“My wife is the love of my life and there is no one better for me. “Beauty standards today are unrealistic and everyone has gone crazy because of social media.” With these words, Declan Rice, Arsenal player, stood up against the barrage of fatphobic messages directed against his girlfriend, Lauren Fryer, who, as a result of the pressure of such comments, has deleted all photographs from her Instagram profile.
This attack of indiscriminate hatred is another example that society, especially that which finds a voice through social networks, does not accept that people with bodies, beauty and normative desirability fall in love with fat people, especially, or almost exclusively, If someone who does not have the body and beauty of normative standards is a woman.
“Social circles, as I would say [el sociólogo francés] Pierre Bourdieu, are informal groups that provide social capital to their members and play an important role in social reproduction. If we took a photograph of the majority of elite footballers, they follow the same pattern of social behavior, including emotional behavior, and in it, Western societies are impregnated with beauty stereotypes that privilege thinness, especially for women,” explains Ulixēs. Fernández García, journalist, social and cultural anthropologist. “This norm, deeply rooted in popular culture since women took off the corset, along with the media and advertising, exert significant social pressure on women, internalizing the idea that individual value is closely linked to body weight. Surprise or discomfort with non-normative partners can reveal our own insecurities about body image and self-esteem. It makes us uncomfortable to see that someone we consider attractive (the soccer player) does not follow the standards of her own circle and social rejection is generated,” he explains.
It is surprising the enormous number of forums that exist whose users wonder why Apollonian men date fat women, as well as testimonies from women who tell what it is like to have dates when their weight does not fit into the prevailing canons. in the series Louie, the actress Sarah Baker, at the moment in which the comedian reproaches her for referring to herself as “fat”, starts a spectacular monologue. “You know what’s really curious? I flirt with men constantly, and I mean the ones who are really hot. And they flirt with me too, because they know that their status will never be questioned. However, guys like you would never flirt with me, because you’re scared to find out that maybe you’d have to date women like me. Have you ever kissed a fat girl? Have you ever courted a fat girl? Have you ever held hands with a fat girl? “Have you ever walked down the street in daylight, hand in hand, with a fat girl, like me,” she asks. Of course, it is rarely questioned that men who are more or less fat, more or less bald, more or less young or more or less tall systematically have beautiful girlfriends once they acquire enough fame or power.
As psychology professor Harold Sigall explains in Radiating beauty: Effects of having a physically attractive partner on person perceptionwhere he examines the effects of having a physically attractive romantic partner on self-perception, men who date the most attractive women are rated higher, so, as we observe in the monologue, the halo effect (the bias cognitive system by which certain characteristics are attributed to a person according to their features or appearance), responsible for this reality, could explain why there are men who fear being seen in public with women outside the canons of widespread beauty considered “normal.” ”.
Some media scandals of infidelity have left, beyond adultery itself, a second and interesting reading about what a powerful man considers his public desire and his private desire. Arnold Schwarzenegger was unfaithful to his wife Maria Shriver, a beautiful, thin, elegant woman and heir to the Kennedys, with a domestic servant, the Guatemalan Mildred Patricia Baena, with a small and plump body. Hugh Grant cheated on Elizabeth Hurley, considered one of the great British sexual myths of the 1990s, with the African-American prostitute Divine Brown. Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness have divorced after 27 years of marriage in which the rumors of separation never ceased, and not precisely because of constant fights or alleged infidelities, but because of the age difference and, especially, the fact that the actress does not have a normative weight, has always made many suspicious about the couple. “They tell me that I am lucky to be with him, as if I had won the lottery. “People don’t realize that he is very rude to say that,” he confessed in an interview in Anh’s Brush With Fame, further proof that society is always struck by an Adonis dating a woman who is fat and, as if that were not enough, older than him.
Blanca Caballero, a 41-year-old communicator, is dating a very attractive 32-year-old man. “His body doesn’t make me feel insecure. What’s more, when I go with him, I feel more confident and powerful. I may have felt that insecurity at first, and in fact, I never thought she would notice me. For a while I trained with him, but I stopped because it’s not my thing and we have always been clear about what each of us is like and what we like about ourselves and about each other. People are surprised to see us, and I know I’m going to say something politically incorrect, but I notice that it happens especially with men. In Chueca they have called me a bitch more than once. There is an obsession with the cult of the body…” she explains to ICON.
Beatriu Carbonell works in online marketing, is 41 years old and is dating a normatively beautiful woman. She is aware that when people see them together, she shows both curiosity and discomfort. “I notice that they are looking at me trying to figure out what is so great that I hide and convince despite my image, which by the way is not a bad image, but it is that of a fat woman, something that we already know is almost worse for this society than death,” he says.
Unfortunately, you don’t have to go to Hollywood to find similar cases. This is what Gabriela Gamarra, a 34-year-old restaurant manager, tells ICON. “She has been passing us for 17 years. I notice that people are looking at us, and it is clear that they are wondering what we are doing together. The fact that he is Spanish and I am Latin adds to the rarity,” she says.
Ana de Miguel, writer and philosopher, tries to explain the reasons in the podcast I open umbrella. “What if there had historically been a system in which they have always had all the power and within that power, would they have said that the older man and the man with a belly is attractive? The man is always attractive, because they look for attractiveness in things that are not his body,” he points out.
The truth is that it is common for humans to implement a positive variety mating strategy, which responds to the idea that “like attracts like.” This is explained by Ryan Anderson, from the University of Queensland in Australia, in an article published in Psychology Today. “Studies have shown that people choose others with similar educational levels, similar age, of the same race… In this case, we can say that romantically desirable people generally associate with other people who are also romantically desirable. This makes sense: I’m sure we’re able to think of examples of romantic partners in which one appears to be more desirable than the other, but more cases probably come to mind in which the partners are comparably desirable. Think about attractive, rich, high-profile celebrities: they often date other people who are also celebrities,” he explains in conclusion. Perhaps that is why the case of Declan Rice and Lauren Fryer remains so striking. And maybe that’s why we need more visible examples like them.
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