I wonder this not just because fat people and queer people have a lot in common, including a continuing need to fight against medicalization, marginalization, and a social order that is all too ready to attack us on any number of levels. I wonder this because fat people and queer people (and many of us who are both) also share a heritage of shame that comes both from without and within, and it is this heritage of shame that continues, I believe, to all but immobilize the size acceptance movement.

What does this have to do with sex? Quite a bit, actually. Our culture’s fear of the body, as opposed to its love of reason and the mind, has generated a lot of shame about bodies in general, and about the excesses of which bodies are capable in particular. Not too long ago, admitting to any sexual appetites at all was shameful almost by definition. Admitting to excessive or deviant sexual appetites was even more so, enough to paralyze people’s souls and lives, enough to drive people to alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide. The shame and shame-induced fears that go along with being too much about our bodies and our sexuality — too openly sexual, too openly non-heterosexual, too openly kinky — are still with us and do still claim some of our brothers and sisters lives and livelihoods, both through suicide and self-destructive behavior as well as through homophobic and sex-phobic individuals and institutions.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of the queer liberation movement (and of sex-and queer-positive activism) has been that the notions of excessive and deviant sexuality have been challenged repeatedly, defanged through the process of publicly confronting shame with the simple everyday realities and humanity of queer and sex-positive lives. It hasn’t eradicated homophobia or sexphobia any more than 50-plus years of civil rights work has ended racism. But it has made things better for millions of people and given them tools with which to fight back. Liberating sexuality is a struggle still very much in progress, but it has at least begun.

Our culture’s fear of the body and its excesses has generated a very similar situation for fat people… but without the quasi-happy ending. I sometimes wonder if the shame that has been lifted from much of the normal human spectrum of sexual expression hasn’t just shifted location from the genitals to the hips, belly, butt, and thighs. When it comes to fatness and the cultural fascism about what constitutes a good or perfect body, the cultural compulsion toward controlling our excessive, deviant, unruly bodies has only intensified since the year that the brave Stonewall queens catapulted queer liberation forward. Our shame over our excessive bodies, our deviant, ugly, too-big bodies, and our fear of becoming (more) so, funnels over 40 billion dollars a year into the weight-loss industry. Into multinational pharmaceutical companies searching for the magic pill that will make us all skinny and perfect, into cellulite creams and fat farm vacations and the pockets of all the other anorexia-pushers. More insidiously, this shame funnels our energy, our time, and our love into body hatred and self-hatred, pushing fat people into social isolation, silencing our voices and experiences, closeting us.

Every time I see a fat person who is afraid to eat in public or shop for food for fear that he or she will be chastised by some nosy stranger, I can’t help but imagine a gay person who is afraid to talk about his or her domestic life in public for fear that coming out will mean censure. Every time I hear “Fat bitch!” on the street, I hear “Faggot!” and “Fuckin’ dyke!” When I hear about a fat child being taken away from her parents by the State, I also hear the stories of the children of queer parents being taken away into so-called protective custody. When a fat friend tells me about going to job interview after job interview and getting turned down in spite of excellent qualifications, I hear echoes of nelly queens and butch dykes — the ones who can’t pass — going through the same thing… no reason ever given, you’re just not quite right for the job. When the National Traffic Safety Administration says that they won’t force automakers to build cars with seat belts that fit a wider range of body sizes and that if fat people can’t find a car with a seatbelt that will go around them, they’re just out of luck, I hear state employment commissions saying that they can’t force employers to provide the option of domestic partner health benefits. And if someone has a life partner to whom they don’t happen to be legally married, they’re just out of luck and are going to have to buy those benefits out of pocket. And every time I hear someone despair of ever finding a lover because they’re fat, I can almost see the cover of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well Of Loneliness: holding the certitude that “being different means being doomed to being alone” is often a sadly self-fulfilling prophecy. What perpetuates all of this is the heritage of shame that goes along with being fat. What insures its future is that the shame is internalized deeply enough that many people don’t realize they even have the option or the wherewithal to fight it.

But wait, I hear you say, being fat is not the same as being queer: you can’t do anything about your sexuality, but you can go on a diet! Well, you could force yourself to simply ignore your sexual orientation, too, and do your Christian duty and marry someone of the opposite sex, procreate like a good little hetero, and not have to put up with all the fuss and bother of being different into the bargain. Lots of people do it. What’s your problem?

Simply put, the issue is not whether or not it is possible to not be queer, or not be fat. The issue is that people are queer, and they are fat. Things can change, I won’t challenge that — people’s sexuality can change, and so can their weight. But we have actual current realities to deal with here, and part of that reality is the fact that queer people and fat people both exist, and queer people and fat people both deserve to be treated a damned sight better than we are. It’s really pretty simple.

And this brings me back to my original issue — the fact that despite the formation of NAAFA, the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance, back in 1969, the civil and social condition of fat people is light-years behind that of GLBT folks. I would like to suggest that there are two big reasons behind this, and two big things we can all do to push for the increased acceptance of all types of bodies of all sizes of large, small, and in-between.

Unashamed Visibility

It’s funny how someone as big as I am can become invisible without even trying. It’s even stranger how all the fat people in the USA — and according to the US Government, that’s about 93 million people — can be invisible, too. We are negated, unrepresented, and even when we are made visible, it’s usually not as fat people but as dieters, or people who are trying to become not fat.

