Engaged!

Well! It has been almost a month since I got engaged! For this reason, I have not been posting lately. I've been busy picking out invitations and special ordering my wedding gown instead! Once the big mega decisions (such as venues) have been taken care of, I should have more time to write on my blog. :)

Just for Laughs--Crazy News Stories

Astrologer facing prosecution for predicting long life for a dead man
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1718662.cms

Thief steals over $5000 in chewing gum
http://www.torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGTA/2007/03/03/3690433-sun.html

Boy offered $100 for his six-legged frog
http://www.stuff.co.nz/3980959a11.html

Setting the Record Straight

I intentionally have not posted my picture, weight, or measurements because my intentions were never (and still are not) to use this blog as a forum to give "air time" to every calorie-laden bit of food that I put into my mouth, to attract lust-filled admirers to ogle over my poundage, or to attract a sweet and lovable FA in search of a relationship. I appreciate the comments people have made both on the blog and through yahoo. Please do keep the comments coming, but first I feel a need to state why I'm not interested in using this blog for the purposes I outlined above.

1) I am a medium-sized BBW, hovering between women's size 16-18. At one point in time, I had been been nearly 300 pounds and a size 28, but for health reasons (namely to get off the blood sugar roller coaster of hypoglycemia), I had to make some lifestyle dietary changes which resulted in weight loss. I went through something of a mourning process as I lost this weight--I really felt as though I had lost a piece of my identity. Even though I still have strong desires to be upwards of 300, 400 pounds, I'd rather be a walking 200-pound person than lying in a casket until kingdom come at 400+ pounds. At my current size, my blood sugar is stable and my doctor no longer considers me to be at risk for diabetes, so I currently have no desire or intention to lose more. For this reason, while I WANT to be much, much larger, my feedee tendencies must be restricted to the realm of fantasy and role-play (or roll-play, as I like to say). ;) Therefore, I no longer indulge in any feeding frenzies that characterized a portion of my former life, and thus, there is no such material to post.

Some like to hit below the belt and call me a wannabe. Okay. I can live with that label. I know that there are lots of other "wannabe" gainers out there, too, and I'd love to hear from you. There are a plethora of reasons why someone may WANT to gain but doesn't actively pursue it, whether the reasons be health, profession, family, practicality of life, etc. Extreme obesity is not like other secret fantasies. Leather and cuffs can be taken off and hidden in a drawer while one is at work. 200 or 300 extra pounds is something a little bit more difficult to hide. A lack of active gaining does not mean the DESIRE to add to one's girth is not genuine. Genuine FAs with feeding/encouraging tendencies recognize this.

2) The kind of ogling and comments from men about my size that accompany my fantasies are not mainstream, even within the size acceptance community. I will ever-so briefly explain what I'm "into" and leave it at that, as my "fetish" comprises only half a percent of who I am. I believe my desires stem from the teasing I had as a child. I suffered a lot of emotional pain from being called fat names and being teased by my peers to being nagged and (unintentionally) shamed by my family and my doctor. I believe that I have tried to turn this pain into something pleasurable by sexualizing it. As a result, I enjoy endulging in any submissive role play where I am being scolded, teased, or humiliated for my obesity. I do have one condition: the whole thing must be a game, and the Dommie must be a TRUE admirer of BBW, just acting out his little part, with no real desire to hurt me. I am not into physical pain, dehumanization, or sexual degradation. As there is a very active yahoo group that focuses specifically on this playful fat humiliation fetish, there is no need to reproduce it here. If you have an interest in this area, you can follow the link to Ms. Kathy's blog, the owner of the group. I do not wish it to become the central focus of the blog as I want everyone to feel comfortable here.

3) I'm not seeking a relationship with anyone right now because I'm in one! We are extremely happy and are planning to get married. However, if somehow through the comments or through the links people hook up, I'd be delighted to hear about it!

I'd like to go back to the main reason I started this blog. Because the mere fact that I ENJOY being fat and DESIRE to gain more seems unbelievable and exceedingly bizarre to most people, I have felt a need to get a personal handle on WHY I feel this way. Is it nature or is it nurture? I want to share my experiences and invite the active gainers and my fellow wannabes to share theirs so that we can compare our stories. I also am interested in learning about the past experiences of FAs. Do you know what led to your attraction to fat? How did you deal with it growing up? What leads you to being secretive or open about your preferences? If you're a closet FA, please feel free to share why, without fear of being attacked for being in hiding. Just like some BBWs struggle to accept that there are indeed genuine FAs, there are some FAs who struggle to accept their own preferences. Everyone has different levels of self-acceptance, and the less we criticize and the more we encourage, the happier we'll all be in the end.

Besides, a little introspection never killed anybody, right?

