Controversial subject... not for the faint of hearted
So I am an avid reader of B!tch magazine, and in their newest issue is an article about "feeding porn." This is the first time I've ever encountered anything like this before, and I have to say, I am disturbed.
So I am going to link to the article instead of posting it here because I really don't know how exactly to describe it:
I had to put a space between the link because this website censors curse words, so just delete the space and it should take you to it.
What's strange about this genre is that allowing women with non-star bodies to make money off of porn, but at the same time, the nature of the videos is just totally and completely disturbing to me. I am all for women with "regular" bodies being sexy and sex symbols (not the super skinny, super large-chested, fake lips and fake books fake hair). And men and women do find large women sexy, and that's awesome for them. What I am disturbed at is the eating. the gorging. Porn in and of itself is a problem, considering most female porn stars (and strippers) have suffered some kind of sexual abuse in the past, and I wonder what is the mindset of these women who do "feeding porn." Are they just expressing themselves, or is there something deeper (and I ask the same of mainstream porn stars, so I'm not just targeting large women)? Why eating? Do you think it's degrading to women, and especially to overweight women?
I apologize if anyone is offended or hurt over this, but I just feel that this is a community that might offer some different insight than over at B!tch. Also, since everyone here is striving to be healthier and lead healthy active lifestyles, is this in any way offensive? I'm struggling with losing weight, but I recognize that this is the only body I will ever have, and I am doing my best to treat it right and eat healthy and be healthy.
So I'm not really all that sure what to think. I really want to hear some opinions, and I am very open to a discussion about this.
I actually found my little sister watching an episode of the Tyra show where she was talking to a bunch of women, all of whom were overweight. The first woman was like 500 lbs and WANTED to be 600 and her fiance wanted her to be the biggest woman in the world and stuff like that....but anyways, there was one girl...she didn't look too heavy, i wouldn't guess more then 350 lbs...I don't really remember...but her Husband was a "feeder" and any time they were intimate he felt he needed to stuff her with food at the same time...
She specifically said that she wasn't comfortable at the weight she was at now, and she wanted to lose weight, but that her husband likes her being overweight and likes to "feed" her and she worries that if she tells him to stop or starts to lose weight he will leave her because she woudln't be what he wants anymore.
I didn't stay in the room to watch the rest of the show, it was making me very angry that she felt she was trapped in a body she didn't love...even though she WANTED to make a change...
Idk, I didn't read that article. I'm using the internet at my work, and the site is blocked, but I do know that I think a lot of the guys that are interested in that kind of porn are "chubby chasers". I can't seem to understand WHY they would get gratification from stuffing food down their lover's throat...but to each his own I guess.
I do worry about the women who take part in this though...I mean, you have to wonder what it does to their confidence levels and what kind of issues it causes. I'm sure that it's not healthy emotionally for them, but I've never believed that porn stars were that healthy emotionally....
I find it degrading, I find it makes me very angry, and I know if a guy ever tried to "feed" me while we were being intimate, I'd be gone...and i'd never speak to him again. Its just something that I PERSONALLY have an issue with, but that doesn't mean it makes all women feel like that. I guess it's just hard for me to get perspective when I find it so upsetting.
It desturbs me. Binging is a compulsive addition that many people struggle with. Watching this, in my mind, equates to watching a druggy get high. It is desturbing to even think of watching, so I cant imagine it being sexual arrousing.
i saw that esp of tyra, all i can say was oh my. ive been up there not near some of them n i could understand y that lady on the show was happy that she couldnt walk like 10ft to get her mail. when i was that big i HATED it not being able to breather u think u could like die at any moment.
Most "chubby chasers" are relatively normal guys who find overweight women physically attractive. Some are guys who find women of many different body shapes and sizes attractive, and some have a very specific "type" in mind (not too different from "regular" guys, so far). Some are very shy men, who find women with an obvious "flaw" (according to society) easier to approach.
And then there are the men with a fat (or feeding) fetish. For some, their ideal is a thin woman they can "make" fat, or at least a woman they can make fatter. For some, the fetish becomes (or may even start) far more important than the woman. As with all fetishes, it can range from minor and harmless, to the bizarre and dangerous.