Very few fat people exist in the world as fat people, unapologetic and unabashed, not trying to pass for anything else, not trying to change themselves to fit the world’s notions of what they should be. A lot of fat people suffer from what I call Oprah Syndrome, constantly obsessing about how they are trying so hard to not be fat by dieting, constantly working out. Incessantly berating themselves for their fatness and praising other people for their thinness in a constant apologetic effort to try to pass as thin. Very few fat people are willing to self-identify as fat. The shame of fatness is too steep for most people to willingly take that on. It’s not so unlike the way in which it used to be very rare to find someone who would willingly identify as homosexual… the price, both in terms of external homophobic reactions and internal shame and humiliation, was just too high.

What changed this situation for the queer community is the same thing that can change this situation for the fat community: a groundswell of unashamed visibility. Being unapologetic is a wonderful tool. Being unafraid to call yourself a fat person, or a queer person, means that you remove the weapon from your would-be attackers hands and appropriate it for yourself. Insisting that you be heard as a fat person, not as a fat-person-who-is-on-a-diet-so-it’s-okay-because-I’m-playing-by-the-rules, is vital, whether you are in the grocery store, on the beach, at the library, or talking to a prospective employer. You’ll find that there is a lot less shame involved than you think when you’re simply being matter-of-fact. It just is what it is. Let other people figure out how to cope with you for a change.

Get Sexy

A crucial part of unashamed visibility is being visible as a sexual being. Our culture has made a fetish out of sexuality, sexual desirability, and proving yourself as a sexual entity. Fat people, as I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, are often shut out entirely (or almost entirely) from the sexual arena. We’re assumed to be sexless, undesirable, lonely, and unlovable. But let me remind you that according to the government, there are 93 million fat people in this country, and let me further remind you that wherever you have 93 million people, there are going to be more than oh, say, four or five of them who fuck. Perhaps you might even be one of them.

So, our culture may fetishize sexuality, but I say that’s fine by me. Fat people are sexy people, and hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. If you’re a fat person who is also a sexual person, don’t hide that part of yourself. Don’t shy away from public displays of affection. When your coworkers are chatting about sex, join in. If you feel the urge to dress up and wear something sexy or revealing, wear it. Educate yourself about sexuality. Read some books or stories about fat and sexuality, like Big Big Love or Zaftig: Well Rounded Erotica, or better yet, write some. Go to the beach and wear a bikini — grab some friends and do it en masse. Write letters to the magazines you read asking them why there aren’t more pictures of sexy fat people in them. Tell them you’d buy ten subscriptions for your friends if only there were more sexy fat people in the magazine. Volunteer to do sex education — people need to see fat people who know about sex and talk about it! Go to a BBW bash, a Bear convergence, or the conference of the National Organization of Lesbians of Size. Go out dancing, take a lover, buy some sex toys, invent the Camryn Manheim love doll, whatever. If you can back up your fat sexiness with some dollars, so much the better, and remember that supporting businesses owned by fat and fat-positive people helps build the community.

But most of all, and this you can do even if you don’t have money, don’t have much time, don’t have a partner, or don’t have whatever: you can love being a sexual being. You can be enthusiastic about being sexual in and with a big body. You can learn to see the sexiness in other fat people (and maybe even in yourself). Refusing to be a sexual second-class citizen goes a long way toward insuring that you won’t be a second-class citizen in other aspects of your life.

Making it plain that you won’t be desexed just because you live in a culture that is uncomfortable with bodies and their appetites, excesses, and desires is a deep, deep rebellion. When we live in a society that wants to hold our bodies, our appetites, and our sexuality under its repressive siege, making love is making war. It’s an important — even crucial — thing to insist upon if we are to be given respect in a culture that often equates respectability with proof of sexiness and sexuality. And while fat bodies and fat sexuality may not be at the top of the charts right now, there is strength in numbers, and we already have the numbers — we just need to be sexual and visible. Grab your latex armor, kids, and get ready to rumble. After all, good sex is what human rights should be: honest-to-goodness one size fits all.

Thus I was forced, as many people are, to either figure out a new way to get myself off or else go without. I wasn’t all too eager to lose the ability to give myself sexual pleasure, so I started experimenting, and was soon successful in finding ways of getting myself excited that didn’t put my hand to sleep.

This is not to say that re-learning how to masturbate is necessarily easy. As we learn to masturbate, we often end up gravitating toward a single position or a single technique that we have found to be most consistently reliable for our particular bodies and preferences. It becomes linked in our minds with the act of self-pleasuring itself, and often it seems as if there is simply no other way we can do it: this is how I masturbate. When that pet technique stops working, we may feel as if our ability to masturbate has been taken from us or destroyed by changes in our bodies or physical abilities. It takes quite a bit of patience, creativity, juicy fantasizing, and perhaps a few dabs of lube to help us get over the feeling that things are not quite as they should be and into the groove of developing new, hot, satisfying masturbation techniques.

However, my experience and that of many others bears out the fact that we definitely can learn new ways of masturbating. When it comes to jacking or jilling off, patience and determination (and don’t forget those hot motivational fantasies!) will ultimately get you to your goal. It doesn’t matter how or why your traditional masturbation methods don’t work — weight gain, body size or shape, pregnancy, injury, disabilities, and even things some people don’t think of, like repetitive stress syndromes, can wreak havoc on your solo sex life — learning to adapt your masturbation to your body’s abilities and capacities will help you along the road to do-it-yourself nirvana. The tips in this article are geared toward the specific problems and issues of fat folks, but they’re useful for anyone.