And the Moral of the Story Is....

I admit to having read the occasional "Weight Gaining Story" floating around the internet, and 95% of the time, the experience is disappointing. Yeah, yeah I know that the authors' purpose in writing weight gaining stories is not to wow the world with their literary skills, but running a spell check sure would help. Despite the frequent disappointment, there are gems to be found in the midst of the drivel. While most stories abruptly cut off at the point at which the author presumably "got off" while composing his literary masterpiece, some stories actually contain the elements of a real story with noteworthy themes.

I ran across one such tale today. "Fat Family", posted by someone who goes by "The Observer" on dimensionsmagazine.com, shared a story that has its basis in reality. The story is of a man who adores BBW but marries a thin woman simply because they get along so well. Throughout the story, she has two children and begins to fill out slightly, and he finds pleasure in giving her more attention as a result. It is a story of his being ashamed to tell her what he truly finds attractive and her discovering his secret desires along the way. Near the end of the story, their plump son comes home from school upset because he was teased about being fat.

For the first time in my life, I actually EMPATHIZED with a character in a weight gain story! I vividly remember coming home from school upset because I had been teased about being fat, and for a short blip in time, I felt as though someone had penned my own story before my very eyes. It was a very short blip in time, however. The way the parents, namely the father, handled the little boy's feelings was completely opposite of how my parents had handled mine.

I'd like to post an excerpt from the story here. If you'd like to read the whole thing, check out the links column on the right-hand side of the page.

--excerpt--
Ethan laughed, "I guess that calls for a banana split." And they went out to a local coffee shop and shared one.

In this environment it was not surprising that both of the kids were becoming somewhat plump as well.

Eric was the first to hear about it. Someone at school told him he was "fat" and he came home upset. Not really upset, you understand. He just didn't like being called a name. But he wasn't old enough to comprehend that he wasn't going to solve the problem with three heaping scoops of ice cream before supper. Ethan, perfectly happy with everyone's size, realized that his family's little world was threatened from the outside.

He asked Eric what "fat" meant to him.

Eric paused --- he was only in the second grade, after all. "I dunno, but Bobby said I was."

"So am I, so is Julie, so is Mommy and so are millions of others. Do you know why?"

"No."

"Because we have fun together and enjoy life. Does Bobby have a family that takes him places like we do?"

"He doesn't even have a Daddy - and his Mom is crabby and mean."

"Hmmm ... do you think maybe he is calling you names because he feels bad that you have things he doesn't?"

"I dunno."

"Well, let me tell you something. Yes, you are fatter than some people. You are also skinnier than some others. There is nothing wrong with either one. But people who are unhappy sometimes call others names who are different than they are. Do you know why?"

"No."

"Because for a little while it makes their pain go away. But it won't last. Would you like to help Bobby?"

"Maybe, I guess."

"We are going to the beach next week. Why don't you tell Bobby that I said you could bring a guest and you would like it to be him."

"I don't think he's even been there."

"Tell him he can have his Mother call your Mom or I to get permission --- OK?"

And with that Eric got his first lesson in diverting criticisms --- and Jill, who had been observing the whole thing, gained a new appreciation of her husband's real feelings.

"You really don't mind having a plump family, do you? Not a word about watching what he eats or anything --- just turn critics into friends."

"I guess I'm nailed --- do you disagree?" he replied.

"It's different than the way my Mother would have handled it - that's for sure. She would have made some sarcastic remark about what do you expect and then railed for ten minutes about the other kid's family pedigree."
--end of excerpt--

Maybe this isn't the kind of story that will "get you off quick", but if you have or ever plan to have kids, I encourage you to check it out in its entirety as the applications are far-reaching--a true pearl of wisdom worth harvesting.

Skinny Models

In the links section, there is an article about the possibility of implementing a ban in New York on models who have a BMI of less than 18.5. I am not a fan of government regulations and control, and I don't believe this ban should be implemented to save the health of the models anymore than I believe that Doritos should be taxed at a higher rate than yogurt for the purpose of slimming down America. Rather, if the public knows that being ridiculously thin is unhealthy, and that the modeling industry promotes this lifestyle, it's the public's responsibility to pressure them to employ normal-sized women by spending elsewhere, thus cutting off their funding.

At any rate, it's an interesting article. Real problem. Bad solution.

Root of Desire

Can you look back over your life and pinpoint the moment when you realized you ENJOYED being fat? I'm not sure that I can personally identify the moment I started enjoying it per se, but as I've reflected on my past, I can say with some certainty that I know when I started becoming obsessed with being fat.

