Fat and Fetishized: Understanding the Power and Worth of a Body That Blooms

I was at an upscale sushi restaurant in West Hollywood, staring at an extensive sashimi menu, the first time a man asked me to sit on his face and smother him.

“Did you notice there’s bluefin tuna on the menu?” he added, pretending not to be glancing my way as he waited for a response.

I did not know what to say exactly. Because I’ve always been a large woman—at that time weighing about 300 pounds. Many men I’d dated had confessed that my large size made them feel like I’d be a less judgmental person in this superficial world, someone they could share secrets with. So I wasn't exactly surprised that my date came out and confessed his fantasy, but I was still a little taken aback by his specific request. What were we talking about here? Smother like you do with a pillow in a Lifetime movie? So I asked.

“What do you mean by smother? Like, where you won’t be able to breathe?”

My date—let’s call him Richard—reached over and rested his hand on top of mine. “Yes,” he said. “I know it sounds a little weird. But you can keep your underwear on. I just want to feel the pressure of you on top of me—you have the perfect body for it.”

I gently pulled my hand away, picked up the menu again, and eyeballed the prices. Even though I wouldn’t be drinking alcohol, I knew that he was bound to drop a pretty penny at this place. Our two previous dates had been equally nice, lavish. He had only taken us to restaurants I couldn’t afford, and had told me to order whatever I wanted each time.

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “It sounds fun.”

We sat in silence while I continued staring at the menu. It was only a few unoccupied seconds, but it was long enough to think about all the mediocre men I’d had sex with in the past, after less-refined dates. I thought about the one time, in college, I’d jerked a dude off in the backseat of his Honda, next to the empty bucket of fried chicken we’d just eaten. I thought about all the times I’d been fucked, quietly, by a grown man in his mother’s house (because he still lived there). Richard had treated me kindly thus far. His face was easy on the eyes, and also looked okay for straddling—smooth, soft pillowy cheeks, no sharp edges. Also, at twenty-five, this was a rare opportunity to be the boss. And who doesn’t want to be the boss sometimes?

Eventually I spoke up. “We should skip dessert.”

I’ll never forget how his face beamed, the first time I’d seen him smile with all his teeth.

*

Heinrich Lossow was a classically-trained nineteenth-century German painter and illustrator. He was also a prolific pornographer. He came from a family of artists, the son of renowned sculptor Arnold H. Lossow. Much of his work was PG, and included subject matter you might expect from that time—ladies petting cats and carrying children, flying baby angels flapping their wings, rich ladies in frilly dresses and giant hats, rich ladies napping, rich ladies looking at nature, and all types of portraiture.

But I am captivated by the porn. Or, what intellectuals call “erotic iconography.” I’m intrigued by the divisiveness around porn, among feminists and folks who consider themselves open-minded and progressive. Is it sex-positive or not? Intellectuals debate the issue frequently; there are a plethora of academic articles arguing one way or the other. With the rise of the Stormy Daniels scandal, it has become a topic of discussion in the media. And frankly, I’m not sure whether it’s sex-positive or not either. What I do believe, regardless of the consensus, is that porn and unconventional sexual tastes will be around forever. There will always be dudes like Richard. And there always have been.

Lossow’s erotic work mostly consists of men and women having sex. But there are two particular pieces that I return to. The first is an illustration of a strong, plump woman, sitting on an almost-fully-dressed man’s face. The curves of her ass and the muscles in her thighs are pronounced. Her breasts are large, hanging at an angle, the way big breasts do. And she holds the man’s penis confidently in her right hand, like she’s done this before. She knows exactly what she wants.

The second work is a painting—oil on canvas—called The Enchantress. In a garden, a burly statue of a Classical Greek Sphinx and a man kiss while embracing. The Sphinx is clearly the alpha in the image; she hovers over the man and wraps her hulky arms around most of his body. The man, on the other hand, sits in the more submissive position on a bench, beneath her, clearly entranced, but letting her take the lead.

