Yesterday, inspired by recent comments about Fat Admirers, I posted a lengthy explanation of why I identify as a Fat Admirer and why that label is important to me. In doing so, I largely avoided a subject that is essentially joined-at-the-hip with any discussion of Fat Admiration: FA Creepers.

But first, we need to lay out some definitions. Since Fat Admirer has yet to make it into Merriam-Webster’s, I will define the term as I understand it. To me, a Fat Admirer is someone who is primarily attracted to people who are heavier than the cultural ideal. Since the cultural ideal is already ridiculously thin, we’ll just use the plus-sized clothing store as the low-end of the cutoff, although the spectrum of sizes which any FA can be attracted to can range from small fats (aka inbetweenies) to deathfatz (aka SSBBWs).

Aside from the grey area of what is considered “fat enough” for an FA, the definition is that simple: primarily attracted to fat people. But other people in the discussion I had this past week have suggested that there are multiple definitions. For example:

It feels like everyone that identifies as an FA has a different definition of what it means. It’s never as simple as just “admiring fat”. To some it simply means just that. To others there is an implied sense of belonging to SA involved. To others it’s a dating scene descriptor, etc.

But for the purposes of this discussion, we will use my stripped down definition, and assume anything additional is the baggage of any particular FA.

Now, what`s a creeper?

Simply put, a creeper is anyone (typically guys) who knowingly or unknowingly, intentionally or otherwise, engages in behavior that is often intended to attract a person, but which primarily creeps out the person that he or she is creeping on. I say “often intended” because I’m certain there are those who are intentional creepers because they get some sort of satisfaction out of creeping women out.

So, the intention of creepers can range from clueless creep to dangerous predator, but as many of you know, it does not matter the intention of the creeper. All that really matters in these situations is the behavior that makes the creepee feel uncomfortable and, sometimes, in danger.

Finally, an FA creeper is an FA with creeper tendencies. Those creeper tendencies can either be independent of the creeper’s FA status (as in the example CollieMom01 gave of the (assumed) FA that followed her home) or related to it (such as online FA creepers who ask about height, weight, dress size, etc.)

In my opinion, a person’s status as an FA is unrelated to his or her status as a creeper. Judging from what I’ve heard, a lot of FAs are also creepers, but is that because FAs are inherently creepy or is there something about the FA environment that encourages creepy behavior. More on that later.

Creeper, Creeper, Creeper

In the past, I have engaged in behavior that could be described as creepy, but I consider myself an unintentional creeper.

This post is not any easy one for me to write because I will be admitting behavior that will open me up to judgment and scorn. However, I do so secure in the knowledge that we are all flawed creatures, and that those who judge the actions of others are either oblivious to their own faults and flaws, or else willfully ignorant of their existence.

Either way, I would rather be judged for who I am and what I’ve done than to have general assumptions made about me for being an FA.

Keep in mind that everything I knew about how boys get girls to like them I learned from Hollywood. My brothers never taught me how to approach a girls. Everything I knew about seduction and romance came from my twisted attempt at imitating sit-com Lotharios.

One of the most obvious (now) examples of creeping from my own past is my reliance on the Gaze. For me, the Gaze was a way of having an “across the room” moment. You know what I mean: “And then I saw him from across the room, gazing at me… our eyes met and it was love at first sight.” That sort of thing.

Of course, when I did this in our junior high youth group, it was not taken as a spontaneous moment of raw human connection. It was “Hey, that creepy kid is staring at me.”

I had absolutely no clue that I was exhibiting creepy behaviour. I was just a shy kid trying to get the girl to notice me and, possibly, find me attractive. It failed. But nobody ever said “Hey creepy kid, stop staring at me,” so the gaze became my primary strategy for seducing women throughout high school. Gradually, I learned other, more effective ways of impressing girls (typically involving humor).

But that was part my awkward adolescence, which I covered yesterday ad nauseum.

Today, I want to talk about the time in my life when my status as an FA was most active: my early 20s.

It is important to add that all throughout my adolescence I was a good, little Catholic boy. I belonged to multiple youth groups and signed a True Love Waits pledge while at a Christian summer camp. I intended to adhere strictly to abstinence until that magical day of marriage, and since the majority of girls I dated in high school were thin, I felt no strong compulsion to violate that pledge.

It wasn’t until I was 18 and beginning to understand my attraction to fat women that my abstinence faltered. Yesterday, I mentioned the watershed moment of proudly dating Allison, a fat girl, in view of my classmates at a camp for mentally retarded/developmentally disabled adults.