Positioning

Think about the position you normally take for masturbating. What is comfortable or uncomfortable about it? What does and doesn’t work? We all have to start when we are thinking creatively about improving our solo sex lives, and many of us never stop to consider that the way we masturbate may simply be ergonomically bad for our bodies and their abilities.

For instance, someone with a big belly may not be able to easily reach his or her genitals sitting up. Leaning to one side or lying on one side can help: reaching around that belly, or over a less-steep slope of it, can clear a path you never knew you had. Never be afraid to let gravity help!

If spreading your hips wide or creating enough space between your thighs is problematic, take a tip from the gynecologists of the world and learn what bending your knees can do for you. Laying on your back and propping pillows under your bent knees, then letting your knees fall slightly to the sides can create a good amount of room between your thighs without you having to spread your legs uncomfortably.

Or what if you crave penetration, but have trouble holding a dildo or toy at a comfortable angle? Lucky for you, the sexperts of the world have been working their little fingers to the nub developing several possible solutions: dildo/toy harnesses that can strap onto chairs or cushions, toys with suction-cup bases that can be stuck onto smooth surfaces, and even some nifty boomerang-shaped penetration toys that can give you the advantage of a “handle” (the other end of the toy) exactly where you need it. These devices can let you alter your physical position to something much more comfortable, while still allowing you the sensations you want. not to mention the fact that they can allow you to eroticize all kinds of interesting locations around the house.

Toys

While we’re on the subject, let’s hear a big cheer for vibrators, dildos, butt-plugs and other toys! Not only do they increase the variety and scope of masturbation (and partner sex) for many people, but they can in fact make it possible for some people to masturbate at all. That’s definitely something worth celebrating.

Perhaps the most popular tool for solo sex is the vibrator, which can be used by people of all genders. Vibrators may be used to stimulate any part of the body, although the time-honored favorites are the clitoris, the vulva, the perineum, the vagina and of course, our pal the happy little anus. I’m happy to announce that the much-lauded “Cadillac of vibrators,” the Hitachi Magic Wand, is an excellent instrument of self-pleasure for almost anyone, including those who may have reach issues (i.e.: people who may be unable to easily reach their own genitals for one reason or another). With its tennis-ball-sized head at the end of a foot-long stem, it gives you those critical inches for getting to your most sensitive spots. Don’t forget that the Hitachi can be topped off with a variety of accessories designed to allow anal or vaginal penetration and/or G-spot stimulation.

For those who prefer something a little lighter, both in terms of weight and vibration, I highly recommend the Flex-O-Pleaser. With its buzzy, egg-shaped plastic head at the end of a long, flexible stalk, and the small motor housed in the handle, it provides a delightful alternative to the Hitachi that is much less taxing on the hands and wrists. As a bonus, the slender stem fits easily between two bodies — even fat ones — without feeling like you’ve got a railroad tie stuck between the two of you. For you girls who like to ride on top and like clit stimulation at the same time, but find that reaching for your own clit can be uncomfortable for you or your partner (those knuckle bruises on your partner’s lower abdomen may make you feel a little guilty later on) this can be just the ticket.

Don’t forget that there are many different positions in which you can use your vibrator, too. You don’t even have to hold it in your hands. One friend of mine swears by sitting on her Hitachi with the handle pointing away from her body and the head sandwiched happily under her clit, another likes to wedge a dildo-shaped battery vibrator between her upper thighs and buck her hips forward to make contact between her labia and the vibrator. Different strokes, as they say, are often what’s required, so don’t be afraid to experiment.

This One’s For All The Fat Girls

Listen up, ladies, because I’m going to introduce you to the fat-girl version of the Joani’s Butterfly and all those other small vibrators designed to be worn — you know, the ones where a G-string-like harness of elastic holds the vibrator against the vulva, enabling you to wear your buzzer under your clothes. Those of you who’ve bought one of these have undoubtedly discovered that the elastic leg bands are not necessarily “one size fits all.” They can be fairly easily adjusted — simply go to your local fabric store and buy more elastic of the same width, in whatever length you require, and retrofit at will — but a sassy fat girlfriend of mine taught me how we lucky fat chicks can do the G-string butterflies, dolphins, and so forth one better. All you need are a pair of fairly tight-fitting panties, a vibrating bullet-style vibrator (the smaller, the better, and if you can find a remote-controlled one, buy it!), and your fabulous, fleshy, built-in fat chick labia.

Now, I know some of you girls have worried about having chubby labia or a fat mons. Truth is that it’s one of the places that a little bit of extra fat can be stored, and it’s no big deal. In fact, some thinner women’s labia are on the thick side too. It’s one of those being-a-girl things, and some people find a fat pussy to be incredibly hot. So, for those of you with typical big girl parts, now you can find out why the goddess blessed you with those nice thick lips.

Simply tuck that little bullet vibe right between those chubby lips of yours — just above, just over, or just below your clitoris — and pull up your panties, looping the battery pack/motor control up and over the waistband of your panties. If you have a remote-control one, so much the better. Now every time you stick your hand in your pocket, you can send yourself into orbit, the combination of those nice thick labia and a pair of tight panties (think of them as a safety net in case that buzzy little devil starts to wander) will let you keep a buzz on all day if you want to. An added plus is that in most cases, those chubby labia are great soundproofing, and the tiny sound of the motor will most likely be completely inaudible. Try it at the office: it’ll make your co-workers wonder why you’re in such a good mood!

