aesthetic. For instance, the English rock band Queen praises “fat bottomed girls” in their 1978 hit song “Fat Bottomed Girls”: “Are you gonna take me home tonight? Ah down beside that red firelight, Are you gonna let it all hang out? Fat bottom girls, You make the rockin’ world go round!” In his hit song “Baby Got Back,” contemporary U.S. rap singer Sir Mix-A-Lot affirms that “average black men” prefer women with curves, and specifically large buttocks: “I like big butts and I cannot lie... I’m tired of magazines sayin’ flat butts are the thing. Take the average black man and ask him that.” While rejecting white mainstream ideals of extreme slenderness , he nonetheless praises an hourglass figure: “ Cosmo says you’re fat, but I’m not down with that, cuz your waist is small and your curves are kickin’.”
Social scientific research lends support to the claim that African American men (and women) are more likely than American whites to find fatter or “thicker” women more attractive than very thin women. For instance, anthropologist Mimi Nichter found that African American high school girls are more likely than their white counterparts to say that the most beautiful women are fat “in the right places,” that is, have large buttocks and breasts and smaller—but not completely flat—stomachs. 112 Sir Mix-A-Lot is one of several rap singers who rhyme about their attraction for curvier women. And yet, ironically, as anthropologist Joan Gross has pointed out, the women who perform with them tend to be quite slender (albeit curvy) and considerably thinner than the men beside them. 113 Other research suggests that it is specifically African Americans of lower socialeconomic status that have a preference for the fatter female form and that upwardly mobile and middle-class African Americans, like middle-class whites, tend to value slenderness. 114
Among middle-class, white men, affirming a desire for fat women can be stigmatizing. While some men repress or hide this sexual preference, others vocally defend it. Bill Fabrey, the founder of the NAAFA, falls into the second camp. He speaks passionately about being “a man who admires the larger woman” and how being a fat admirer, or FA, represents a “minority sexual preference.” Growing up in a white, middle-class household, he says he was about 12 years old when he realized that he “had always felt that way, just couldn’t verbalize it.” He says that his mother was shocked when he told her of his “taste”; she insisted that he was “going through a phase.” Fabrey says it took his parents twenty years to accept his “taste, with any respect and recognition,” even though he describes them as “very supportive parents in all other areas.” He says they had a very low opinion of fat people because they had never met a fat person who “had high self-esteem or dressed nicely or talked like an intelligent person.” Fabrey blames that on the detrimental effects of the prejudice and mistreatment fat people face in the contemporary United States.
Fabrey talks about deciding to form NAAFA after The New York Times declined to print a photo of his fiancée on their wedding announcements page in 1963. He noted that he and his fiancée had “comparable connections” to other people whose announcements were published and surmised that the only reason they declined the photo was because his fiancée weighed 350 pounds. He says he eventually reached a point where he said: “How dare they tell me what I should find attractive?” He says that, unlike fat kids, he was always reminded “what a good kids [he] was” and that he “could do anything [he] wanted to do.” So, he says, he “started a movement.” While his “taste” for fat women was stigmatized, his social location as an average-sized, white, middle-class, and highly educated straight man gave him confidence as well as cultural capital to wage this battle.
His
Social scientific research lends support to the claim that African American men (and women) are more likely than American whites to find fatter or “thicker” women more attractive than very thin women. For instance, anthropologist Mimi Nichter found that African American high school girls are more likely than their white counterparts to say that the most beautiful women are fat “in the right places,” that is, have large buttocks and breasts and smaller—but not completely flat—stomachs. 112 Sir Mix-A-Lot is one of several rap singers who rhyme about their attraction for curvier women. And yet, ironically, as anthropologist Joan Gross has pointed out, the women who perform with them tend to be quite slender (albeit curvy) and considerably thinner than the men beside them. 113 Other research suggests that it is specifically African Americans of lower socialeconomic status that have a preference for the fatter female form and that upwardly mobile and middle-class African Americans, like middle-class whites, tend to value slenderness. 114
Among middle-class, white men, affirming a desire for fat women can be stigmatizing. While some men repress or hide this sexual preference, others vocally defend it. Bill Fabrey, the founder of the NAAFA, falls into the second camp. He speaks passionately about being “a man who admires the larger woman” and how being a fat admirer, or FA, represents a “minority sexual preference.” Growing up in a white, middle-class household, he says he was about 12 years old when he realized that he “had always felt that way, just couldn’t verbalize it.” He says that his mother was shocked when he told her of his “taste”; she insisted that he was “going through a phase.” Fabrey says it took his parents twenty years to accept his “taste, with any respect and recognition,” even though he describes them as “very supportive parents in all other areas.” He says they had a very low opinion of fat people because they had never met a fat person who “had high self-esteem or dressed nicely or talked like an intelligent person.” Fabrey blames that on the detrimental effects of the prejudice and mistreatment fat people face in the contemporary United States.
Fabrey talks about deciding to form NAAFA after The New York Times declined to print a photo of his fiancée on their wedding announcements page in 1963. He noted that he and his fiancée had “comparable connections” to other people whose announcements were published and surmised that the only reason they declined the photo was because his fiancée weighed 350 pounds. He says he eventually reached a point where he said: “How dare they tell me what I should find attractive?” He says that, unlike fat kids, he was always reminded “what a good kids [he] was” and that he “could do anything [he] wanted to do.” So, he says, he “started a movement.” While his “taste” for fat women was stigmatized, his social location as an average-sized, white, middle-class, and highly educated straight man gave him confidence as well as cultural capital to wage this battle.
His
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