one is from my cell. She’s called “The Big Woman”, and is made of rough pieces patted together into the shape you see.

I love her. She is the big woman, and she’s one of the only female bodies I’ve ever seen that I feel some connection with – the shape reminds me of my own, in terms of certain contours. I don’t know what the artist thought or felt about calling her the “Big Woman”, but it makes me feel she is proud and fierce, and every time I go to the Post Office, she makes me happy. So, I, er, just wanted t o share.

Thanks for the investigative journalism, Mary! Has anyone else seen any good fat art lately?

Wanted to write you last month after I saw Ricky Gervais live — most of the show was amazing, but he did a solid 15 minutes of fat jokes that were just horrifying and they were all — ALL — aimed at fat women. He’s newly buff and living it up, which, you know, bully for him and all, but I sat there and tried not to cry for that portion of the show, and then listened to him explain how he wouldn’t apologize for making jokes like that b/c comedy was supposed to be edgy and push people. All I could think was truly edgy fare needn’t be explained as such, and since when the fuck are fat jokes “dangerous” and “taboo”? Sort of smacked of David Brent waxing on to the doc crew about his “comedy.” Was offended and made me sad.

Anyway, knew you were an Office fan, so I went home and looked up what you’d written about it, which made me feel lots better, knowing I wasn’t the only conflicted Gervais fan out there.

Sheila also discussed this with her friend, Entertainment Weekly PopWatch blogger Mandi Bierly, and this theme found its way into a recent interview Bierly did with Brooke Elliott and Margaret Cho, both of whom are on Drop Dead Diva. That interview is here, and it’s a really interesting read, and Bierly brings up Ricky Gervais, the Eat Less shirts, and plenty of other topics.

Margaret Cho on Ricky Gervais:

I haven’t seen it, but I always think he’s funny. The fact about his humor is that in his comedy, people always say that he’s fat. So it’s interesting, he’s the one who’s been hurt by it, too, a lot. So I wonder what that means… In any case, as a comedian, I could never make fun of it because I almost killed myself so many times as a younger woman. I took so many diet pills. I have a heart murmur because I took Fen-Phen in the ’90s. I have permanent damage to my body because I wanted to be thin. That desire to have a smaller body, to take up less space in the world, was so important to me that I don’t remember most of my twenties. I didn’t appreciate the young woman that I was, or my young beauty, because I was so obsessed with the fact that I felt fat. It’s never good to add to anybody else’s suffering.

Brooke Elliott on her character in Drop Dead Diva (a formerly thin model who ends up in the body of a plus-size lawyer):

I think the show treats this character with so much dignity and respect. That’s why this show’s so popular. She’s a beautiful woman, and it treats her like a beautiful woman. She’s got all these guys fighting over her. There’s so much drama in her romantic life. She feels beautiful, she is beautiful, it’s just about taking somebody [the real Jane] who formerly considered herself invisible and making her visible. Deb’s never been invisible, she doesn’t know how to be. So when she’s in Jane’s body, she knows how to be visible. That’s what this is about: Somebody becoming visible to themselves and to the world, which is powerful.

And finally, a recommendation!

Speaking of beautiful, confident big women on TV: you prob. know about this since you’re hip to the Brit coms, but if you haven’t watched, you MUST MUST MUST see Gavin and Stacey. BBC America is currently showing series three, but the first two are available on DVD. The title characters are the least interesting, actually. The two writers, Ruth Jones and James Corden, play the supporting characters and are fantastic. Ruth is a gorgeous voluptuous woman (also, she plays the bartender in Daffyd’s pub in Little Britain, if you’ve ever seen that). Hilarious, amazing cast, great writing.

I have actually never seen Gavin and Stacey but my friend Eliza loves it, and she has great taste, so I’ve been meaning to check it out. Thanks for the e-mail, and the recommendation, Sheila! And thanks for the interview, Mandi, it was a terrific read.