One for the Gents

Every so often I hear cries of frustration from men who find that, for one reason or another, they are simply not able to whack off with their customary aplomb. It could be carpal tunnel, tennis elbow, weight gain, or any number of things, but not being able to beat off when you really want to just sucks, and not in the good way.

Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to your pillows. Many men find that a good pillow hump is a quite functional alternative to a date with Rosy Palmer and her five sisters. Wrapping a bit of plastic wrap around the pillow and applying lube to yourself and the plastic can help give you that lovin’ feeling and cut down on the potential for friction burns between skin and fabric, though there are some men of my acquaintance who swear by satin pillowcases (how chic!). Some guys prefer to just put on a magnum-sized condom, squirting a healthy dose of lube into the condom beforehand. I’m told it makes for easier cleanup and keeps the lube where you want it more effectively. Whatever you prefer is fine — perhaps you’ll develop your own techniques.

A more involved technique, and one which requires a bit of investment, is to couple the use of pillows with my favorite boy-toy, the amazing Fleshlight. These long thermos-bottle-like cylinders contain a yielding, satiny, gripping, delectable sheath of one of the sexiest polymers known to humankind, and I mean that sincerely — as soon as dildos made of the same stuff hit the market, I bought two. With an opening at one end of the sheath (you can choose mouth, pussy or anus depending on your whim), the Fleshlight offers an orifice so inviting that it remains the only sex toy for men that has ever given me a case of penis envy. Wedging it between two pillows, you can then hold the pillows with your arms and/or knees and enjoy what I am told is a particularly exquisite ride free of problems of reach, hand or arm injury problems, or body shape.

For more tips on toys, masturbation, and other sexual techniques, check out Chapter 6 of Big, Big Love (Greenery Press). While you’re at it, pick up a copy of the brand new Zaftig: Well Rounded Erotica (Cleis Press) — because there’s nothing to fuel those masturbation fantasies like hot, steamy, size-positive smut! Happy Masturbation Month!

So without further ado, I give you the poster girl for Fat Sex History Month 2001, the legendary Miss Sophie Tucker. Billed as “The Last of the Red-Hot Mamas,” the redoubtable singer, actress, and comedienne was born to an immigrant Russian Jewish family in the early 1880s (the exact date of her birth is uncertain), and began her career as a child, singing for tips while helping wait tables in her family’s restaurant in the theatre district in Hartford, Connecticut. A chunky kid and teenager, she was originally ashamed of her weight, hiding behind the piano when she and her sister would go and perform in amateur-night concerts in Hartford’s Riverside Park. The crowd, on the other hand, loved her, her size, and her wit, and pretty soon the summertime crowds would yell “Give us the fat girl!” and demand that she perform.

She went into showbiz in earnest in 1906, pounding the pavement in New York’s “Tinpan Alley” hoping for a break and making friends with the likes of Irving Berlin. And soon enough she did get a break, shoved on stage in blackface makeup when a vaudeville impresario said she was “too big and too ugly” to go on stage otherwise. But like the trouper she was, Sophie made it work, playing for laughs and soon introducing her signature “hot songs,” suggestive comedy numbers that were just this side of what the censors would allow. It wasn’t too many years before she was out of blackface, recognized for the genius performer she was, and drawing the crowds from coast to coast with songs like “There’s More Music in a Grand Baby Than There Is in a Baby Grand,” “When They Get Too Wild For Anyone Else They’re Perfect For Me,” and one of her signature tunes, “Nobody Loves A Fat Girl, But Oh How A Fat Girl Can Love.”

Although some people claim that Sophie was able to get away with her steamy content because she, as a fat woman, made it come off as funny but never salacious, I think that Sophie could tell a few stories that would put the lie to that theory. Married three times, Sophie never found herself with a shortage of admirers, and had a soft spot for glamorous ne’er-do-wells like gamblers, gangsters, saloon owners, prizefighters, auto racers and, back in the Roaring 20s, even a Chicago alderman named Dorsey Crowe. Stage-door Johnnies were a regular fixture in her hard-working show-biz life, and in her autobiography she writes about one who, during World War I, bought her a pair of dazzling diamond earrings as a token of his affection. She even once received a proposal of marriage from an Arab sheikh who wrote that he was particularly entranced by her “generous proportions.” Not too shabby for a fat girl who was told she was “too big and too ugly” to go on stage!

Not only was Sophie sexy, sought-after, and a fabulous entertainer, she was also incredibly sexually savvy and funny. She paved the way for comediennes like Bette Midler, Joan Rivers, Roseanne, and Margaret Cho. Sex figured prominently in her patter as well as her songs, and Bette Midler still retells some of Sophie’s saltier jokes in her standup acts, like this one:

I was talking to my boyfriend the other day and he said to me, “Soph, when I am 80 years old, I am going to get myself a 20-year-old girl. What do you think of that, Soph?” And I says, “Well, when I am 80 years old, I’m going to get myself a 20-year-old man. And let me tell you something, twenty goes into eighty a hell of a lot more than eighty goes into twenty.”