There are also chubby chasers who have a pygmalion fantasy (as seen in many movies from My Fair Lady to Pretty Woman) - they want to transform a woman, so they're attracted to fat or frumpy women that they can mold into a beauty (the problem is that if they succeed, they often lose interest once their "project" is complete). Sometimes you'll see this in super-attractive guys with gym bodies, who will be attracted to an out-of-shape woman to transform the woman into a hottie. If he's not successful, he may be emotionally abusive, and if he is successful he often loses interest - it's often not a win-win situation for women involved with men addicted to mentoring/molding.
Like most fetishes, I think the line between fun and quirky and insane and dangerous is often a bit blurry (at least in the middle). Especially since fetishes often develop progressively. So, if you meet a guy with a mild idiosyncratic preferance, he may be at the early point in a progressively disturbing fetish that could have or develop a compulsive component - or he may be hiding the true nature of his preference to avoid scaring a potential partner away - or he might just have a quirky preference that will never get "worse".
As with most fetishes, I think the mild ones are harmless and can enhance a relationship, and the severe ones "replace" a normal relationship, and can be harmful. A person who finds a partner (regardless of size) enjoying his/her meal "sexy" is relatively normal. A person who needs to overfeed a partner (regardless of the cost to that partner) to get aroused, and can only get aroused when food or feeding is involved, has a psychological problem. In the gray area in between, it's a bit difficult to determine whether a person's preferences are dangerous or just odd.
Some fetishes are relatively harmless, but wanting to stuff your woman or man's face with food can be dangerous.
And kaplods, what you described sounds pretty dangerous to me. And very patriarchal. And you're right about the thin line with fetishes... I think that being attracted to big women is fine, different strokes for different folks, but for me, when the feeding comes in, that's when a line is crossed. And you're spot-on (do you have a degree in psych or something? ;-) ), fetishes can become out of control. For people who say, watch a lot of porn, I'm talking a serious addiction, it starts to get more and more bizarre. All of the sudden, mainstream stuff doesn't do the trick, and you have to go into more and more bizarre stuff. And then you have a problem, an addiction.
I think that this "feeder porn" comes from that place. This isn't what "normal" people look at who engage in porn every once in a while. this isn't porn that men who like large women look at. This is when the line is crossed from occasional to addiction.
personally, I just can't imagine doing that to myself. I really do wonder what is going on with the women who are a part of this. Mainstream porn stars have their handful of issues including sexual and drug abuse, emotional and physical abuse (I read Jenna Jameson's biography and she was raped on more than one occasion and used meth and was in a toxic lesbian relationship for awhile). So I really wonder what happened to these women that made them get into "feeder porn." I just can't imagine a "normal" women with no issues getting into something like this. There has to be something deeper.
And it also strikes me as dangerous because we all know the dangers of being overweight and obese. That's why we're here. So it's emotionally dangerous and physically dangerous.
I think it's pretty deranged and is not about sex but manipulation and control. I've also been solicited for feeder/feedee relationships many times (and there was a lot of money in it) from men who have seen my fat-positive thoughts in various places I used to write and found it incredibly repulsive.
I think I'm going to be sick... some guy just posted a comment saying how he was a male feeder and how he has nothing but respect and high esteem for the women he feeds (aka abuses). And how he enjoys watching women gain weight and lots of it, and how he would never do anything to risk their health.
Um, hello? Is this guy a ****ing moron? Gaining weight is unhealthy! you can die from being too overweight due to the health problems that comes with it. UGH UGH UGH
I think I'm going to go throw up now....
Last edited by sunflowergirl68; 08-29-2009 at 09:12 PM.
Some fetishes are relatively harmless, but wanting to stuff your woman or man's face with food can be dangerous.
And kaplods, what you described sounds pretty dangerous to me. And very patriarchal. And you're right about the thin line with fetishes... I think that being attracted to big women is fine, different strokes for different folks, but for me, when the feeding comes in, that's when a line is crossed. And you're spot-on (do you have a degree in psych or something? ;-) ), fetishes can become out of control.
Yes, I have a bachelor's degree in behavioral psych and a masters in psych. I do want to make clear that I believe that when a feeding fetish results in weight gain or a repetitive cycle of gain and loss (or the feeding behavior otherwise risks the health) of the feedee just as when any fetish results in physical or emotional harm to one or both partners, it's crossed the line into dysfunction. I think most hardcore porn and fetish porn and sometimes even soft porn can be the very picture of dysfunctional, and appeals to people with more severe degrees of fetish-related dysfunction.