I love my body. I am no sex kitten. I am not a supermodel. I am fat, and generally regarded as unattractive because of it. Vanity is not the most important function of skin and muscle, as some would believe. I love my body because when my spirit is beaten down into the earth and my mind does not want to work through another day, it perseveres. My legs, pale and large as they are, carry me faithfully through each day. They carry me through triumphs and tragedies. They carry me through crowds that would hate me because of my double digit pant size, and they carry me towards the future with unwavering strength. The dangle over the side of the bed each morning, begging to touch the ground and move through the motions they have grown so familiar with over nineteen years.

My spine keeps straight, and climbs under my skin gracefully. It keeps my head held high when I am ready to crack, and keeps my posture hopeful when I would rather curl up and sleep. It is framed by broad shoulders that have held the weight of the world many times over, shoulders that will not fall in fear of a world that will not relent. Underneath are my arms, scarred with souvenirs of teenage angst. The skin stretched across them is marked and discolored, covered many times over by lines that speak more clearly of my anger than my voice ever will. Those scars hold stories that my lips keep hidden far behind my teeth. They hold stories of my body being ripped apart by a man much older than me, forcing his own body into mine. They hold stories of my rage, my hope, and my resilience. My arms are scorned for being so torn, but they have succeeded in holding me together when I was absolutely certain that my life was falling apart.

My heart pumps blood whether I want it to or not. When my father lost his own body to a savage cancer, it worked and worked, urging me to keep moving. It built itself back together when the realities of a harsh life threatened to rip down the very foundations of my family. The rib cage protecting it holds what hope I have left in the world. Those bones hold more than I would like to admit. They hold the heart, of course, but more intangibly they hold my spirit. They hold every memory, even those I would rather forget. They are wrapped with a mind that does not work in terms of black and white, only shades of gray. They hold happiness and sorrow juxtaposed. They hold insecurity and strength as one.

My brain tells me when being rational is more important than giving up. It carries information like a vault, never letting anything slip through. It locks conversations and old friends deep inside, waiting to relay necessary bits to my mouth. It helps me sort out the good from the bad, the fact from fiction. It helps me to realize that other people cannot control my happiness. It forces me to think ahead, always with the idea that someday, I will be able to overcome what life has thrown in my direction. It tells me that someday, memories of sexual abuse, family violence, a rotting father, and losing faith will be fodder for the fire that burns inside me. It tells me, simply, that someday everything truly will be alright.

My body may not glide gracefully down a catwalk. It may never be draped in high fashion clothing. It may not ever feel the touch of a man with my mouth’s consent. Those things are not important. My body has done much more than I ever could have asked for it. It has carried me through hell and back. It has survived levels of darkness that some people never dream of. It has taken me to happiness, and never has it failed me. My body is mine, and I love it, stretch marks and all.

Speaking of pregnancy, I’d love to see BFD someday address the weird sub-genre of being plus-sized and pregnant. It’s a whole new world that I never really thought about until eight months ago, but man, has it been an eye-opening experience for me. I mean, you have the usual body issues that pretty much every woman deals with these days, but then those are compounded by the extra challenges that larger women face, compounded by the “holy crap, now I really am HUGE” part that inevitably comes with expecting.

There are so many facets of being larger and pregnant that I could’ve never anticipated, both good and bad. For example: can I just tell you how hellish it is to find plus-sized maternity wear? All those cute shops like Mimi Maternity, Pea in the Pod, etc. — none of them carry above a size 12. That was frustrating, but not wholly unsurprising. What *was* a shock was what I observed at the more ubiquitous department stores like Macy’s, JC Penny, Sears, and Target: if they carry maternity wear at all, they don’t carry extended sizes. The only brick-and-mortar place that I could find that carried my size was Motherhood Maternity, and even then only certain stores have them. There are exactly three MM stores within a 25-mile radius of my home that stock plus sizes, and I live in the ‘burbs of Philadelphia. If I still lived in my hometown in Mississippi, I’d have to drive close to 100 miles to get to a store that had clothes to fit me.

Even if a woman is fortunate enough to have a MM within driving distance that keeps plus sizes in stock, the selection is pretty lame. In the store closest to my home, they carried maybe a half dozen different pairs of pants, two different pairs of shorts, about 20 different tops, and no activewear or dresses. The clothes themselves are hit-or-miss; I found a nice pair of slacks that work well in an office environment, and I really love the pair of jeans I found there, but the tops were pretty hideous all around, and the khakis were coarse and scratchy. In the end, I picked up a few pairs of pants, but ended up getting all my tops from Lane Bryant. I found I could just go a size up and focused on the shirts that had a babydoll cut or empire waist to them. So that part, at least, worked out quite well!