Sophie was also well aware that even in a time when women were supposed to be proper housewives, a woman who knew what she wanted sexually could definitely get it. She often sang songs about philandering husbands, but she didn’t hesitate to tell their wives that it wasn’t half as hard as they thought to get a little lovin’ on the side, too:

When your red-hot papa’s steam pipe gets cold, your tears won’t heat it up… Love is like home cooking, good and wholesome, but all men like a little mutton on the outside now and then. And if you find your husband is cheating, go out and do the same, old dear! Why, he’s only giving you the chance that you’ve been waiting for for years… go out and make whoopee! Men? You’ll get ‘em by the score. Don’t you worry, honey, that’s what God made sailors for.

Ahead of her time, Sophie summed up her sexual politics pretty distinctly and defiantly. She loved men, no doubt about it, but she expected them to give as good as they got. Once, when asked about her “hot” numbers, she replied:

“My hot songs? They’re educational. They have a message: ‘make him say please and make him say thanks.’ I don’t try at any time to be offensive. The women take the hint, too. After the show they tell me they’re going to make their husbands say ‘please.’ ”

And no doubt about it, they did, especially where Sophie herself was concerned. With a career that spanned vaudeville, radio, talkies, and even television (I’ll bet at least some of you reading this remember Sophie on the Ed Sullivan Show in the early 1960s), Sophie’s life and loves spanned the better part of the 20th century. Sure, she was funny. Sure, people laughed at Sophie when she sang:

I’m the last of the red-hot mamas
They’ve all cooled down but me
Flapper vamps, say, what do they know?
Come get your hot stuff from this volcano!
Way up in Alaska where the natives freeze
An Eskimo left my house in his BVDs
I’m the last of the red-hot mamas
I’m gettin’ hotter all the time!

But many were also intensely aware that under the humorous bravado, red-hot mama Sophie Tucker was telling the gospel truth. Sophie Tucker may have passed away in 1966, but her fat ‘n’ sassy legacy lives on. “Oh how a fat girl can love” indeed!

I don’t know whether the exchange was held with the intent of my overhearing it, but I certainly did hear it, and it stuck. Not only was the phrase stuck, but so was I. That little phrase seemed to encapsulate every horrific image I had of my own body. Instead of the “normal” proportions of smooth and curved, flatness and fullness of the “attractive” girls and women, I was obviously nothing more than a walking mass of undifferentiated rolls and crevices, so alien and malformed that not only might one not be able to tell the difference between my genitals and any other crease on my body, but that it didn’t even matter. If you could just “pick a fold and fuck it,” then I, as a fat girl, was basically nothing more than a huge (and, it was implied, totally available) penis receptacle.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t already been terrorized into believing that no one would ever find me attractive or want me because I wasn’t thin. But the “pick a fold and fuck it” phrase seemed to encapsulate the absolute worst of what I had ever imagined my own sex life could be: a sex life where the most I could ever expect was to end up being used, casually, flippantly, carelessly, as a masturbation accessory, where it didn’t even matter whether or not it was my genitals that were involved or whether what happened was sex for me. I felt violated, scared, and, scariest of all, helpless to do anything about it.

I had the same reaction when I first encountered the idea of fat frottage — the sexual practice of rubbing the genitals (average anatomical topology means that this is usually the penis, since it’s an outie, though I do know of a few folks who aren’t penis people who engage in this too) against or between a fat person’s rolls or swells of flesh. I felt instant revulsion, humiliation, panic, feelings of paralysis. It took several years of thinking about it and finally gingerly experimenting with it before I was able to countenance the activity without a gut-level wash of sheer horrified disgust that left me too overwhelmed to react.

It wasn’t that the notion of fat frottage didn’t make objective sense. It’s practical and appealing to want to make use of the materials at hand in terms of what our bodies give us to create physical sensations. It never seemed odd to me that someone might want to slide his penis between a lover’s closed thighs, rub it between pushed-together breasts, or slip it between someone’s buns like a Chicago redhot into a freshly-steamed roll. But between the folds of skin and fat and flesh on a fat person’s belly? Or underneath the “apron” of fat that folds down, in some fat people, over the lower pelvis? How disgusting. How humiliating. How flat-out sick. What a horrible thing to imagine happening, let alone happening to me.

Obviously, not all flesh is created equal. In our minds if not necessarily in actual physical fact, there are vast leagues of difference between a woman’s breasts and her fat belly. If a man wants to stick his dick between the former it seems normal enough, but if he wants to do the same to an equally accessible fold between deposits of fat anywhere else on her body it is at the very least a serious fetish, possibly exploitive, intentionally humiliating to the woman, maybe even abusive. It took me a long time to begin to be able to really articulate, even to myself, why the two things were so different despite the fact that the action involved was more or less the same. The action, yes, the body parts, no. Our culture, and we individually, construct for our body parts a variety of meanings that we can’t simply dismiss. Breasts, particularly breasts big enough to form cleavage, are sexy, displayable, desired, something to be proud of, but fat rolls, particularly fat rolls big enough to form cleavage, are unsexy, to be hidden, undesirable, something to be ashamed of.

Never mind that breasts are mostly made up of fat, never mind that neither tit-fucking nor fat frottage tends to be overwhelmingly physically pleasurable for the person being rubbed against, or that, to judge from what I’ve been told by people who’ve enjoyed both tit-fucking and fat frottage as rubbers rather than rubbees, breasts and fat rolls feel physically pretty much the same around or against the penis or clitoris. The parts simply aren’t interchangeable. What they mean, what they suggest, what we’re taught to see in them and think of them — these things are not the same, nowhere near equal. The cultural weight of the difference between fat rolls and other body parts, between fatter bodies and thinner bodies, is still shocking, profound, life-altering. It is the difference between learning to expect that you will be excluded, sometimes vehemently, from active sexuality and learning to expect that you will be included, even enthusiastically coaxed to participate.

