For my inaugural post, I thought I would comment on what I see quite frequently in the gainer world – that gaining and attraction to bellies is viewed a fetish. As a psychologist, and a belly admirer, I believe I might have a differing perspective on the use of this term.
For those unfamiliar with the definition of sexual fetish, it is, according to the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-TR), a subtype of paraphilia in which the individual develops an unusually strong sexual attraction toward an object, body part, or situation. Paraphilias are defined as “recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or behaviors generally involving (1) nonhuman objects, (2) the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one's partner, or (3) children or other nonconsenting persons that occur over a period of 6 months.” Importantly, to be considered a psychological disorder, the paraphilia must cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, academic, or occupational functioning. In other words, to be diagnosed with a paraphilia (fetishism subtype) you have to be so massively into this love object that you flunk out of school, lose friends, lose your job, or lose your mind.
As you can see, a psychological fetish is quite strong, and is quite debilitating. Common fetishes are feet, clothing, leather, lingerie, and other body parts. It is possible that “other body parts” may include bellies. However, it is one thing to be sexually attracted to bellies, and another to be attracted to bellies as the sole object of strong, intense sexual desire.
In other words, I doubt most encouragers/admirers of bellies would say that it is only the belly they desire. They probably enjoy other aspects of gaining, such as plumping thighs, thickening ass, fattening pecs and widening lovehandles. Most also say that an attractive face is important in the overall package, which has nothing to do with bellies. I would argue that this isn’t fetishism per se, but rather attraction to a particular body type. We all have body types that we find attractive or less attractive (fat vs. chubby vs. thin, older vs. younger, male vs. female vs. trans, etc.). These attractions do not a fetish make. A fetishism (at least as a psychological disorder) is so powerful that it leads to significant distress in our lives, causing us to lose friends or employment, engage in illegal activity to satisfy that desire, or report marked psychological distress. If your desire for bellies has led you to exhibit these symptoms, it is possible that you meet criteria for a sexual fetishism. But read on.
Only a trained psychological or psychiatric professional can make the diagnosis of paraphilia (sexual fetishism), and I strongly discourage non-professionals from making self-diagnoses. For example, you may believe you have a sexual fetish because disclosure of said attraction led to subsequent break-up with your boyfriend/girlfriend who did not understand or was repulsed by your attraction. However, this is simply you clarifying your attractions, and your partner stating that he/she has alternative attractions. Assuming you could easily enter into a healthy relationship with another male/female who shared your attractions and sexual interests, there is nothing about that type of belly attraction that would qualify as fetishism.
Furthermore, I want to challenge the longstanding notion that fat is unpleasant, unattractive, and unwanted. This deeply-held societal norm is part of what makes belly admirers believe they must have a disorder, because most of society doesn’t share their views. But this is shortsighted. Historically, fat has not always been viewed as a bad thing; indeed, many societies and cultural groups view fat as attractive and a sign of wealth and power. There are some cultural groups that still view fat as a sign of power and attraction. The sumo of Japan are one such example. In Mauritania, it is common to induce young girls to a process called gavage, which is similar to the French tradition of force feeding ducks to produce fois gras. To the men of Mauritania, the fatter women are, the more beautiful they are. Some men will not entertain marrying women who are too thin.
These are entire cultures devoted to the beauty of big. But there are plenty of individuals across the globe who like fat and gaining, homosexual and heterosexual alike. It may feel uncommon, because our society does not promote the value of gaining and fat in media and advertising, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist – or worse, that it is some sort of taboo or disorder.
Consider this. When you talk to straight men, what is it that they find attractive about women? In many cases, they will endorse the breasts. The bigger the better, in many cases. What are breasts? They are soft, squeezable blobs of fat. Many men will encourage women to grow them bigger, whether through augmentation or increased attention to them during periods of particular bustiness (e.g., during pregnancies). It’s not useful for women to have bigger breasts – it does not enhance their ability to breast feed – and if anything, it leads to greater health and mobility issues. So why is this type of fat admiration condoned?
This leads to a much larger discussion topic – that is, who holds the power in society, and therefore, who defines what or who is attractive? Straight men find breasts attractive, and bigger, fatter breasts are even better, so that is what society values. But when was the last time you heard a straight male breast admirer admitting he has a fetish?
Well said! This needs to be heard :)
ReplyDeleteGreat post - welcome to blogging, hope the coming posts are in the same vein. We could all use some clarity when it comes to this thing :)
ReplyDeleteHaving written a lot on the subject, both as a Family Therapist and as a Sex Researcher, I would add a couple of points to your well-written initial post…
ReplyDeleteThere’s a very interesting book, Disorders of Desire by Janice Irvine, who points out how those of us who work professionally in the mental health profession, intersect not only psychological issues, but legal ones as well. One of the Functions of the DSM is to justify institutionalization, for example. This is one of the reasons people like Money pushed replacing “fetish” with the term “paraphilia.” Fetish has become such a common “lay” term, it lost of lot of “punch” when a professional was sitting on a witness stand. A lot of modern effort has been to push expressions of sexuality and eroticism from “badness” to “sickness,” but not necessarily to “celebration.”
It’s not uncommon for medical/scientific terms to fade in and out of fashion, and for them to continue to exist on a “popular culture” level, even when professionals avoid them. An example would be “sexual preference,” which is never used these days by an ethical psychologist, but is extensively used by right wing extremists pushing an anti-gay agenda. Or, as a person of color myself, I would point out one rarely runs across “negro” in a current academic journal.