If these images are any indication of a pattern, it’s that the large female form has been a curiosity lusted after for ages. Plus, it’s no secret that the larger female physique was revered throughout history. We see this all the way back to at least 25,000 BC, with the Venus of Willendorf figurine. She is a cute round thing and looks a lot like I do in the nude. I’d bet my next paycheck that several millennia ago, fat ladies like the Venus of Willendorf sat on plenty of eager, smiling faces.

The morning after the sushi date with Richard, my thighs were a little achy. I’d happily done exactly what we’d discussed at the restaurant; with my dress and panties still on, I had straddled his face and smothered him with my ass and thighs. For a few seconds at a time, I asphyxiated him, then lifted myself back up when I felt inspired to do so (being mindful of not actually suffocating him). It was easy and I liked having control, but the whole time all I could think was: I can’t believe this turns him on and This is actually kind of boring and I’d rather be eating a sandwich right now.

I sent him home that night panting and smiling.

When I received a text from Richard a couple of days later, asking to meet again, I pulled the New phone, who dis? act on him. I love a free sushi dinner, but though his request had been fairly painless, there hadn’t been any real pleasure in the experience for me. It seemed transactional. I felt like I was this person living in a somewhat niche body—but a body with a cult following—and I was getting shortchanged by my fans.

I felt like I should be asking for more. Though I’d physically been in the dominant position that night, it was still all about him and his fantasy. It was a one-way street. In retrospect, I wondered, If this isn’t about making each other feel good, then shouldn’t I be getting compensated somehow?

In retrospect, I wondered, If this isn’t about making each other feel good, then shouldn’t I be getting compensated somehow?

*

On today’s popular porn sites, fat women have a giant, devoted audience and are often referred to as BBW (Big Beautiful Women, not Basketball Wives). Smothering has its fair share of fans as well. And the two are often combined. If you’re on the hunt online for videos of some version of BBW smothering, the results are endless and subgenres varied.

There’s face-sitting: Young College BBW facesitting, SSBBW (Super Sized BBW) facesit, BBW Facesitting Outdoor, Ethnic Videos BBW Girls Facesit.

And there’s smothering, where you cover your partner’s mouth or face with a part of your body, typically your ass or genitals: Latina BBW Smothering, Ebony BBW Smother, BBW Asian Smothering, Monster Ass BBW Smothering.

Squashing—literally crushing a person until they’re unable to breathe—is also a thing: BBW Squashing Women, Two BBW Squashing Unlucky Man, BBW Squashing Lesbians, Awesome BBW Squash Facesitting.

And wrestling: Curvy BBW Wrestling and Sucking Cock, BBW Fight Club, BBW Wrestling Grappling, BBW Oil Wrestling.

And finally, long live The Queen, in which a woman sits on a person’s face as though she is a queen on her throne: Dominant Mature SSBBW Queening Young Guy, BBW Queening Brutal, Young BBW Queening Dude in Park, BBW Queens Man And Suffocates Him.

Ad infinitum.

My weight has fluctuated my whole life. Now that I’m in my thirties, and long past Richard, I know that when my weight rises and my body expands, so do the more kinky requests that come in. I am so used to the fetishization and immediate sexualization of the fat on my bones that I wait for the invitations like clockwork, like a surprise party that you knew was coming all along.

At a convenience store, a young man—college-aged—who was maybe a little drunk, recently stood too close to me in line, so close I could feel the warmth coming from his sweaty skin. He whispered in my ear that he’s always loved big women, and that he’d give anything to go home with me and feel my body on top of his all night. I told him that if he didn’t stop talking like that, I was going to grab his phone and call his mother. I paid for my sparkling water and split.

With each clothing size I go up, the dudes get bolder with the advances, more honest with their confidential desires. Which is something I don’t mind if he and I have shared, say, a few meals together and a fart or two in bed. I often write about sex, so I certainly don’t mind talking about fantasies or kinky interests when we’ve built that rapport. When it’s consensual.

But, from strangers, without warning, these yearnings seem way more appropriate for Reddit forums than my inbox. When foisted on me by a man I don’t know in line behind me at the convenience store, these secret cravings are totally fucking gross and often scary.

