For My Friend Becky

[Ed. - I wrote this piece and it was posted elsewhere, and I got such overwhelming feedback from it that I felt it appropriate to share here.]



My friend Becky is an amazing woman; she's intelligent, hilarious, sophisticated, gorgeous, and has a heart of gold. Unfortunately, Becky is also very lonely. You see, men in OC roundly reject Becky on an almost daily basis. Not because she's evil, mean-spirited, or immature. You see, Becky's a plus-size woman. And to many of the shallow people around here, that's all that matters. It breaks my heart each time she calls me crying after a date, or forwards me an e-mail, recounting the callousness of the men who tell her point blank that though they admire the person she is, they don't want to risk being seen in public with a large woman. She cries, her heart broken and confidence shattered, and I cry too, because I love her, and I get angry at the myriad of ways in which people perceive her-- in an unforgivingly and overwhelmingly negative manner-- even before she gets a chance to introduce herself.

Becky, my dear; since I can't stomp on the smug faces of all the assholes who fall in love with your spirit but can't bring their feeble selves to appreciate your body, I instead dedicate this essay to you:

Cute Fat Girl With Lowered Expectations Seeks What She Can Get

Well, no... not really. Not at all, in fact.

She's a college graduate, Mensa member, and has both vocabulary and articulation skills that impress the hell out of most of the people to whom she speaks, but that doesn't matter here.

She's got a comprehensive knowledge of politics and current events, and can hold her own in a lively and spirited debate, but that doesn't matter here.

She posesses a sharp wit that can make a roomful of people dissolve into fits of laughter and make almost any dreary situation a little brighter with a humorous shift in perspective, but that doesn't matter here.

Independence and individuality are her strengths; She's never bought into the princess fantasy, and she doesn't need a man to take care of her. She has a career, her own place, pays her own bills, and is fiercely self-reliant. She's not a greedy, money-grubbing gold-digger looking for a sugar-daddy to exploit, but that doesn't matter here.

She's a vegan, a skilled cook, and goes to the gym regularly (in fact, she does elliptical cycles that put the wheezing Newport bitches to shame, and she can leg-press a body-builder), but that doesn't matter here.

She makes friends easily, can hold her liquor while drinking most people under the table, is responsible to a fault, has never been under psychological care or medication, has no children, has no STDs, has no questionable estrangements with either family or friends, has no history of violence, arrest, or criminal behavior, and generally has her act together, but that doesn't matter here.

Nope, not in Southern California. And especially not in Orange County. What matters the most here is the mass she displaces: she could be the most screwed-up specimen of femininity known to man, but if she weighs in at under 125lbs, she's still sexually desirable by 90+% of average heterosexual males in this area. It doesn't matter that she's neither a screeching shrew, a neurotic headcase, nor a whining perpetual-adolescent. It doesn't matter that she's self-aware, resourceful, cheerful and talented. She's learned that around here, all the good grooming, impeccable taste, sensuality, and compassion in the world doesn't matter once you get past a certain physical ideal. Short of moving, what can she do, really?

Even among those who admire larger women, she's found that the margins between the normal and the abnormal men are still rather flimsy, and their intents are often purely (and selfishly) sexual. If a woman's dress size is no longer in single digits, she's supposed to lower her expectations of a potential partner. As far as movies and TV are concerned, she's supposed to be a mindless eating machine, a disgusting repository of high-calorie foods, a constant snacker waving around a bag of chips and a chicken leg, the subject of utterly cruel fat jokes, a jiggly, dimpled, mass of zero social skills and questionable personal hygiene, a seam-splitting behemoth deserving of public humiliation... just a chubby and then forgotten joke. She's supposed to be ugly, sad, defensive, shy, of below-average intelligence, and so desperately craving male attention that she should be willing to settle for what she can get, among them the feeders, the big-breast fetishists, the junkies, the humiliators, the violent, the closeted woman-haters, the twisted perverts, the assholes, the self-hating... the generally un-fuckable (for a wider range of reasons).

Well, she is not. And she does not. And she never has. And she will not. And there are many wonderful women like her all around.

If you're the kind of man who's willing to look beyond your own prejudices in order to truly appreciate a caring, fun, sensitive, loving, wonderful woman, let her know. Say "hi"; make friends; look into her twinkling green eyes; tell her how pretty she is. Get to know the wonderful woman she is, inside and out. At the very least, I can promise you from the bottom of my heart that she'll be worth every moment you share with her.

Becky, sweetie, I love you. Don't let the bastards get you down. You've got a love of love to give, and your smile makes my world go 'round.

Big love and bigger hugs,
-Avatar.