220 pounds is beautiful

[ljgeoff]

vito_excalibur writes:

I've been reading Secrets Of The Flesh: A Life of Colette. Erica Jong interviewed the author, Judith Thurman, about the book, and they printed the interview at the end of the book, right before the Reading Group Questions and Topics For Discussion.

An excerpt:

Jong: Another thing that struck me about Colette was her weight. You talk about this in your book, but none of the other biographers do. At the end of her life she weighed one hundred eighty pounds. She was obese. She had this famous delight in being a gourmet, but she obviously was gluttonous. Which is analogous to her sexuality. She seems to have never passed up a great fuck.

Thurman: That's true, or not many great fucks.

Jong: ...But the weight issue is fascinating. Because a lot of the men she met later in her life thought she looked rather old and fat. But then after spending a couple of days with her, they were totally besotted...My own feeling is that the sexual magic of a woman is not diminished by a a few extra pounds. But a hundred and eighty, I don't know. Do you want to comment on that?

Thurman: Yes. Like everybody else I've been obsessed with weight my entire life. If I'm not thin, I'm suicidal. But Colette took a stand against thinness just as it was becoming chic... She took a sort of "fat is beautiful" stance, again way before anybody did. And you know she also had a famous love affair with her stepson who was sixteen. She was forty-seven when it started, and it lasted for five years. And he was this beautiful, athletic boy of sixteen. And she was a one-hundred-eighty-pound woman going on fifty. So her sexual power must have been absolutely dazzling. And her sexual confidence in some ways must have been dazzling as well... I think she was an exceptional case, that she felt so comfortable about her body at whatever weight it was. I admire that.

I was going to just quote a little, but I had to quote the whole thing. I was going to write a diatribe about how sick I think the whole culture of thinness is, but I don't think I will. I will say that I love my body. I'm full and round and soft. I'm healthy and strong and beautiful and sexy as hell.

My husband Mike says that the difference between the attitudes of fat women who are comfortable with their bodies, and those who are not is sad -- "The ones who aren't as happy are always asking for, what's it called, validation. And they sell themselves short."