Yet another milestone took place over a year later when I was out to dinner with my friends, people whose opinion I actually respected, when I saw the most beautiful angel to ever grace the dingy booths of Gingham’s (a Denny’s knockoff)… well, until Veronica and I made it our regular Saturday night thing, of course.

Her name was Kim and she wasn’t a little chubby like Allison, she was a full-on deathfatz pear-shaped goddess, and I wanted to meet her. So, I began with the Gaze, hoping to catch her eye, smile and, if she smiled back, approach. She didn’t look over once.

But then she got up to leave and after she paid and left, I followed her out to the parking lot and said, “Excuse me.” She stopped, turned and smiled a radiant smile. I continued, “I just wanted to tell you that I think you’re extremely beautiful and I was wondering if we could go out some time.”

Right now, many of you are probably screaming in your heads, “CREEPER!” and you’re right. Following a woman you don’t know anywhere for any reason is downright creepy. But I wanted to be away from my friends so that the rejection I expected would be a solitary disappointment, rather than a group embarrassment.

“Sure,” she said, and proceeded to write down her number and give it to me. “Call me,” she said, as she handed it over and went giggling off with her girlfriends.

Oddly enough, although our relationship began on a creepy note, there was an even creepier moment early in our dating. Kim went to Lindenwood, the same college as my best friend Angie, and so I was frequently on campus hanging out already.

You Give Me the Creeps!

At the same time that I met Kim, Lindenwood became the sight of a grisly murder, where a student discovered the partially nude, decapitated body of a 13-year-old girl. With the murderer still at large, Kim and I went on our first date, which I had planned meticulously.

I wanted it to be romantic, so I packed a picnic basket and took her to a park with a lake, where we would walk and talk and picnic on the beach and fall in love, etc. Again, everything I did was a grand romantic gesture based on Hollywood love stories.

Later that evening, Kim admitted to me that while we were sitting in the sand, she was afraid that this guy she just met might be the murderer and that my picnic basket contained the tools needed to sever her head. Once again, oblivious to the perception of others, I creeped her out big time before finally withdrawing the sandwiches I had made.

Once she realized I wasn’t a murderer, we got along splendidly. Kim would also be the person who chipped the largest chunk of my abstinence away when, a few days later at my 19th birthday party, she insisted on giving me a special present: my first blowjob.

We dated for a few months, but our relationship was never meant to be and we went our separate ways. Afterward, I rationalized that a blowjob wasn’t sex, so my abstinence was still in tact, and I went about dating women in hopes of experiencing this entirely new realm of sexuality to its fullest.

One year later, April 1999, I met another woman (let’s call her X, for reasons that will soon become obvious) online while I was a student at Mizzou. We chatted all hours of the night, exchanged emails and phone calls, and eventually she came to visit me for my 20th birthday. We got along famously from the moment we met, and that night I lost my virginity on the floor of our dorm’s common room, beside the ping pong table.

Romance!

With the floodgates of my sexuality thrown wide open, I pursued unrestricted carnal pleasure with X, and another girl I met during summer break. Three months later when X informed me that she was pregnant. Barely devirginized, I settled down and began life as a family man.

However, our relationship ended in a bitter, difficult breakup just a month before September 11th, 2001. Young and wounded in love, I made my way back into the dating world with new eyes.

First and foremost, I was no longer a virgin and my carnal desire was intense to say the least. At the same time, I was just as focused on finding “real love” as I had always been, and one of the first things I did was locate a BBW/FA club in St. Louis called Ample Romance.

Breeding Ground

Ample Romance is where I met my wife, Veronica, which I will go into in a bit, but first I want to share what Veronica told me about her experience with FAs from her time as one of the ladies who ran Ample.

In short, everything people say about FAs is largely true: many of them are really bizarre, but even the ones she met who seemed “normal” (defined as fairly attractive and fairly successful (defined as having a job and not living in your parents basement) with no obvious psychological or emotional issues) would eventually share with her something that was a complete deal-killer.

Several of these “normal” FAs had mommy issues, which she explained as a guy who talks about his mother frequently and is often times looking for a woman who looks, acts and talks like his mother. Although, it is natural for a guy to be attracted to those who reflect the person who “modeled femininity” to a sexually developing child, these guys with mommy issues took it to an extreme.