The "food scene" in the movie 9 1/2 Weeks might be an example of a harmless form of the fetish (assuming a couple isn't risking either's health imitating the scene).
As for the guy who says he has "respect" for the women he is "feeding," I suspect that HE believes it. Either because he would be ashamed to admit even to himself that he's so sick that he doesn't care about his partner's well-being - or because on some level he believes that "respect" for these women make what he's doing "ok."
People rationalize bad and dysfunctional behavior all the time, and sometimes there's even a grain of truth in it. I think especially on "the spectrum" of fetishes, the early stages are easy to justify, and as a person gets in deeper and deeper, it only makes the need to justify (at least to themselves) that much greater.
"We're not hurting anybody," is an excuse that people have made for eons.
I've also had my share of fetish attention, and I have to say I've been very lucky that the men were always very obvious about it in the first date or two, so it was a "no-brainer, deal-breaker." With the man who would become my husband, after a few weeks of dating, I started to be concerned that he had a "white knight complex," (a rescuer fetish). His previous girl friends tended to be women who needed rescuing. It put me on the alert to make sure he was "just a nice guy," and not a guy addicted to women in distress.
Actually, it turned out he's really somewhere in the middle. I wouldn't call it a fetish, because it's not a sexual need, he's just a very generous guy who does want to help people in need, and sometimes he takes the need to be needed too far. He's the kind of guy that will give his friends (and anyone he's talked to for more than ten minutes might fall under the category of friend) the shirt off his back. Sometimes I feel like the bad guy for having to reign in his generosity.
I don't know that most people go into a relationship with their eyes as open as I did. Because of my psych background, I was LOOKING for signs of weirdness, and when I found them I looked even more closely to make sure his weirdnesses were ones I could live with. I think a lot of people with true fetishes (until they're very severe) hide them until they get someone into a relationship. Once the person is "hooked," only then do they bring out the fetish. When a fetish gets too severe to hide, that's when people go looking for a subculture that allows them to put the fetish right out there in the open so as not to waste time going through the motions of developing a normal relationship.
The fetish clubs and social groups allow a person to keep up the illusion of the fetish being "normal," because in their subculture it is. Even when the behavior is so extreme, that most people would call it harmful, you're going to find a lot of feeders AND feedees who aren't willing to admit that to themselves or each other.
It's not far different from "generic" S&M, in that when it crosses the line into harmful, that's when the people engaged in it are the most defensive of it. People who are just into it "a little," tend to feel that they're playing with something dangerous. It's the people who say "it's perfectly safe and harmless," that I most suspect are taking it to the point that it isn't.
I don't want to ask too much, but I do think your insights would really benefit the discussion on the comments section of the article. I really think that someone with a psychology background like you, someone really advanced in their studies, would help others understand more.
I don't want to ask too much, but I do think your insights would really benefit the discussion on the comments section of the article. I really think that someone with a psychology background like you, someone really advanced in their studies, would help others understand more.
I did read the comment section, and I've got to say, I really doubt my comments/perspective would be helpful or appreciated there. In my experience, on these types of topics, where there are two polar viewpoints, the rational "middle ground" voice gets trashed by both sides, rather than being given any respect (except by those who already hold the middle ground viewpoint). In all likelihood, both "sides" would attack my comments assuming that I was taking THE OTHER side (or just arguing that I was as wrong).
I've gotten involved in these kinds of arguments/discussions before - and I can't say I won't ever again, but I am much more hesitant to do so, because it ends up being too stressful for me (I love a persuasive argument, but I can get caught up in the need to get in "the last word," which is virtually impossible on a topic like this).
I sure do. It seems like objectivity isn't even seen as something to strive for anymore. Jumping to conclusions and holding extreme viewpoints has become the true American pastime.
Last edited by kaplods; 09-01-2009 at 03:50 PM.
Reason: typos
That is messed up!
I don't see how anyone, no matter what their size, shoving food down their throat could be attractive.
I guess different strokes for different folks?
Still, the feeders are not being respectful or being a considerate human being to the woman they are feeding! Gaining weight is not healthy, I don't believe any woman when she says it makes her happy, and it will shorten her life span!
If a man ever tried to shove food in my face in bed, I'm pretty sure I'd have to shove my knee into his groin!
Controversial subject... not for the faint of hearted
