nighthamcollege:

You Fat-Shamed Your Beautiful Girlfriend

If your girlfriend wrote into this column with this story, I would tell her she should break up with you.

Autostraddle

Absolute banger of an advice column

The author went in at the letter-writer and I love it so much. Men know exactly what they’re doing when they answer their girlfriend/wife’s anxious question about their weight. Men that do that are pulling the myth of the male bumbler.

My favorite parts include:

I’m going to be completely honest: If your girlfriend wrote into this column with this story, I would tell her she should break up with you. Not because you were ‘honest about your feelings,’ but because gaining and losing weight, over and over and over, is part of nearly everyone’s life. It is so inconsequential in the vast tapestry of existence, and if getting fatter over the course of nine short months throws you into this kind of tailspin where you find yourself not only unattracted to her, but you feel honor-bound to tell her so, how are you going to handle it when the really hard stuff happens? When one of you gets sick or disabled? When one of you becomes consumed by seemingly endless grief after the death of a loved one? When one of you loses your job? When money trouble strikes? When you lose your home? When one of you unearths a trauma you hid away even from yourself? When you become responsible for a dying family member? When one of you is unable to free yourself from the dense fog of depression or anxiety? When one of you is in an accident? When your bodies simply get old, the way all bodies do?

and

It seems like the way you perceive yourself is at the center of your decision-making process right now, so may I ask: Why aren’t you as attracted to your girlfriend as you were when you met? Is it really because her body is shaped differently? Or is it because you’re worried about what a fatphobic society will project onto you for being with her? Have you compounded your girlfriend’s insecurities by projecting your own onto her?

And here’s something you need to be extra honest about, because it’s going to reveal something deeply important to you about yourself: You knew it would devastate her, you knew it was cruel, you knew what those fat activists would say about it. You’ve done enough work to know exactly what you were doing. Yet you went ahead and told your girlfriend she isn’t attractive to you anymore. Why? Really, why? Did you do the mental calculations in that moment and decide that the shame and hurt you knew you were inflicting on her were worth it, if it got your girlfriend back to the size you want her to be?