The other thing she noticed was that many of the FAs at Ample were fucking everybody and that many of the women who were sleeping with these FAs were perfectly aware of their promiscuity within the group, but slept with them anyway. In fact, Veronica said there were men who participated actively on the Ample Yahoo! group, but never attended a single party. She later realized it was because they were fucking so many women from the group that attending in person would have been a nightmare for them.

These are two of the main issues that came up in the discussions I read about FAs. As one person described it, “I hear ‘FA’ and I automatically think ‘only interested in casual sex, fetishizing my fat.’”

As for FAs being abnormal, I don’t know. All I can say for sure is that being a Fat Admirer in a thin-centric world can really fuck you up. Either that or you have to be fucked up to embrace your preference for fat women in a thin-centric world. Either way, it seems as though any FA contingency includes quite a few number of creepers.

Some FA creepers are like me, who struggled with their sexuality all their life and have trouble expressing their sexuality or sexual attraction in traditional, socially acceptable ways. I don’t say this in order to justify it or to say, “Aaaaw, don’t worry, he’s probably just a confused, awkward weirdo.” I say this because many creepers simply aren’t aware that they are creepers and in that situation, education is called for, not disdain or scorn.

As for the pathological FA creepers… well, I believe (although I have no way of proving it) that the truly creepy creepers, the ones who pose a threat to others, are no more common among FAs than the general public. Any woman can share horror stories of creepy creepers, but FA creepy creepers are frequently treated as though it was their status as an FA that made them creepers, rather than two separate issues converging into one hideous creature.

An FA is an FA. A creeper is a creeper. An FA creeper is both. An FA creeper is not comprised of a single trait (FA creepiness), but of two traits: fat admiration and creepiness.

This is where I have a problem with the way people talk about FAs. Being an FA doesn’t make you a creeper. Being a creeper makes you a creeper.

Now, as to the promiscuity accusation, Veronica’s explanation is simple: supply and demand.

Attend any BBW/FA function and the first thing you will notice is the ratio of men to women. For me, attending my very first BBW/FA function as a newly single, relatively recently deflowered young man was like being a kid in a candy shop, except I had only ever had one kind of candy.

And as someone who fit the bill of “normal” (except for the fact that when I moved back home, three hours from X, I moved back into my parents’ basement), I was considered a “catch” at Ample.

For the very first time in my life, I didn’t need the Gaze. I didn’t need to do anything. My dream finally came true: women approached me.

One of the first women I met saw at Ample, though, was Veronica. Although I was older and less susceptible to the “pit in my stomach” sensation that I felt when I saw eighth grade girl (from yesterday’s post), I felt it as soon as I saw V. Dark, mysterious and voluptuous, she sat at a table by the entrance throughout that first event. I never spoke to her, but I did gaze at the back of her head, hoping she’d notice me.

She didn’t.

Not until the second event, a birthday party at a loud and smoky bar. With sufficient liquid courage in me, I approached her and we hit it off. We dated about a month (although she says we were never officially dating… just going out to the movies, karaoke and Ample, and making out) before she informed me that she wasn’t interested in dating anyone at that time.

I didn’t know what to do with the intensity of attraction I felt for her. I felt like we were Divine Complements (which replaced my belief in a “one true love”) and that I could definitely love her forever. But all she wanted was friendship. Since I had no clue how we would ever bridge that gap, I chalked her up as a lost cause and went on in my pursuit of love.

And so, I dated like a madman. I went out with as many women as would agree to go out with me. I had always been primarily interested in finding “the one” that I could spend the rest of my life with. I frequently lamented the fact that I had nobody to share my bed in a thunderstorm, which seemed, to me, the epitome of companionship.

Of course, I took great pleasure in all of the carnal stops along the way. But despite my reputation as a serial dater, I didn’t have sex with the vast majority of the (at least a dozen) women I dated. We fooled around, to be sure, going anywhere from first to third base, but I can only think of two women (aside from Veronica) who I actually had a sexual relationship with, but both of those come with a caveat.

In one situation, I was severely impaired by drunkenness, so I’m not even sure we had sex. In the other case, things were getting hot and steamy up to the point when she asked me to put on a condom. X and I never used a condom, so I had zero experience with them. Having never even practiced using a condom, I found myself experiencing what comedian Tom Rhodes aptly describes in his joke on being part of the Condom Generation:

What a happy period in human history to be living through. In that oh-so-romantic moment when you turn to your lover and say, “Excuse me lover, while I roll a balloon on my dick and try to keep an erection through the shame and embarassment of you watching me roll a balloon on my dick.”