So in the end, many women end up having to order online. Online has the obvious advantage of having a much broader selection of styles, as well as retailers and smaller boutiques who carry extended sizes, but it also means taking on the risks associated with online clothing orders (wrong fit, returns hassles, paying shipping costs, etc.).

Another thing I didn’t anticipate? Not *looking* pregnant until the very end. I don’t have a very large non-pregnant belly, but man, did that extra fat conceal the fabled bump for months and months. If I pressed down on the area just below my navel, I could feel a new firmness there as my uterus grew, but it’s been weird to realize that I don’t look like how other pregnant women look (whether on the street or in the pregnancy books I bought) for most of the phases I’ve gone through. It’s kind of sad, in a way, because you hear so much about how the world treats pregnant ladies better — people give up their seats on trains, folks hold the door for you, etc. — and I haven’t gotten to experience any of that. It’s also kind of awkward for the people you encounter who aren’t sure whether or not you’re pregnant. And I feel for them, definitely, because most folks are essentially
kind, and they don’t want to take a risk humiliating you and embarrassing themselves in case you’re not pregnant, so they don’t ask about how far along you are or when’s your due date or whatever.

So those are the major negatives that have proven to be challenging. But there is good stuff, too, I swear! First of all, the super-awesome upside of not quite looking pregnant is that I have yet to have some stranger try to touch my belly, ask invasive questions, give me unsolicited advice, or regale me with pregnancy horror stories, so that is a pretty significant plus. While I am open and friendly with the folks I know, I can be awkward and withdrawn with people I don’t know well or at all, so honestly, it’s been really nice not to have people feel like they can strike up a conversation with me just because I’m pregnant.

Secondly, even though finding plus-sized maternity wear was grueling and painful, I didn’t have to do so until I was well into my seventh month. So while the clothes at MM were occasionally hideous and unpleasant to wear, I, unlike skinnier moms-to-be, only had to deal with [maternity wear] for a short eight weeks. Hooray! And as a side note: God bless the ladies of Ingrid & Isabel, the geniuses behind the Bella Band! If you’re not familiar with it, the Bella Band is a stretchy piece of fabric that you can use to hold up your pants when they start to get too tight to button. You can wear your regular non-mat pants with the top undone, but the Bella Band holds them in place. Layered under a shirt, it looks just like the bottom of a camisole. That thing is BRILLIANT, and I have worn it almost every day. Also, I&I are one of the few retailers that acknowledges that there are, in fact, plus-sized mommies out there, so most of their stuff is available in a wide range of sizes.

Thirdly and most significantly: I have been pleasantly surprised by the fact that pregnancy has caused me to love my body more, not less. I cannot overstate how fundamentally shocked I am by this development. One of the biggest things that has kept me from wanting to get pregnant before now is outright (but understandable) vanity — I dreaded getting any larger than I already was. I feared seeing the numbers on the scale climb steadily upward, knowing there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. But the crazy thing is that once I got pregnant, I really didn’t care. I mean, I will readily acknowledge that part of this is probably due to the fact that I didn’t get the pleasure and annoyances of a hugely swollen belly, but I think most of it is that I’ve been able to be at peace with getting bigger. It’s not a big deal because it’s what’s supposed to happen, and hey, isn’t it kind of amazing that I am in the process of creating a whole new person!

I’m not yet at the awesome zen of “beautiful at any size”, but I am way, way more forgiving of myself and my weird, non-traditional pregnant shape than I could’ve ever guessed. And that’s been the most delightful discovery of all.

More on this issue: We talked about shopping for maternity clothes in this post, and Well-Rounded Mama has put together a (NSFW) photo gallery of fat women who are pregnant or giving birth. I would love to hear thoughts from you on the issues that women face when they are fat and pregnant.