The trick is learning that the difference is only as authoritative as you are willing to let it be, that the seeming dictator is nothing but a “Wizard of Oz”-style projection of expectation and presumption. Being fat doesn’t automatically render one helpless, voiceless, or choiceless when it comes to sexuality or to the desirability of one’s own body.

Let me say this again, because it’s important: there is no direct causality between fatness and being sexually neutral, asexual, or sexually dependent on the whims of others. None at all.

Fat people can choose to acknowledge the fuckability of their fat specifically as well as their bodies and selves generally. This doesn’t neutralize the volatility of the idea of sexual activity involving a fat person: as long as fatness is volatile in our culture, so will sexuality that includes it be volatile, just as interracial sexuality will remain volatile as long as racial difference is volatile. But it does offer the prospect of ownership, of control, of having the option to exercise or not exercise the sexual potentiality of a fat body.

Accepting the potential desirability of your body, no matter what it looks like or feels like, is the key to that ownership. This does not mean that you have to find your own body desirable: your opinion, in this instance, is actually irrelevant. It means that you must accept that, at some point in your life, your body is likely to be desirable to someone else.

If you cannot accept that others are likely to find your body sexually desirable, then you are highly likely to be overwhelmed when that fact confronts you. This is where so much of the feeling of exposure comes from, the feelings of panic, painful vulnerability, helplessness. If the very notion that someone might take sexual interest in your body, or in a part of your body that you cannot yourself imagine as desirable, is enough to stop you wide-eyed like the proverbial deer in the headlights, then you are almost guaranteed to be at a loss for what to do when it happens. You may not know whether to say yes or no, not know what you want and don’t want, not have any inkling of what will make you feel cherished or what will make you feel violated, because the rules have been broken in a direction you never anticipated and for which you are utterly unprepared.

This is the situation in which many fat people — women more than men, but men are hardly exempt — find themselves, not only in regard to fat-specific sexual acts like fat frottage, but in regard to having anyone express physical sexual interest in them at all. Being wanted for your body has never been the exclusive province of Playboy Bunnies, supermodels, and chiseled-featured Adonises. Certainly fat people are not the only people who have found that being wanted sexually for their bodies alone, or for specific parts or aspects of their bodies, can be confusing, conflict-ridden, even insulting, and can leave a skinned knee in your soul where subsequent encounters only pick off the scab, ensuring a thick scar.

This is why the best way to wring the poison out of “pick a fold and fuck it” is to enter those folds, if you will, and stipulate, even just for an instant, that someone else wants to do so too. Reject your own rejection long enough to acknowledge the possibility that you will be sexually desired and you create the possibility of being able to react if — and honestly, if experience is any guide I should say when, not if — it happens.

How you react, of course, is up to you. Perhaps you will want to explore what it feels like to knowingly be a sex object. Perhaps you’ll find it intoxicating that you can do something that you and other fat people are taught is beyond the realm of possibility for us, and you’ll get a charge out of teasing and titillating someone with the body or body parts they find so overwhelmingly magnetic. Perhaps you’ll slap the person across the face and indignantly inform him or her that you’re more than just a piece of meat. Perhaps you’ll look that person up and down and say, “Sorry, no thanks, I don’t go for your physical type.” Perhaps you’ll find something about that person as lust-inducing as they find you, drag that person into your bedroom, find your biggest bottle of lube, and go to town for a week.

And perhaps — or so I sincerely hope — you will never have to feel the ashamed paralysis, the panicked helplessness and wide-open vulnerability of discovering that, despite all you may have been taught and all you may think, your body can be desired. Believe it. For your health, for your well-being, for your safety, for your sex life, for your ability to see a curve ball coming, believe it. It makes all the difference in the world.

The book in question is Makoto Kubota’s Sumo (Chronicle Books), a large-format and extraordinarily beautifully designed photography book featuring — you guessed it — Sumo wrestlers. Kubota has been photographing sumo for a decade, and his intimate knowledge of the sport blends with his equally intimate and stunningly visceral love of sumo wrestlers and their bodies to produce a portrait of a sport that is as much artistic, spiritual, and erotic as it is a simple matter of who wins or loses. And oh my sweet delicious goodness, is it ever sexy.

Yes, I said sexy, and I defy anyone who looks at Kubota’s lush, intense images to say otherwise. I freely admit that I’ve had a soft spot for rikishi (sumo wrestlers) for years — there’s just something about the combination of strength, size, fierceness, and skill that absolutely melts me — but I’ve shown the book to several friends who weren’t already sumo fans, and the reactions have been unequivocally positive. “Oh my God, that’s the most incredibly homoerotic thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” my pal Liz gushed as we flipped through it together, letting our eyes feast on the round firmness of flesh, following the powerful lines of huge muscles beneath fat and skin with our eyes, marveling at the sense of sheer power that comes from Kubota’s images. “Just look at them! Look at that ass!” Look at that ass, indeed. Anyone who ever doubted that a fat man could have an astoundingly hot tuchas needs only to wander through these pages. With the rikishi clad in the traditional sumo loincloth and wide belt, there’s little left to the imagination when it comes to exactly what these men’s bodies look like. They look astonishing, and surprising, and arousing, their tree-trunk legs and broad rounded backs deceptively soft-looking until you notice the thick layers of powerful muscle that animate and give subtle shape to the smooth curves of their bodies. The average sumo wrestler clocks in at around 350 pounds, and all the hallmarks of classically fat bodies are in evidence: bellies, stretch marks, folds of fat and flesh, enlarged breasts. Through Kubota’s lens, it all looks creamy, touchable, silky and plush in the precisely the same way that those of us who know fat men’s bodies know they really are in real life.