Being the wise woman that she was, she refused to have sex without the condom, and that was that.

Other than those two instances, I never went past third base with any women from Ample. But if I had been interested in sex only, it would not have been difficult to achieve that goal. I’m a relatively slow and steady person, but that isn’t to say I didn’t have opportunities to be promiscuous.

But if I had been promiscuous, looking for casual sex rather than relationships, then would that have been because I’m an FA or because I’m a promiscuous person? And what role does being an FA play in all of those FAs who are only seeking casual sex?

Supply and Demand

Like Veronica said, it’s supply and demand. Fat women who self-identify as BBWs and attend BBW/FA parties are looking for a place where they can have a good time and be themselves without shame. BBW/FA parties are exactly the same as the traditional hook-up location for average- or thin-sized women: night clubs.

Although some who attend BBW/FA parties are just there for the camaraderie, many are looking to hookup for the night and/or find a mate. But at traditional night clubs, the ratio of men to women is about even, in which case women have more control. Women decide whether to accept a drink from the skeezy guy at the end of the bar or whether to dance with the creeper who’s been staring all night. With a little confidence, women are more in control of who they approach and who they accept advances from.

As a guy who has been to both traditional nightclubs and BBW/FA parties, I can tell you without a doubt that it is infinitely more difficult for me to approach a woman at a nightclub than at the BBW/FA parties because there were so many more attractive guys around. The odds of a woman actually talking to me at a nightclub were around 1 in 100, and of those times they actually talked to me, I was blown off 9 out of 10 times. I only met one woman at a nightclub that I hooked up with, and we dated for a few months afterward.

But at the BBW/FA parties, the dynamic is different. At those parties, I felt like the hottest thing since Brad Pitt. Being one of the few 20-year-olds, I was King of the FAs, and that fact shifted to me the kind of power that women have in traditional nightclubs.

And, although I’m sure there are exceptions, it should be said that men should never be allowed to be the person in power in these situations. Men who know they can date whoever they want, particularly if they’ve never had that ability before, will date women like they’re changing channels. I would go out with a woman, find a few traits that bothered me, then move on to the next woman.

I wasn’t interested in friendship, I wanted a real and lasting relationship, but I knew what I wanted and what I didn’t want, so it didn’t take long for me to rule out those with whom I was obviously not compatible.

But put this dynamic into the hands of someone who is only looking to score (which many guys are, regardless of whether they are FAs or not), and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

And online is even worse. At least in BBW/FA clubs you (mostly) had to show up and own whatever weirdness you expressed. At sites like Dimensions, anonymity breeds the kind of FA creepers who indulge in reckless, shameless, disgusting and disturbing acts of depravity. They say shit they would never say face-to-face. They ask questions they don’t have the courage to ask in person. In short, they represent the worst aspects of humanity in general, and FAs in particular.

So, yeah, FAs have a terrible and deserved reputation for being creepers, but I believe it is primarily due to the environments around which Fat Admiration has arisen.

BBW/FA clubs give FAs more power to exploit women. BBW/FA websites provide the kind of anonymity needed to indulge their fetishistic inclinations. If you build it, they will come.

But even acknowledging all of these realities, I still believe it is wrong to make blanket statements about FAs because of those bad actors. Their behavior says more about their status as creepers than as FAs, and assigning stigma to the FA part, rather than the individual creepiness, has the effect of shaming “normal” FAs, like myself, who read what is being said and feel less and less inclined to be proud of our unique sexuality.

Just as homophobia suppresses the gay identity and has unforeseen consequences on the psycho-sexual development of young homosexuals, so does the stigma surrounding FAs prevent them from developing a healthy, normal sexuality. Even if we banned the term “Fat Admirer” and outlawed the very identity itself, there would still be men with that sexual preference.

Attaching stigma to any normal sexual preference only drives those who have that inclination to unhealthy expressions of their sexuality. Feeling like you must hide who you are for fear of being judged does not eliminate the problems associated with Fat Admirers. It only buries them beneath the surface where, untreated, they fester and rot, until they express themselves in unexpected, and sometimes dangerous, ways.

FAs are not the problem. A culture that makes attraction to fat bodies so unthinkable as to be repulsive is the problem. Living in a culture where fat attraction is so reprehensible that FAs feel set apart from “normal” people is the problem. By addressing the cultural root causes, we may be able to, in a single swoop, eliminate both the need for the identity and the breeding ground for FA creepers.