Thanks for kick-starting the conversation, Jennifer, and best wishes for your new arrival. May you enjoy a labor that lasts 30 minutes or less!

The advice requester explains that he has a fat coworker who eats all the communal chocolate at a meeting, and he wants to say something to the fat man about how his eating a bowl of chocolate isn’t good for his weight problem. Not so shocking, what with all of the “health concerns” (read: fat hatred) and all. What makes it interesting, in my opinion, is “Prudence’s” response.

She tells him (rightly) to say nothing at all to the guy about it. I was feeling pretty happy about her response at first, until she goes on to say that he surely already knows he’s killing himself, and that his compulsive eating must be so bad that he can’t even confine his binges to the privacy of his own home. That just infuriated me. Of course the man should say nothing to his fat coworker, but not for the reasons she gave. He should leave the man alone because he is an adult who can make his own choices about his own damn life, without “well-intentioned” interference.

In her blog entry on the subject, which is worth a read, Meredith also adds:

Let’s assume that the man is 500 lbs and that the candy bowl did have 5 lbs of candy. First of all, we don’t know why this man is 500 lbs. There are probably several contributing factors from genetics (which have been scientifically proven to determine 60% or more of a person’s body size) to a disability to (okay, probably) some serious overeating. But we can’t assume the whys on this kind of thing for anyone, no matter how large they are. And we certainly can’t assume a disease like compulsive overeating (this bothers me on both sides, when all fat people are considered to be compulsive overeaters and all thin people are thought to be anorexic … these are serious illnesses, people. let’s not jump to conclusions.).

The other ridiculous assumption is that the fat man does this sort of thing all the time (he’s so fat because he eats candy all the time). If a thin person came in the room and did the same thing, would they think that he or she did that sort of thing all the time, or would they think something like, “Wow, so-and-so must be hungry. So-and-so must not have eaten lunch today.” My guess is the latter. And the same thing could have been true of this man. Maybe he’d had a busy workday and was running from meeting to meeting, with no time for lunch, so he ate what was available.

But none of that should matter, either. Becuase even if he is fat because he eats 5 lbs of candy a day, it is none of anyone’s business but his own. He is a grown-ass man who can eat all the damn candy he wants. He can eat nothing but candy if he wants. He is a fully formed adult who can make his own decisions about his own life. If he truly is a compulsive overeater, he probably knows it and could seek professional help if he wanted to. The fat man’s choices about how he lives his life are not this person’s business, and certainly not his concern. Being fat is not immoral. Even doing things to harm your own health isn’t immoral. It’s your body. It’s your choice. It’s your business. As long as you’re not hurting others (and being fat doesn’t hurt others), it is officially not of anyone’s concern but your own.

But wait, there’s more! Here’s the video:

Please note the animation that accompanies the question, which is just straight-up “let’s make fun of this fat guy’s body.” From the look of horror on the co-worker’s face to the “his elbows are in the wrong place because he’s so fat” to the groaning chair, this just looks like an opportunity to mock the overweight.

Prudence is also the columnist who wrote this great response to the girl whose boyfriend said she was too fat. It sems her response might have been different if the woman had weighed 500 pounds, though.

Hi Mo! Love the blog. I was just writing because you asked for ideas, and I know this is a tad bit frivolous but I’ve been waiting for someone around the fatosphere to talk about it, or even make an open thread for people to weigh in (hehe,) but I was totally fascinated by the season premiere of The Office. The episode was called Weight Loss and the whole office embarks on one of those biggest loser type programs and of course fails spectacularily.

Thing is, I’m pretty sure it was written by people who are very aware that diets don’t actually work. They show a lot of extreme diet behaviors that have been glamorized (Master Cleanse) but make sure to show just how silly and harmful they are (Kelly faints and has to go to the ER.) They show some of the behavioral side effects of dieting, such as secret eating and the Last Supper effect. They show how silly it is that everyone thinks weight loss is always a magic cure no matter what (Michael asks Angela to lose 5 pounds and she says her doctor told her to gain weight and he counters “do you want to die!?!”)

