Butterface

This is a blog about the objectification of women. Or maybe it's not. It might be a rant, it might be a list of questions, it might be a little from column A and a little from column B.

 I love women's bodies. I love all sorts of lady shapes and types: thin, curvy, small tits, big tits, tan, pale, big feet, whatever. I care more about the clothes covering the lady body more than the shape of it. I could take or leave any type of man body. Some people are only interested in one type of body though. I dated a boy for two years who was very clear about the body type he preferred: not mine. He wanted me to be thinner, always thinner. J is a tiny Asian boy who has the body of Megan Fox minus the T&A. He hated how thin he was and couldn't stand to be with someone with a higher BMI. And so I tried to be thinner. I tried so damn hard to be the tiny girl that this boy wanted because he would tell me that sometimes he was attracted to me. Sometimes, I was the girl that he desired. But most of the time I was just too fat. I would hide from food all day and then eat the world at dinner. After these world-eating times, when I was complainy and too full to move from binging, this tiny boy would chastise me and wonder why, why couldn't I just control myself? Why did I have to eat so much food, couldn't I see that it was bad for me and it was bad for us? Because when I ate too much food I wasn't attractive to him. And if I didn't want to be attractive to him, then he just didn't know what he was doing with me. I would cry about how fat I was, literally cry, because I couldn't control my desire to eat a third slice of pizza and I knew that that third slice was destroying my relationship. He would still have sex with me of course, because a fuck's a fuck, but he'd be damned if he'd enjoy it as much as he would enjoy touching a thin girl's body.

I look back on photos of myself from this time and I want to slap both of us in the face. I was not tiny, but I was not fat by any stretch of any rational human being's expectations of a woman. I'm certainly fatter these days and have had several people look at and touch my naked body and tell me how beautiful I am. Yet, I don't feel it. I feel like a giant, like I STILL have to get to the impossibly tiny size that this insecure little man demanded of me two years ago. I think, these people who are touching me must be lying. How could this body be beautiful, when even the smaller version wasn't?

J could only appreciate one type of body: super thin. I can appreciate many more. Does this make me less of an asshole, or just less choosy? I certainly care more about what's under a person's skin, but let's be real here: if there's no physical attraction, it's not happening. This guy valued me as a human, I suppose, but not as a paramour and certainly not as an appropriate girlfriend for him. The girl he left me for was a runner of some sort. He told me that she was a better partner for him because her chances of surviving an apocalyptic situation were much higher than mine. Because she could run faster, I suppose? This was probably the most offensive thing (in a laundry list of offensive things) he's ever said to me. When I was a kid I used to catch, skin and roast fish on a homemade brick stove, just for fun. I am well acquainted with most edible and poisonous plants in this area. I studied animal tracking. I am getting my degree in BEING OUTDOORS. I'm a scrappy motherfucker, and I will survive a motherfucking apocalypse. This kid thought I'd be the first one to go because I was lugging around an extra ten pounds?

Why am I going off on this rant now, when we've been broken up for over two years? Recently, J referred to his newest girlfriend as a "butterface." For those of you who aren't familiar with this delightful American idiom, it means that a girl has a hot body and an ugly face. Everything "but her face" is hot. Clearly, this is a terrible thing to say about any person, especially a person you are supposed to be romantically involved with. Is this even worse? Should I be happy that I got off with merely a skewed body image and a mild eating disorder? This poor girl can't do anything about her butterface; I could at least, in theory, diet.  I have no doubts, however, that he is more pleased with this situation. I am one hundred percent sure that J would rather have a "hot body/ugly face" combo than me. This makes me angry, and I can't exactly pinpoint why.

This relationship was, in hindsight, mind-bogglingly unhealthy for me. J fucked with my brain in ways that I'm still trying to sort out. Am I just as much to blame for pestering this boy into dating me, even though he was pretty clear about his preferences? Is this guy a dick for wanting to sleep with thin girls, or is he just a dick for trying to turn me into one of those thin girls? Or is he a dick for telling me that I wasn't what he wanted but sleeping with me anyway? The douchebaggery is not up for debate but the root of it is; where does the douchebaggery start? Are people who care less about what a person's body looks like better people, or just people with a wider preference set?