Fat Dudes Are Hot

Marianne Kirby likes lots of kinds of bodies, and fat dudes are on that list.

I have to start with my favorite hot fat guy, Ed.

This one night, I’m out with a couple of friends, and I have had some cider and cheered some people on about their karaoke business. And there’s this dude.

He’s what I’d consider a nice solid degree of dude fatness, which means he’d probably get labeled stocky. He probably had to wear husky pants as a kid.

I’m already monogamously married at this point, but I still like to look around. And so I look and this guy is right up my proverbial alley with the fatness and the blondness and the glasses and the beard. And the geek shirt. That’s an important element as well. (As well as an entry point to flirtatious conversation.)

Hawt. (Via @Chubstr and Chubstr.com)

I end up chatting with him because karaoke and cider combine to make me a very friendly person — and I’m already a pretty friendly person. But that’s really all I have planned because, you know, monogamously married. And Ed is just my type, too.

But my friend was kind of concerned because she didn’t know what was going on — all she saw was me flirting with a dude who looked a lot like my husband. In the car on the drive home, she tells me it’s because all she knew was that cider was on draft, and he was EXACTLY my type. She’s a total mom (which is an awesome thing), and it cracked me up.

My friend @Nicholosophy who is going to have to explain Australian uniforms to me.

There’s not enough cider in the world to make me cheat on my committed partner, but, you know, my friend was picking up on how very much I appreciate what the bearded blond men around town are putting down. It’s cool.

I think this story got away from me, but the point is this: Fat guys are hot!

I actually find a lot of different people aesthetically pleasing. I’m not, like, trying to create a hierarchy of hotness because that would just be a fool’s errand to compare apples and oranges and rambutans. Why compare when they are all so delicious? I mention fat dudes specifically because they often get left out of the appreciation posts — and many of them often feel left out of fat acceptance, too.

Some people are just BEAUTIFUL. (Via @Chubstr and Chubstr.com)

Fatness really does operate in a different way for a lot of men. Ed will talk about being fat (and medically, he totally is) but then he wears a medium in his underpants? I have no idea how that works. But I don’t have to understand it to appreciate it.

There are a lot of different kinds and degrees of fat. Maybe it’s because I am myself fat, but I really like bodies with mass. That’s not dissing thin and/or small bodies. Those bodies are also awesome. There’s just something awesome about heavy bodies that take up space, too.

Can we talk about suspenders? I need more fat dues to wear them. Thanks, @baniak and @bibliogrrl!

I also appreciate the tactile qualities of fat dudes. Listen, muscle guys are pretty to look at, but they do not, in my experience, make for the best quality cuddling. That is reserved for fat guys. (Again, not dissing muscle bodies, because there are awesome things about that body type as well.) Fat dudes play on the little bit of “oh, it’s nice to feel protected” that exists in my nature. It’s totally hot.

I don’t know how the other xoJane folks feel, but I am turning this into a fat man appreciation blog.

I don’t know this guy but I wish I did. (Via @Chubstr and Chubstr.com)

Obviously people are more than their bodies. Personality and wit and intelligence and all of that is more important than a fat round ass when I am in the market for a partner. But fat people hear about inner beauty all damn day like it’s supposed to be some sort of consolation for not looking like what we’re supposed to look like. What about outer beauty? Because fat people have a lot of outer beauty.

I don’t mean beauty in the really narrowly defined culturally mandated way either. Because, frankly, sure, those folks are beautiful, but sometimes they are really boring just by virtue of being the cultural mandate. The hottest people I have ever seen aren’t trying to look like a cultural ideal. They just look like themselves — whatever that happens to look like.

This totally attractive person is Jose Sagastume (@aviciouskoala).

Once you get out of the habit of expecting all bodies to look like the ones in magazines or the movies, it’s easier to see just how many hot people there are wandering around. And yeah, I really do get that some people have preferences. But it doesn’t make any sense to me that a preference for a certain type should somehow mean no one else gets to be considered attractive.

Hotness at the door. (Via @Chubstr and Chubstr.com)

I just got back from Wiscon recently, where a (totally hot) friend of mine was talking about how there aren’t many clothes for fat men that are designed to show off various body parts. Like their thighs. As much as we talk about issues of clothing access for fat women, we don’t spend as much time talking about how fat men are just as constrained when it comes to self-expression — especially if they want to present in any way other than what’s available in the Big & Tall department.

I love this pic of Irfon-Kim Ahmad (@twMaize).

That’s a literal crying shame. That wraps us up in fat hate but also in sexism — because sexism hurts everyone, including men. I appreciate sites like Chubstr and Chubarama (thanks for that link, Emily!) because they not only make fat men visible, but because they show us all kinds of fat men, presenting in lots of different ways. (Chubarama is not always guaranteed to be work safe, by the way.)

Other than the pic of Ed up at the top, these are all pictures from volunteers — Chubstr sent me a selection but so did a bunch of Twitter friends. I love all of these pictures. I just want to note that “hot fat men” is an even broader category than is represented here. It’s fat of varying sizes, it’s hot fat disabled dudes and hot fat trans dudes and hot fat men living all sorts of intersectional identities.