There is one part where Dwight tricks Phyllis into going for a drive with him and then he takes her purse and makes her walk back to the office through the bad part of town to try to get her to exercise, and it is a funny scene but you are very clearly meant to be laughing at what an asshole Dwight is and not at Phyllis. When she calls the company to complain about his behavior they back her up 100%. The only character who actually loses weight is Stanley, who doesn’t do anything extreme and does it for his own reasons and loses a very small amount. I guess some would say that any weight loss isn’t fat accepting, but the Stanley story line is really subtle and no one even notices his weight loss or congratulates him on it and no big deal is made of it- it isn’t portrayed as some great victory, just something he is personally happy about, which I think is a really appropriate attitude about weightloss.

Anyway, other people might disagree and not think the episode was very accepting and anti diet, but as far as I’m concerned it is one of the most accepting things I’ve seen on TV like… ever. Any negativity towards fat and eating and bodies is meant to be seen as silly and mean, something The Office has gotten really good at as they’ve addressed racism, sexism, etc.

In case you haven’t seen the episode, you can go see it at Hulu.com or below. For those of you who did see it, what did you think?

Plus-size designer Igigi was the official sponsor of the BFD meetup at BlogHer. This meant that me, Weetabix, and three of our lovely readers got to pick out outfits from the Igigi website to wear and review at the convention. I went to Igigi on Friday morning to pick up the dresses and meet up with the delightful Katrina, and I even got a little sneak peek at the new line, which includes some spectacular clothes for the workplace (a blazer I already covet).

I have to say that I was hoping one of us wouldn’t like her outfit, so that this ensuing post would seem like less of an Igigi lovefest. (After all, back in the day, Anne and I were not afraid to criticize Igigi’s clothes.) I guess I could pretend I didn’t like my dress, but, well, do you see the dress? Empirically, I look awesome in it. Sorry, but it’s true.

One little snag is that they were out of the dress in my size, 18/20, but I loved it so much that I decided to try a 14/16, and it worked fine. It probably would have been even better in an 18/20, and cling to my fat rolls a little less lovingly, but I decided to work with the slightly-too-small smaller size, and I really felt saucy and slinky and okay with the clinginess. (The other dress I tried on was this one, and in case you think I have nothing whatsoever bad to say about anything, I looked like an undead bridesmaid at a vampire wedding.) I got a ton of compliments on my breasts (for which I should also thank my brand new balconette bra) and on the dress itself. Someone even complimented me on my “personal branding” (oh that’s so BlogHer).

The other lovely women in the photo are (starting from the left) our own Weetabix, Corinna from This Lush Life, and Deb from Deb on the Rocks; as you can see, they all looked genuinely spectacular. And indeed, all of us were happy with our outfits. The other thing that strikes me about this picture is how different the dresses and our personalities seem to be; all the same designer, but four strong individual styles. Thanks again so much to Igigi, and the lovely ladies at the meetup. We’ll have to do it again sometime!

More pictures from BlogHer and the meetup are here. Full reviews from Weetabix, Corinna, and Deb after the jump!

Weetabix:

I’ve always loved Igigi since I started wearing the designs back in 2003. I keep saying that, because I would like some damned credit for discovering them, but it’s really my own stupidity for talking about it, as now w so many lovely ladies are wearing Igigi and I have to worry about someone showing up at events, wearing the same damned dress. Ok, I’m not bitter. Really, I’m not. It’s hard to be bitter when everyone looks so damned tasty. Clearly, Igigi has quality merchandise and designs to have gained popularity on their own merit. At the BFD Meetup, I kept feeling Deb up because the silk portrait collar top she was wearing was just so lovely, I couldn’t keep my hands off. And Corinna’s dress… like, wow is the only thing I can really say. It was made for her. I got the colorblock dress and threw it on right away in the morning, since I knew that I’d never have time to run back to my room and change. So, yeah, I’m biased, because I am fortunate enough to basically have the body type that Yuliya seems to be designing for a lot: tall, big boobs, hourglass figure. Like many of the Igigi dresses, the colorblock dress was made from the soft, almost bamboo-ish material that packs like a dream. I wish they’d use that fabric for all of the designs: for instance, I own the dress Mopie was wearing too (see? I told you!) and unfortunately, that one is NOT wrinkle-resistant in the slightest. Walking through the conference, I got SO many compliments on the dress that I was starting to get tired of spelling out the URL and wished that I either had Igigi cards to hand out or that my own cards didn’t have shiny backs so that I could write the URL on the backs for the people who were interested. Also, an unintended benefit: the dress is designed in such a way that if you feel the need to flash your boobs at an entire room full of women, you can totally do that. You know. If you want to, anyway.

