From: avery@netcom.com (Avery Ray Colter)
Newsgroups: alt.support.big-folks
Subject: Re: CHOOSING to be attracted to someone
Date: 1 Sep 92 20:07:07 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)

sheryl@seas.gwu.edu (Sheryl Coppenger) writes:

>I don't think I made a "deterministic interpretation".  I just said that
>there are many factors that go into attraction.  I didn't propose that
>there was some kind of equation for it.  Some people are more affected than
>others.  But I think that anyone who pretends that it is all some internal
>cosmic chemistry without outside influences is kidding himself.

OK, that I can deal with. Yes, there are always outside influences. Maybe
I was just so psyched about the girl I was going to all the dances with in
junior high, and the fact she was fat kind of seeped into my underlying
consciousness as one possible reason I liked her so much. Maybe it was other
isolated incidents with different women at various points in my life. My
feeling then, and my feeling still now, is that it is a very chaotic process,
with nondeterministic events shaping the big picture - and my feeling then
and now, was that if I tried to tinker with this in more than very subtle
ways, I'd likely drive myself completely insane. "A Clockwork Orange" 
made a WHOLE lot of sense to me when I first saw it.

>You read too much into my brief reference and paid too little attention
>to what preceeded it.  I didn't save the article, but as I recall you 
>said something on the lines that it wasn't worth trying to change society's
>attitudes on appearance because SOCIETY just replaces one fascism with 
>another.  You may be right, I just  think that's a little bleak, that's all.

I'm not sure now either, but I was likely thinking some combination of:

a) We teach society by example - we should rely on our own enjoyment
   of the power we raise, and not set our hearts on society at large changing,
   at least not for a while.

and

b) "If we got together and coordinated our energies, we could
    really tear down the system."

I used to be really into attacking the enemies that I saw, the influences
which act in ways hostile to size-acceptance. I'm beginning to see that any
such attack has a lot more power when it is an extension of a more positive
underlying idea of self-empowerment, rather than an unbridled lashing out.
In other words, success is the best revenge.

>>Unfortunately, I'm beginning to wonder who is worse, those who used to
>>try to convert me to being attracted to thin women, or those who are now
>>trying to convert me to being attracted to every woman in existence. The
>>latter strikes me at times as the former with one step removed, namely
>>the exclusion of the attractions I presently harbor.

>I hope you're not including me in "those".  I don't care who you're
>attracted to, Avery.  All I said is that if the culture got more
>relaxed about what and who was beautiful then ON AVERAGE people would 
>tend to be attracted to more different types.  I was musing on a 
>hypothetical.

I don't include you in those, please don't let a little discussion
rip us apart like that. What you say is indeed true for the most part,
that most people would have a greater range of attraction in a culture
more relaxed about it. I just wonder sometimes why, when size is one
of the only physically attractive topics I define in any halfway limiting
terms, and when even there my range is from basically just above "plump"
to a good way into "supersize", why some people think this is so closed.
It's not like this whole range is such a tiny percentage of the population
after all. Those are the ones I'm referring to, those who are into the
"negate all physical reactions" school of thought.

>And I don't know what you're so upset about.  If this change in attitudes
>came about and I'm right in my prediction then you would be a little
>less alone in your attraction to BBWs.  And gay people wouldn't feel
>like they had to force themselves into straight relationships or risk
>losing friends, jobs, etc.

That part, per se, is not the one that is setting me on edge. That part
of it is a wonderful vision indeed.

>But I don't think Liddie ever said you had to grit your teeth and go
>out with thin women.

In some iterations, that's what it sounds like.

>Gad, Avery, lighten up.  

I'm trying, believe me.
I remember the time one of my crushes in junior high gave
me the exact same words you just did. I was so frustrated that she
wouldn't go out with me that I finally just looked her in the eye
and said, "Speak for yourself". I never felt so miserable in my life.
I had to be to even utter something like that I guess.

Now, hopefully you'll understand that what I really meant by that then,
and what I want to say now, is that "lightening up" is as difficult for
me in my own sense as it is for you in yours.

-- 
Avery Ray Colter ("Elfcat") - 	avery@netcom.netcom.com (IP 192.100.81.100)
(510) 656-1902          	{elfcat|arcolter}@aol.com
"Heaviness is the root of lightness; calmness is the controller of haste"