Not long ago, a man in Colorado messaged me on a dating site: Are you open to wrestling? I am willing to travel down to Tucson, if so.

Tell me more, I wrote back. So far, he’d been respectful, so I was, at the very least, intrigued.

He sent me a link to a video on YouTube, said, Look, this is essentially what I want. There’s no sex or nudity involved, he assured me. He’d pay $400 for a half hour of my time, and an extra $200 if I won the match. Winning meant I pinned him onto the ground for ten whole seconds. I wasn’t sure where the thrill was for him, but it seemed simple enough for me to execute.

I watched the video. A blond SSBBW—somewhere between 350 to 450 pounds, I’d guess—stands fully-clothed at one corner of an empty room, besides a few bookshelves that line the walls. My solicitor—a forty-year-old man with a bodybuilder’s physique—stands at the diagonal corner. A timer from a cell phone blares and the two lunge towards each other, with more obvious effort coming from her. They grab each other, but really, she grabs him. It’s as if he’s not trying at all, having obviously curated this experience. She tosses him to the floor and pins him down.

This is the moment when the mystery was solved for me—my curiosity about what part of the encounter aroused him, since no genitals are involved in the action. In the grand finale, her entire body cocoons him as he lies on the floor, grinning madly, satisfied.

I considered his offer seriously because my car needed four new tires. And, as a current graduate student, my funds are tight. I can be quick to fantasize about all the ways to make seemingly easy money, short of robbing pawn shops or selling a limb. I thought about agreeing to his offer, but only if I could bring my dog to the hotel with me (though that seemed like it might be confusing for my dog, watching me wrestle with a stranger, and I didn’t want to traumatize her). I thought about bringing a friend—the kind who would take this secret to the grave with them.

I certainly don’t mind talking about fantasies or kinky interests when we’ve built that rapport. When it’s consensual.

But after a few days of rolling the scenario around in my head, the offer felt too heavy, there was too much at stake for me—my safety, but also my mental and my physical well-being (I have a bad back)—and so I declined, and charged the new tires to my credit card.

*

In my bedroom hangs a photo of one of my favorite sculptures by Fernando Botero, the Colombian artist. A woman sits with her head turned just over her right shoulder, reaching for her hair with her left hand. Botero, widely known as “the painter of fat ladies,” has been painting and sculpting corpulent bodies for decades now. When asked about his fascination with large bodies, he is quick to explain that he is not obsessed with fat women but with “volume,” that everything he paints is volumetric.

And though his supposed motivation for rendering his large-bodied muses is underwhelming (he claims to have only been “attached to three women, all of them skinny”), I still know him as the artist who has normalized the presence of fat women in paintings that I’ve seen in home after home my entire life. The fat woman always takes center stage in his work. She prevails. She is infinite.

What I have found jarring over the years is not that kinks like this exist, but that folks either pretend, or don’t know, that big women have always had an immense following, in real life and online. When I see the way plus-sized women are still portrayed in Hollywood films, as jesters to buttress the narrative of the conventionally-hot, superstar female lead, I wonder why all of pop culture has yet to catch up with reality? When will everyone start getting truthful about the demand for big, sexy bodies?

The more I see big bodies like mine in film and music and art, the more excited I get for the girls coming of age today, for the fat girls who spend their Friday nights pussy-popping to Lizzo until their legs cramp. I follow a couple dozen plus-sized models and influencers on Instagram. I follow young illustrators who exclusively paint lush, corpulent bodies. I follow photographers who only capture bodies as big as moons. The secret of the beauty of our bodies is slowly starting to get out, becoming less and less niche each day. And I hope it moves faster.

When I think of the night with Richard and many other men I’ve encountered since, I think of the fat body as royalty. How the big body is coveted—yes as a fetish, but also as beauty. Teenage me had never pictured a time where the fat body would be seen as modern art. And I may never fully understand wanting to be smothered or squashed or wrestled and pinned, but I do understand the power and worth of a body that blooms.

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