Deb Rox:

Bob Mackie once said that Cher made it easy for him to be a great designer. “She had such an unbelievable body. She could wear anything. She was like a big Barbie doll,” he said.

I’m the opposite. It takes me forever to find something that fits, that has rockstar style and that also flatters my curves. So when I was offered the chance to pick an Igigi outfit to wear at the BlogHer 08 conference, I didn’t know what to think. It was absolutely fantastic to receive gorgeous clothes and the clothes looked stunning on their website, but what were the chances that they would fit and make me feel great at the important events I was attending? Honestly, I brought a spare outfit of my own, just in case the new clothes didn’t fit this Empress.

I ripped open the plastic covering my Igigi outfit to complete excitement. The Portrait Collar Blouse in Flintstone was exceptional. The fabric was exquisite, with the perfect softness and drape, and when I held it against me it felt like a painting, like the pale blue sky in “Birth of Venus.” It was so beautiful that I became even more scared—what if it didn’t fit? So I immediately got as naked as the Venus (well, I kept my great bra on—gotta have that!) and slipped into the sky blue blouse. Gorgeous! The collar flawlessly framed my face and neck and the finely tailored rows of double buttons made me feel like a poor girl gone rich, like Madonna or Cher or Cinderella on Ice.

And miraculously, it fit. That never happens! The shaping on the sides and back showed my waist and accented my chest in heavenly ways. I felt like a rockstar making a costume change for the final number, the one where I would pull up a stool and sing directly to one person an intimate, meaningful number under a soft spotlight. Maybe “Baby’s Got Blue Eyes.” Maybe “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.”

The black Wide-Legged Pants were equally elegant, glamorous, and constructed from lovely fabric. They were a little snug in the waist and needed to be hemmed, but they flowed off my hips and legs and had sexy movement. To even come close to fitting new pants is amazing. Simply amazing.

The outfit was great, so I consider Igigi my new rockstar secret. Bob Mackie is right, it’s not a huge trick to design something beautiful for a hanger or its Barbie body equivalent. But it is a major feat to provide well fitting, gorgeous clothes right off the hanger to a curvier girl with the impossible standards of an Empress. Igigi can dress me anytime!

Corinna Makris:

I’ve always thought of Ava Gardner as my own personal style icon. Of course, she is slender and taller but she had my dark coloring and a curvy body. I was about 12 years old when I saw Night of the Iguana and she immediately became my fashion role model. She was sultry, her presence was riveting, and she always got her way. Since then, I have searched for clothes that would make me feel like Ava but sadly 1940′s pencil skirts that fit my hips are impossible to find (I suppose I could have them made, but I haven’t), and while long elegant dresses with plunging necklines can be found in my size, I don’t have season tickets to the opera, and those dresses aren’t appropriate office party attire.

Finally I have found a dress that fulfills my desire to be an exotic femme fatale, one that is also modern and fits like a dream. I had never worn Igigi before. I know I am always telling everyone at www.ThisLushLife.com to wear Igigi but I am going to admit that I’ve never bought anything from the Igigi website for myself. I thought the clothes too dressy for my workaday life, too elegant for my simple local restaurants, too clingy for my curves. Those opinions have changed forever.

Thanks to the fantabulous Weetabix and Mo Pie and a recent Igigi contest, I now own the Marianna dress, and I believe it looks better on me than it does the model! It doesn’t just fit well, it fits like it was made for me. I can’t promise that it will fit you the same way but I can tell you that I am 5′ 7″ with an hourglass curvy figure. The Marianna dress hugs me like Frank Sinatra hugged Ava and then floats around the places where I want it to float.

The Marianna dress is made from strong stretchy fabric, with long lovely lace sleeves. I feel confident that I will wear it many times, but not too many – after all there are so many other Igigi dresses I now want to own!

