It’s a valid question — but it is not the question that former America’s Next Top Model winner Whitney Thompson asked herself when she set out to create her new online dating site, “The Big and The Beautiful.” Thompson seems to have been asking, “what can I do to earn $40 per month from tons of women I’ve never met?” Or, alternatively, “how many times can I use the word ‘real’ when I describe my new project?”
The answer to the latter question is three, as in: “I created this site for real women with real curves … looking for real pleasure,” says Whitney.
As regular readers know, copious use of the misguided “real woman” concept is one of the first warning signs of bodywashing… which is a term I just made up for when celebrities or companies pretend to be all about body positivity but are really all about themselves. Like what Bare Escentuals and CoverGirl did here. I’m borrowing liberally from greenwashing and pinkwashing, obvs. Except, yes, my term sounds like a sponge bath. We can work on it.
Anyway, I have my suspicions about Miss Whitney’s dating site, or really, whether we should be working on creating separate dating sites for bigger people in the first place. I explain them over on Never Say Diet today. So you should go check that out now.
At first I thought, well maybe it’s a good idea, but I certainly see your point. My knee jerk reaction is that such a site would attract “chubby chasers,” whom I have always reviled. Let me say that I am a large woman and certainly it’s fine with me if a man finds large women attractive–what I have a problem with is fat being a fetish. I would not want a man pursuing me for my adipose tissue any more than I would want one pursuing me simply because I had a large endowment in either the chest or butt department. If someone is interested in my bits and parts rather than me as a person, they are someone I would not want to bother with!