Why Do I Want To Be Fat?

"Why do I want to be fat/Why do I want to gain/Why do I want to fatten my partner?"--variations of this are so frequent on gaining sites, I decided to share one of my earlier answers:

  Well, I freely admit a major motivation for me going into the field of psychology was to better understand why I had this unusual interest in men gaining weight.

There are a number of reasons why you might have your own interests.

For example, there’s the term “bodification” or body-modification.  This can be the outward sign of feeling in control of one’s life/body.  Some typical forms of bodification include getting a tattoo, getting a piercing, changing hair color, getting a “Mohawk,” or bodybuilding. In this case, gaining weight is simply a form of bodification.

 For example, I was involved with an international male model based in Switzerland.  Because of his profession, his income completely depended upon him “selling” himself as the visual image necessary to move a particular product.  As a result, he had to look “a certain way.” While he was successful, his physical appearance also needed to be consistently maintained.  As this continued over the years, he felt more and more he “owned” his own body less and less.  To compensate for this, he started doing bodifications that he chose for himself and that could either be removed before a photo shoot, or involved part of his body not photographed.  He began by getting his navel pierced.  Later on he got a Prince Albert, which as you probably know, is a genital piercing.

Culturally, there’s usually a “big” difference between how women and men perceive getting larger in general American society.  Being large as a male is frequently associated with Power.  If you think about American slang/idioms, you come up with: “Throwing your weight around;” “Big Man On Campus;” “The Big Guy.”  Large men often are able to intimidate others by their size to the extent they don’t always have to demonstrate their ability to dominate others.  Smaller men may tend to avoid challenging them.  This leads to the term “gentle giant.”  Men who get larger “take up more space.”  They are often admired as having the power to indulge themselves.  This isn’t just about food, but also includes other forms of conspicuous consumption, including buying fancy cars, tech toys, or expensive wine/cigars.  One doesn’t tend to look at a fat man in an Armani suit and driving an expensive car and think, “he’s poor.”  In many ways, fat can equal “success.”

Women, on the other hand, are often seen as “out of control” or “weak of will” if they gain weight. Because gay men are classified as “woman-like” in general American culture—more precisely, both women and gay men are perceived as “less than male”—they are treated the same way as a woman if they gain weight. 

I suspect this is why when a person enters his 30s a number of things come together to create a “perfect storm.”  One’s metabolism tends to slow down, which means even with no changes in diet or activity, one tends to gain weight.  One’s income tends to be more stable, which means it’s easier to afford additional food and new clothes to fit a bigger body.  But perhaps more importantly, from a psychological developmental level, an individual has become more secure in  himself and less dependent upon the approval or opinions of others,  Just so, if a person has wanted to do something for a long time (such as gain) he’s ready to do it to please himself.  There may also be a sense of “I’ve spent my entire life fighting what I want to do—why should I spend the second half of my life unhappy, damn it?”

  Another reason one may be interested in gaining is because it can represent a type of “kink,” a term I prefer as a psychotherapist to “fetish.”  There can be a range of emotional/erotic responses to gaining, whether directly involving oneself or someone else.  A sexologist named John Money proposed what he called “The Love Map.” 

 This represents one’s “erotic landscape” of what “turns you on.”  If you’ve had Psychology 101, you probably heard about “Pavolv’s Dogs,” where the Russian researcher would ring a bell when he fed his dogs.  At one point, a dog would salivate simply from hearing the bell ring—this is called a conditioned reflex.  To put it another way—there’s a stimulus (bell rings) and a response (dog salivates).

If there is a stimulus with an erotic response, Money suggested that another experience/stimulus might “fuse” with the erotic response.  Here’s a basic example:  a mother discovers her young child playing “doctor” or “house” (these may be too “American” as slang—these are children’s games where young children imitate their understanding of how adults function.  “Playing House” usually means one child takes on the role of the “Daddy” and one takes on the role of the “Mommy.”  As you might imagine, this may lead to them having seen parents “in action” and the children ending up nude and lying together.

Should the mother come in just at the moment when her nude young son has an erection/erotic response, she may react by jerking her son away, spanking him, while yelling, and “Don’t you ever let me catch you doing this again!”

Money theorized that in this example, there could be a fusion between spanking and the erotic response.  This may explain why 25% of American adults report using spanking as a form of foreplay.

(For an excellent dramatization of this, check out the movie "Exit to Eden."  There's a graphic scene where the main character, played by Paul Mercurio (best known from the hit "Ballroom Dancing") is shown becoming aroused by spanking as a boy, and then having this played out as an adult.  Here's a clip where the other main character explains her own introduction into the world of spanking and domination):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odzNdbEGfLA&NR=1

Money proposed the establishment of the Love Map tends to take place before the age of 8.  As a result, many adults (especially in the U.S.) frequently fail to recognize when something like this occurs, since there is a general myth that children are “non-sexual.”  In reality, children, like other primates, tend to be very sexual, although they don’t understand sexuality in the way an adult does.  Children tend to be more focused on physical pleasure.  A child rides a “stick horse” that stimulates his or her genitals, or bounces on a ball.