Thanks so much, ladies! You all looked unbelievably fabulous.

I was psyched to see WANTED, the new summer blockbuster action flick — based on a graphic novel — starring Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman and James McAvoy. My girlfriend and I saw it on opening night. (No worries, no spoilers here). My girlfriend and I love Angelina and the risks she takes on film, when she takes them.

I had hoped that Angelina would deliver a babe-kicking-ass role with chops and attitude. I had hoped the movie would be about coming into an identity that is better than the one before.

Instead, the movie was a meditation on how the modern age — and its attendant feminism — has slighted traditional Western (hell, GLOBAL) masculinity, with nice barbs thrown in about fat chicks, Latinos and working women added for a little extra flavor.

McAvoy and Jolie were convincing in their roles, but after 10 short minutes, I found myself fantisizing that Jolie’s Fox might take a sledgehammer to Wesley Gibson’s trachea. This is the unfortunate, mealy-mouthed white guy — The Opressed White Guy — played by McAvoy. I could list the many sins of this script — the principle one being how men must reclaim their roles as gun slinging, alpha-dog cavemen to counter the rising tide of contemporary corporate culture, which is turning us all into women. Pussies, if you want to borrow the language of the movie.

But in the first 5 minutes of the movie, we meet Janice, poor Wesley’s obese, fire-breathing, castrating bitch of a boss. Wait for it, wait for it… she’s eating a generous slice of her own birthday cake before devouring what little is left of Wesley’s Y chromosome. Moments later, she’s downing a donut. Yes, folks, the ultimate cinematic shorthand for a lazy, abusive manager is none other than an obese white woman with a secret stash of jelly donuts in her office desk. Before Wesley grows a pair and tells her off, we get to sit by and listen to a patronizing lecture about how Janice’s mistreatment in junior high gives her no right to be a bully. And she is a bully, folks. She snaps her stapler around Wes’ head as if to say do my bidding, boy, or your testes will be between these metal jaws next. She is physically ugly, personally repulsive and a binge eater. Her drug of choice (after the souls of her employees) is the emblematic donut. We can’t have a white guy tormenting Wes. It has to be a fat, disgusting white woman who feasts on donuts. How fresh.

The movie doesn’t do any better for the rest of its duration. The only role it challenges is the role of a wimpy corporate white hack with a dick. In order to reclaim his manhood, he best dump the demanding girlfriend (who’s fucking Wesley’s best friend) and learn to curve a bullet. Oh, and Fox stands out as the perfect woman. Beautiful, violent and practically silent. And she’s oh so fuckable. The cheating girlfriend’s biggest problem isn’t her cheating. It’s her mouth. It never stops. She actually has relational expectations, the sucubus!

If you think Janice and her donut binge is left behind in the opening scene, well, see the movie.

You’ll be disappointed.

1. “Carnie Wilson’s War” (with video from the Tyra Banks show, of course) is Carnie’s battle with her weight after her highly publicized weight loss surgery.

2. Britney Spears is on the Posh Spice diet (water with lemon, steamed fish, edamame, and seaweed) and has gone from a size 14 to a size 10!

3. Oprah has gained weight again!

From that last post:

I hate how we are so quick to pay attention to how much weight everyone loses and gains. I know, Oprah has tons of money and I’m really not a big fan… Nonetheless, money or not, she has the same body issues many of us “normal” women have — probably moreso because she’s constantly being scrutinized by people. When she loses weight, people give her a hard time. When she gains it, people give her a hard time and laugh at her. It’s sad. Maybe I’m just sensitive, but I really hate seeing people being judged by their weight — fat, skinny, whatever.

I don’t want to point out again that all of the posts I ran across today were about women. But, oops, I guess I just did!

The best sex comes with humour. Whether it’s being able to share a laugh at the noises bodies make when they stick together, or to feel the warmth in your heart of chuckling at a partner’s quirks, a dose or two of laughter can make good sex even better. And Celia Kyle’s Love Defined, a blend of erotic description, romance novel and fantasy, proves it.