I was a fairly average-sized toddler/little kid, but by the time I was in first grade, I was chubby. Chunky. Not obese, but a far cry from being like the other gracefully slender girls in my ballet class. Had no one ever said a word to me about my weight, I might have passed out of my chunky stage, its existence recalled only through a series of birthday party photographs chronicling my life prior to a childhood growth spurt.

However, my extra poundage was brought to my attention on the school bus. The most coveted seat on the bus was in the very back, which made the experience of going over bumps comparable to an amusement park ride. In an attempt to get as near to the back as possible, I, a piddly first-grader, chose the seat just in front of the Queen of the Fifth Grade, who had already claimed the prized back seat. Apparently the Queen had been saving this seat for her Royal Court, for when I sat down, she demanded that I move.

I must have had a tough-spirited nature that had yet to be broken, because I didn't budge from that seat. Her Highness began calling me names and told me to move my fat ass from the seat, but I did not move. With every new verbal assault attacking my weight, my indignance grew, despite the reddened heat of embarassment I could feel spreading across my cheeks. Still, I did not move. More words. More teasing. More humiliating remarks about my weight. Finally, a punch in the back of my head, and the Queen fell silent. Strutting with confidence while holding my head as high as any first-grader could, I boarded that bus, and biting my lip while holding back tears, I disembarked into 12 years of teasing, name-calling, and fat jokes.

Upon arriving at home, the shame and humiliation I had experienced that day came pouring out, and I cried to my mother about the girl on the bus who had teased me about being fat. Expecting to be cuddled and comforted, needing to be cuddled and comforted, I exposed my emotional wounds to my mother, that they might be mended with her consoling words and miracle cure-all kisses. Instead, and oh-so matter-of factly stated, she said, "Well, maybe you should try to lose some weight."

Enduring insult added to injury, I felt betrayed and alone. Any consolation would have to be done on my own, and the next best thing to the loving arms of a mother whispering that her child is beautiful is a handful of cookies and a bowlful of ice cream. Mint chocolate chip.

Here we witness the birth of a vicious cycle. Fat jokes and teasing led to self-comfort with food, which led to weight gain, which led to greater amounts of teasing and more frequent fat jokes, which led to the cycle continuing, and my obsession with weight took root.

Introduction

I don't pretend to be a psychologist. I don't pretend to have a secret window that peers in on anyone else's life. I don't lump all fluffy items together and deem everything a marshmallow. All I can say is what I know, what I have lived, what I have experienced, what I have dreamed, what I have fantasized, and what I have desired:

Fatness.

Obesity.

Corpulence.

I'm fat, and I have been since childhood. I'm more than just fat, though. I'm fat and I want to get fatter. I have daydreamed about gaining incredible amounts of weight ever since I was six or seven years old, but in a world that told me that pudgy kids were unhealthy kids, that chubby kids were lonely kids, and that fat kids were ugly kids, I grew up believing that I needed to have my head examined. In order to avoid such examination, however, I kept my desires stealthily hidden, indulging my fantasies by writing stories about gaining weight and drawing pictures of fat people in a spiral-bound notebook, hidden beneath my bed. As I grew, so did my fear of discovery. Consequently, these child-perspective stories of growing fatter along with pictures of fat people drawn in a child's hand were eternally lost in fire, carefully torn into confetti-sized pieces, and put into the "paper trash" to be burned in the backyard.

In the mid-nineties, I discovered that I wasn't the only one who needed to have my head examined. I first discovered the term BBW in my senior year of college and learned about the underground world of men who love fat women. I later learned that some of these men enjoyed seeing women getting fatter. Even more shocking, I learned that some of these men enjoyed intentionally fattening a woman up! My head was spinning! Where on earth could I FIND one of these guys? A few random searches on the internet containing terms such as BBW + gaining weight led me into the deeper underground world of feederism. It was while browsing through this internet subculture that I realized there were indeed other women like me, with deep desires of becoming extremely fat.

This blog is devoted to exploring the desires of those who want to gain, whether they live out their fantasies or not. I recognize that there are even smaller branches of fetishes that stem out of the desire to gain (or to see someone else gain), from immobility fetishes to clothes bursting fetishes, to measurement charting fetishes to wearing pig noses and oinking fetishes to humiliation fetishes to force feeding fetishes, etc. etc. etc. The list could go on for days. The people who visit this blog will likely be interested in a variety of these individualized fetishes, but what we all will have in common is the desire to add to our own girth, or to that of someone else.

In short, I would like to hear from all of you who desire to gain. As I post musings regarding my desire to gain weight, particularly in terms of my childhood, please reply and share what we have in common and what is different about our experiences. I wonder if there is a common thread that runs through us all that gives us the desire to gain or if we are all completely random. Honestly, I'm hoping to find that there are more folks out there who can say that they are "just like me" so I can set this notion of being a freak and needing to have my head examined aside.

More soon...