Based on this model, a child may be in a situation where he or she is having a pleasant physical experience that may involve a fat person and this can result in the fusion of fat with eroticism, or at least with great pleasure. One of the things I find of interest is how often gainers on sites like Fantasyfeeder will report memories of putting pillows underneath their shirts in an attempt to “feel fat” when they were small children.  I recall one sharing with me that his father had abandoned the family when the son was around four years of age.  When he was lonely, the boy would pull out one of his father’s old t-shirts, to enjoy the smell of his father.  He

would put it on, and then place pillows underneath it to fill it out and remind him of his father.A young child wrestling with a chubby older relative or a chubby peer may inadvertently have his or her genitals stimulated, and end up with a fusion between eroticism and being with a fat partner. 

I want to emphasize this is not a form of sexual abuse.  The playful relative or peer may have absolutely no awareness of what the child is experiencing, and indeed, would be horrified that their innocent play was having this sort of impact.

There may also be other issues involved—say of the child feeling “powerful” because of a particular type of play.  This is one of the suggestions of why games like “Pokeman” (originally from the term “pocket monsters”) are so popular.  The “universe” of such a game allows a child to become “powerful” in battle, using their Pokeman devices/creatures as substitute warriors. Just so, this may be what a feeder or encourager feels on some level when assisting someone else’s weight gain.  He or she may feel “in control” of the other person’s experience on some level.

Notice too, that this may explain the diversity within a community like Fantasyfeeder.  Depending upon the early childhood experience, one may end up an encourager/feeder or a fat admirer, or a gainer.  It would also explain why someone with an alternative pathway may be clueless as to why someone else is a feeder/encourager—the thought may have no appeal whatsoever to someone who didn’t have his or her Love Map shaped as a feeder/encourager.  This sometimes leads to some gainers falsely accusing all feeders/encouragers to be “closet gainers” who “really” want to gain themselves, but are too afraid to do so.  In reality, some feeders/encouragers really DON’T want to gain.  For some individuals, there may also be an overlap of early experiences, so a person ends up being both a gainer and fa/feeder.

A couple of other things—men tend to have their Love Maps “vandalized” at a much higher rate than women, which means men are much more likely to be “kinky” than women are.   Love Maps can be modified, but they tend to be very strong.  Just so, if gaining weight has a strong erotic connection, not gaining ( a specific problem in the Fantasyfeeder community), or being in a relationship with someone who thinks fat or gaining is “gross” can frequently interfere with a relationship.  Even though there may be a sexual relationship, it may lack “sparkle” or “spark” for the person with a Love Map that includes fat or gaining. If fat or gaining is a major component of a person’s Love Map, he or she may not be able to maintain a satisfactory relationship with someone who doesn’t “match” it.  On the other side, someone who had spent years having relationships that don’t reflect the Love Map, may feel “fireworks” when he or she finally connects with a partner who DOES match the Love Map.  For example, a FF member’s husband has recently gained weight unintentionally, and she’s been shocked to discover how erotically charged their relationship has become with every inch he adds to his waist.

There was a psychiatrist named Milton Erickson who said, “What we call a neurosis is really the complex way in which a patient is trying to indirectly solve his problem.”  An example of this might be someone who has lost a significant other/partner/loved one, and then turns to food to “fill up the emptiness.”  This would be an example of an unhealthy reason for gaining weight.  Getting fatter was not a conscious decision or choice by the gainer.  Gaining weight doesn’t make the person “feel better,” because it’s not really about eating or gaining weight, so there’s no connection between feeling full and feeling better.  Indeed, the additional weight may cause the person to feel even more depressed, leading to eating more, and creating a cycle of becoming increasingly fat and depressed.

I mention this because it’s so opposite what I find actual gainers express in the context of something like Fantasyfeeder.  When a “real” gainer starts getting bigger, there is often a sense of self-empowerment and a release of erotic energy that’s been repressed.  In other words, for a “true” gainer, the decision/choice to gain is “clean” and direct.

Gaining weight for pathological reasons is not “clean and direct.”  It’s about trying to gain to indirectly deal with another issue.  For example, a number of very overweight women have been sexually abused.  The body fat is indirectly used as a type of “body armor” to repulse the interests and sexual overtures of men whose attention may feel threatening.  Interestingly, many gay men (and straight ones) will use bodybuilding as a type of bodification for the same reason.  In this case, however, the “body armor” consists of muscles “so no one will ever do that to me again…”  If such a person were to go through successful therapy, they might lose the need to be fat—or to be overly muscular.

Again---this is completely different than what “true” gainers go through.  They are making a conscious decision/choice.  Their behavior related to gaining increases their sense of self and pleasure.  A person with a pathological reason for gaining decreases their sense of self and pleasure.

Hope this very long response gives you some “food for thought.”