Kyle’s heroine, Dr. Virginia Taylor, creates opportunities for the second type of humour; as billed, she’s a unique personality whose quirks offer both Mattias Kilgrey, the leading man, and the reader, plenty of smiles. Whether she’s lost her glasses in the breadbox (or on top of her head), manages a pratfall in the shower when surprised there, or orders enough for four at her local take-out place so she can have a taste of everything, Ginny’s habits are endearing and create a believable personality. She comes off the page reminding the reader of herself, or of someone she knows whose habits lead to similar fond chuckles.

But Ginny isn’t just a ball of quirks. Kyle rounds out Ginny with deeper and quieter feelings, touching on her passion for her work and her self-doubts. Readers might find the relationship arc both gratifying and recognizable as Ginny initially shys away from Mattias in embarrassment about unshaven legs and in doubt that he’d be interested in a body like her own: a fat body. While insistent on being loved as she is (on revealing her naked body to her lover, she says, “This is me. Get a good look. I won’t have you telling me to lose thirty pounds in two months. . .”), she had struggled with fear about how the man of her dreams will respond to her body. Any reader who’s wondered something similar will know how gratifying it is when he responds with a full panoply of erotic moves and a resounding assurance that her body, exactly as it is, is exactly what he wants. The romance is sweet and human, and Ginny’s quirks as well as her doubts serve to make it real.

In terms of erotic content, the book teases throughout and builds up to a big finish at the end. If you’re looking for explicit detail, the action here will usually meet your needs: Kyle gives a full play-by-play from the first lustful gaze through the big finish, and intersperses the description of what’s being done with commentary about how it feels, so that readers with an interest in either have something to take away. (Those looking for more of the “kinky” side may be disappointed; there’s a lot of action but no fetishes or orgies or actual spanking; and readers should also note that this is hetero romance). Having been introduced to the book on BFD, I will say that I was expecting a bit more of a description of what it’s like to make love to a fat body, or to be made love to in one – Kyle does make it clear that Ginny is a fat woman, and that this is what Mattias wants, but the descriptions of their sexual contact could almost all be mapped onto any body type. That may be important for an erotic novel – if you get too detailed, it will be harder for readers to imagine themselves in the action – but it was my one disappointment with the book. I would have welcomed a few more lines about exactly what it felt like for Mattias to run his hands over a fat body. Kyle does invest words in Ginny’s curves, though most (not all) of those are devoted to the two ‘curves’ she’s carrying in the front. That said, we know from the start that Ginny is a fat woman, and an eminently desirable one. Kyle isn’t coy about that. And Ginny’s internal dialogue does at times concern her body, and there were gratifying, recognizable moments for me in that dialogue. Neither the romance genre or the erotic genre is known for involving fat people, and Kyle’s book clearly steps out from the crowd here.

Love Defined also distinguishes itself in its use of fantasy. The first chapter presents a mystery – what is this Mattias, exactly? It’s clear that he has the hots for Ginny’s very human body, but it’s also clear that his own body isn’t always human. He starts out in a snow leopard habitat at an animal sanctuary, turning up his nose at raw meat. We quickly learn that Mattias is the possessor of both a male-model type human frame (Ginny counts to see whether he’s got a six-pack or an eight-pack) and a feline form; with the assistance of an earth goddess, he can switch from one to the other. Rawr. Kyle doesn’t spend a long time delving into the fantastic backstory, but fantasy is an important frame for this plot. Mattias’ abilities cause the characters to come together in the first place, provide rationale for a love story rather than just an series of erotic encounters, and give a nod to the idea of “animal passions” throughout. It’s used well, and guides the plot deftly without getting in the way of the main characters’ very human interactions. Kyle also writes erotic novels without the fantasy – so if shape-shifting cats aren’t your thing, don’t be turned off by that element here. What I found in the book (in addition to a loveable heroine, steamy action, and a satisfying romance) was pleasant use of language, an extremely good sense of pace, and a good use of dialogue. I’d wager that these strengths hold up across her work.

If you’re looking for some good, clean fun – stay away from the erotic shelves. If you’re looking for some good, sexy fun involving a delightful fat woman and a man who both loves her and aims to please, this is a great choice.