Honestly, when I first started looking through Sumo, I wondered whether or not Kubota perhaps intended it, at least partly, as erotica. He shows the rikishi in all their sweat-streaked post-workout beauty, reveals the intense determination with which they struggle with one another as they train, gives us stunning close-ups of men’s bodies pressed together, holding one another, pulling and pushing, straining and grappling, the urge to triumph visible not just in their faces but in their hands, in their feet, in the ways the muscles bulge beneath the skin. We see the bodies of these gorgeous fat athletes from angles normally only seen by lovers, get to look over their shoulders and down their backs. It’s a sensuous, deeply gratifying ride, full of strength, vulnerability, desire, and grace.

Along with the photography, there are a few short essays and photo essays about sumo’s colorful history and the present-day practice of the sport. Not only do you learn that sumo wrestlers traditionally bulk up by eating huge helpings of a traditional stew of seafood, tofu, and vegetables called chanko-nabe, but that sumo wrestlers traditionally double as amateur singers who sing for their fans. Kubota also relates that the rishiki are considered incredibly glamorous in Japan, many of them ultimately choosing to marry from the ranks of beauty queens and models who vie for their favors.

The notion of beauty queens and fashion models competing over fat men seems quite odd in a Western context, but why should it? When you see at the pictures in this book, it’s easy to see why some of Japan’s most beautiful women want to get their immaculately manicured fingers on a sumo wrestler. These men are flat-out stunning, and the thought of all that power and size grappling with you in a sexual wrestling match… let’s just say that’s one wrestling match where I’d gladly end up on the bottom.

The point is that to some degree our notions of our sexual possibilities are influenced by what we see around us and have available to us. When all the sexy clothes are too small (and you’d have only a slightly more difficult time getting a lesbian into the Oval Office than finding a French maid costume big enough to fit someone who wears a 52F bra), the clear message that’s given to women too big for those sexy clothes — to say nothing of the BDSM gear, dildo harnesses, and other things that get made in a “one size fits all” that doesn’t — is that they’re too big to be sexy, too big for sex.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, it happens to men as well. Finding silk boxer shorts in a 5X is not an effort to be undertaken by the faint of heart. But just as women in general are more likely to be buying and wearing sexy clothes and lingerie, women are disproportionately affected by the erotic disenfranchisement that comes along with simply not having access to the accessories that go along with a vibrant sense of sexual self-expression.

Certainly the situation’s not as bleak as it once was. Plus-sized clothing has broken out of the navy blue polyester doubleknit closet over the past 15 years or so, and it definitely has improved things. The trampoline-like expanses of hospital-white elastic that used to pass for plus-sized “foundation garments” have at least partially given way to a small but reasonably available selection of lacy bras, colorful panties, even things like thongs, the occasional camisole, and, if you get lucky, a bustier or slinky nightie. You can open a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog and find, lo and behold, that some of their items are available in extended sizes, all the way through a (in practice rather meager) 3X.

If you’re bigger than that, though, forget it — you’re too big. Come back when you’ve lost weight. And don’t bother complaining that you can’t get what you want. What’s that? You say you’re not the “demure little flowered A-line camisole that hides the hips” kind of girl, and you’d prefer one of those snazzy red and black cut-out bras? And you’d like to see it on an actual plus-size model instead of on some six-foot-tall size 12 who passes for a plus-size model? Oh, please, dear. Why don’t you just sit down and shut up and let someone else tell you what you should wear… and be… and do?

Well, I’ll tell you why not. Sexy clothes, even downright slutwear, aren’t a privilege — they should be a right. We’re all sexual beings. We all want to be seen as and regarded as sexy. We live in a culture where, for many people, part of feeling sexy and being seen as sexy involves dressing the part. Victoria’s Secret is really pretty simple: dressing up is a way to feel special, to feel desirable, to feel pretty. Sometimes, it’s a way to feel wickedly delicious, transgressive, daring, and exciting. It can even be a path to being actually aroused. I know I’m not the only person who finds the sensation of my favorite lingerie against my skin to be a turn-on all by itself.

So what’s a big fat sex-positive fashionista to do? Well, a little research definitely helps. The resource guide in the back of my book, Big Big Love: A Sourcebook On Sex For People of Size And Those Who Love Them, lists quite a few options. Hitting the web is another excellent option, and there are many specialty businesses which will amply reward the equally ample sexpot shopper. Even here on the Good Vibrations site, where lingerie isn’t the order of the day, there’s one excellent plus-size item that will expand almost anyone’s erotic wardrobe while expanding their sexual possibilities at the same time: the Crown dildo harness, made by Stormy Leather especially for those of us who want to use our extra cushion for the pushin’. Better yet, check out GV’s Handy Shopping Guide for Fat Folks.