In working with the media, both as a reporter/writer and as someone forced to do a lot of interviews, I would like to quote Jay, who stated—“It doesn’t take a lot of creativity to realize you’ve got the wrong answer, but it takes creativity to realize you’ve got the wrong question.” Just so, a lot of our training in mental “health” and medicine is really pathologically based. It’s precisely because what we do potentially impacts an individual’s jail sentence, and because medical coverage is paid for by emphasizing how “sick” a patient is, we’re “stuck” with terms like “fetish” and “paraphilia” which were designed for “pathologizing.” Even Money admitted we know a great deal about what “goes wrong” with sexuality, but we don’t have much research about how “healthy” sexuality develops. And frankly, the last 8 years of federal administration did all it could to prevent such research.
As an American Indian living in Arizona, I am almost daily reminded of the fact “fetish” had nothing originally to do with sexuality, but was an anthropological word coined in 1757, by De Brosses, and used to describe physical objects (blood, religious/spiritual related articles, totems, etc.) that are associated with “other people”—i.e., people other than the culture of the one describing their activities. Earlier this week, I was looking at several cases of “Zuni carved fetishes” on-sale.
I often wish we could more easily make useful distinctions, so that in the “real world” we had more terms like “kinky” and “pervy” where there was a greater sense of celebration, rather than a sense of medical aberration. Sigh—but even here we end up with a word derived from “pervert.” That dates back from the 1300’s in terms of someone deviating from established religious doctrine, and is first used as a “sexual deviation” by Ellis in 1897. Ah, well…. (Eagledancer on Beefyfrat)
www.coyotecooks.workpress.com
Well, I’ve often said there are few things sexier than a well-fed man brandishing a copy of the APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, and now we have proof. He’s more than just a pretty paunch, that Fatnesse.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea fetishism had such onerous membership criteria (something akin to joining the Academy and voting for the Oscars). I’m also a little unnerved by the concept of paraphilia and its merry band of subtypes, it makes me worry someone out there wants to lump us together with all manner of perversions from left-handedness to frotteurism (that’s a popular university drinking game, right?).
So if the door bitch at the fetish club won’t let us in and the paraphilia entrance exams require distress and dysfunction, then why is there no adequate means to express (let alone explain) our attractions and arousal in the language of psychology? Is it simply because a perfectly happy and functional fat-lover is unlikely to come under psychological scrutiny in the first place, and so the text books walk by unaware?
I get the boobie analogy, but is that a social product or is it something inherent? What straight man doesn’t love a happy pair of pups, regardless of culture or fashion or era? And if the heavy lassies of Mauritania increase their desirability by the pound, then isn’t that a matter of social status rather than the object of an inherent sexual attraction? Isn’t it like having expensive clothes or a red Ferrari, it might add to the allure for some but is it the real source of the hard-on?
I’d prefer not to go looking for names and tags and their unwanted suggestion of conditions or defects, but it’s so hard to discuss what makes us different without an adequate language that puts things in context. What do you call a sexual arousal that is as much about a cause and effect as it is about a static physical state? If we consider fat to be our own particular brand of beauty, why is so much attached to the development, acceleration and further indulgence of that beauty? Why is so much associated with what we do to our own bodies? And why is it so much more complicated than the simple art of being gay?
These are the sort of questions that make it so difficult to compare fat-love to breast-love, or to the status of hefty Mauritanians. I can’t help wondering whether the humble foot fetishist feels the same way, or whether he’d know what to call himself if he failed the distress and dysfunction test at the fetish club.
Maybe I agonize too much. Maybe we should just cut to the chase and debate which American Idol contestant would most benefit from gavage.
xxxT
Tadpole, thanks for an astute (and humorous) comment. As always, I look forward to your musings. In regard to your question about the breast analogy, I simply offer this. Who decided that skinny is attractive? Or fat? Or big breasts? Or small breasts? These are all social constructions, and depending on your time in history and the culture you find yourself, they vary. I dare say that in some parts of the midwest U.S., a woman can consider herself (or be called) "shapely, curvy" in a way that in NYC or LA would make her feel, well, fat. That same woman in Mauritania would need to pack in on to please her suitor. In Mauritania, fat is a sign of wealth, privelege, and status, for sure; but it is also something that young boys dream about. To be older, to have a fat woman, to be able to hold all her fleshy cargo...this is the stuff of pre-adolescent's wet dreams. Here we would call that a fetish or perverted...there it is expected. So, in 2009, you can have a young boy in Mauritania openly discussing his love for fat women with his buddies and feeling accepted, and a young boy who tries to have the same conversation in the U.S. or other more industrialized countries (notice I didn't say "civilized") would be ostracized.
ReplyDeleteAs I alluded to above, my belief is it boils down to power. Who owns the power, and who defines what is or is not something born of power. Several hundred years ago, fat was considered a symbol of power and prestige because most people had to scrape together their sustenance, and only the most wealthy had abundance. Nowadays, junk food and fast food are cheap... easily obtainable... and therefore fat is easy. It costs a lot of money to afford a gym membership, a personal trainer, natural, organic healthy foods, and the designer clothes to show it off. So we happen to be in a time when fat is unfashionable...but love of fat is hardly a disorder. I would just say that we're old fashioned in our attractions...by about 300 years.