"I know I wouldn't be alone in asking my beau the deeply unsexy questions of whether he thinks I look fat".

"I know I wouldn't be alone in asking my beau the deeply unsexy questions of whether he thinks I look fat". Photo: Getty images

There’s something curiously irksome about the phrase “I like a bit of something to hold onto.” Unlike other irksome phrases such as “nom nom nom” or simply “panties” this one gives me the creeps in a way that is a little more intangible. Why is it so peculiarly irritating? Perhaps it is because the phrase, often said by earnest men, is well-intentioned but ultimately it’s quite hollow. It’s intended as an evolved view on the female form in a society that tends to value a certain kind of beauty and a certain kind of body shape above all others. But just as it is equally unhelpful when magazines publish articles about “how men love curves” and how “men don’t find skinny women attractive” it only reinforces that body image, and culturally approved beauty, is more commonly than not seen through the male gaze. And as long as the big knotty issue of body image is entwined into what men think, or more precisely, what men think about women’s bodies, everybody - men and women – is disadvantaged.

In an article in Jezebel earlier this month writer Hugo Schwyzer wrote about how men are socially and culturally conditioned to like what they like. And, worst of all, how anything other than socially “approved” preferences is considered to be a fetish, rather than an individual choice that is really none of anybody’s business. Which drives home the fact that the ‘body image standards’ that hold many women hostage are a complete bummer for men too. The piece was a response to a rather divisive article by author and academic Alice Randall in the New York Times called Black Women and Fat. In the article Randall asserted that three out of four black American women today were drastically overweight because they A) wanted to be and B) because black men preferred them that way. As Randall writes,

Anything other than socially “approved” preferences is considered to be a fetish, rather than an individual choice that is really none of anybody’s business.  

“How many middle-aged white women fear their husbands will find them less attractive if their weight drops to less than 200 pounds? I have yet to meet one.

But I know many black women whose sane, handsome, successful husbands worry when their women start losing weight. My lawyer husband is one. “

While Randall was criticised for speaking on behalf of all black women, her points about the way body image and appearance is culturally approved rang clear. In any case, striving to reach the ideal thinness or the ideal fatness can have terrible consequences. And while these new ideals are hardly all men’s faults, when so much value is placed on what men think, they’re not entirely blameless either. As Schwzer points out,

“This doesn't mean, of course, that slender women aren't attractive, or that all of men's sexual preferences are simply about trying to win approval from other guys. Yet as Alice Randall, Joe Tex, and Sir Mix-a-Lot all remind us, what men want has at least as much to do with culture as with biology. In the black community, Randall suggests, those expectations about male desire have encouraged female obesity; among middle-class whites, expectations about what men want play at least a strong supporting role in women's destructive pursuit of thinness. No, it's not all "men's fault." But men are hardly innocent bystanders either.”

Yet it’s easy to lay blame. I know I would certainly not be alone in asking various beau’s the deeply unsexy question of whether he thinks I look fat. What does it really mean when I do so and he rote responds with “of course not”. Probably that I am also buying in to the idea that by his acceptance of my body I am once again allowed to feel okay, and he is bestowed the rather dubious honour of deciding this. And then we would both feel quite smug if he follows up his “of course not” with a chaser of “I like a bit of something to hold on to anyway.” Or at least smug until the creepiness settled in.

If we’re really to call bollocks on the male gaze/culturally accepted body type connection then we first need to be more aware of what is really a compliment and what is really empowering. Just  how feminism will only truly benefit everyone when men are onboard, so too the murky waters of body image.  Truth be told, and it’s shocking I know, but many different people like many different things. Normalising and celebrating this has far more meaning than hollow phrases of empowerment. Or asking your boyfriend if he thinks you’re fat.