A little activism doesn’t hurt, either. Write a letter to your local plus-size clothes emporium, or to catalog companies you patronize. Tell them what you’d like to see, and what kinds of models and advertising would get you to buy more lingerie. Inform them that you’re tired of having someone else dictate what your erotic fashion sense should be, and that more variety is definitely in order. Really, it makes a difference. With sexy fashions as with sex itself, the more people ask for what they want, the more likely they are to get it.

Just in case you need a little encouragement to take that little shimmy down the sexy clothes path, I’ve come up with a list for you: my Top 10 Reasons Fat People Should Wear Sexy Clothes.

10. Because it generates an aura of sex appeal that can be very, very contagious.

9. Because, let’s face it, big women in bustiers and corsets give those bustiers and corsets a reason to exist.

8. Because it puts a wiggle in your walk and a sly, totally irresistible “I’ve got a secret” smile on your face when you’re wearing something super-sensuous under your regular clothes.

7. Because the mere notion of big bearish guys in sexy boxers is known to make strong men and women weak in the knees.

6. Because slinky fabrics feel so good on your skin, and you’ve got so much skin for them to feel good on.

5. Because if you wear ‘em in front of other people, you’re doing fabulous, effective social equality activism without even opening your mouth, just by being who you are and wearing something sexy.

4. Because people wearing clothing that makes them feel sexy are automatically sexier than they would be otherwise.

3. Because it’s subversive for fat people to acknowledge their sexiness.

2. Because dressing up is playful and fun and makes you feel adventurous and exciting.

1. Because you can.

I was doing research on fat and sexuality for my book Big Big Love: A Sourcebook on Sex for People of Size and Those Who Love Them, and had been interviewing people for several weeks about size, sex, fat, and fantasies, but this was certainly the first time Santa Claus had entered the picture. After my interviewee and I got done chuckling, I asked more about the Santa thing. For that interviewee and for quite a few other people I talked to while working on the book, Santa turned out to be much, much more than just a holiday icon. He was a sex object, the central character in torrid fantasies that danced like hormone-plumped sugarplums in quite a few people’s heads.

At first I was a little surprised by this. Of all the childhood heroes to whom a child or adolescent could become attracted, Santa just never seemed all that likely to me. Superman, Wonderwoman, Spidey, even the Tooth Fairy… there are so many candidates. So why Santa? Well, for many of the people I talked to, Santa Claus is a personification of the attributes they idealized and hoped to find in a partner. And that makes sense. He’s generous, ample, giving, round, friendly, accepting, soft, and good-humored. Santa’s always got that sexy, aroused-looking flush to his face, he’s always in a good mood, and he always looks ready, willing, and able to slide down your chimney or offer you a taste of his candy cane. But that isn’t the whole of it. No, part of the attraction is that Santa is, was, and always will be a fat man, and those generous love handles, that belly that “wiggled and jiggled like a bowl full of jelly,” that sleek round fat-man bod, are things that sing a sweet and sexy song to an awful lot of people.

It’s still news to many of us that people are actually attracted to big partners, but it’s quite the truth. Plump, round, portly, potbellied, rotund, chubby, chunky, or just plain fat, there are people who love it, find it sexy and attractive, and who profoundly enjoy the sensual banquet of being with a bigger partner. (Hint for the confused: there’s more to touch and enjoy!) In a fat-phobic world, it can be difficult to believe that this is true, but it is. And it’s not just Santa Claus that people who like bigger partners — also known as FA’s (fat admirers) or chubby chasers — are looking at: it’s you and me and the rest of the 97 million or so Americans the National Institutes of Health estimate to be “overweight.”

Sure, we’re not all Santa Claus, and most of us don’t really want to be. I mean, really, the wardrobe’s pretty limited, and the North Pole just does not have much of a nightlife. But the fact that some people form helpless, hopeless, torrid fixations on Santa Claus tells us some important things: You don’t have to be thin, or young, to be sexy. Big people have a lot to give. Fat can be hot! Round bodies can make us hard as rocks or slippery as seals. Some fat people — like Santa — can do things that thin people can’t. Soft and thick can be every bit as sexy, powerful, and confident as lean and thin.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Santa, dare I say it, is a sex machine. Santa knows that bellies are touchable, round, delicious, tantalizing… and that when you wear that “bowlful of jelly” like you know it’s so sweet and tantalizing that everyone wants to take a taste, everyone will. You can see it in that twinkle in his eye. Santa is one man who knows that everybody — even grownups — secretly wants to sit on his lap.

Sure, I know Santa’s fictional. Sure, I realize that real life isn’t necessarily going to play out like a children’s story, and that you’re never guaranteed of finding what you hoped for under the tree. Still, Virginia, people do find fat people attractive, and I think the fact that people fall hopelessly in lust with Santa Claus is pretty good proof. Need more? Try reading Jenesi Ash’s funny, hot erotic short story “Santa’s Little Helper,” (in Best Women’s Erotica. It’s a Santa fantasy that’ll deck your halls and jingle your bells with tantalizing, taboo, well-upholstered delight.

No, you don’t need the red plush or the white beard to opt in on Santa’s secret. It doesn’t even have to be Christmastime. Just rev up that easy laugh, turn on the twinkling lights in your eyes, and get out there in the world, fat and sassy and knowing in your bones that someone out there is just aching to unwrap a great big sexy present that looks an awful lot like you. It sure works for Santa, and it just might make a much merrier Christmas for you, too.