My roommate squeals with happy excitement. I look up to see her wearing her boyfriend’s jacket, she’s swimming in it. She is a petite blonde girl, and I smile to see her so happy. She explains to me that this is how a boyfriend’s jacket should fit. Overly large and where she can barely see her fingertips at the bottom of the sleeves. I know she’s not trying to make any back handed comments, but I cringe a little bit.
You see, I am dating a spaghetti noodle, in my head I like to affectionately call him my fettuccine noodle, and due to working at a labor-intensive job he has very defined arm muscles. So, when I put on his jackets or T-shirts they just fit. I am a thick girl. I’m not at the point where people are overly concerned for my health, but I have at least 50 pounds on my sweetheart of a boyfriend. I’m a size 14 or 16 depending on the manufacturers and the alignment of the stars. He is kind, supportive, and truly loves me for the person that I am. If I say that I’m going to go work out he tells me to “go get hufflebuff,” which is a little joke I made up because I’m a Hufflepuff. If I tell him I want to go to the store and buy an entire cake, he gives me the same level of enthusiasm.
In American society, we are convinced as young children that dating someone with a similar body type as us is the norm. If you are a skinny or fit person, you’re supposed to date a thin or in-shape person, and the husky date the husky. The idea of mixed weight couples is such a strange concept in western culture that TLC produced a new reality TV show called, “Hot and Heavy,” and I really wish I was making this up. The show revolves around the relationships between plus sized women, “heavy” and men that are “hot.” This is not only degrading to the women featured on this show, but also births an entire generation who will look through this lens of prejudice.
In my own relationship I’ve been asked if I met by boyfriend online or if I had even met him yet. I can see it in their eyes when they ask wondering had he really seen what I looked like, was I catfishing him, or maybe he was just too good to be true. We met as friends through our mutual friend. As we got to know each other, we built up a mutual attraction.
We found our love within a social bubble; the friends we shared were those I’d known since childhood. They were nonjudgmental and the biggest supporters of our relationship, and because they know us, I think they even once described his personality as very similar to mine. “Likes to read and drink,” although neither of us are quite as Hemingway as that quote would have one believe. But in the real-world others merely getting a glimpse of his photo on the home screen of my phone sparks curiosity into our relationship.
In our current culture, thinness often equates to beauty. In movies we’ve been watching since we were children, when the “ugly” girl goes through her life changing transformation, suddenly she’s not only thin, but with form fitting clothes and her curly unruly hair is sleek and straight. These toxic ideas of what is pretty are the source of the negative comments towards a relationship between this plus sized princess and her prince.
In a perfect world, I wouldn’t be faced with snide looks from other girls or be asked how I managed to get such a good-looking boyfriend. It wouldn’t be presumed that I caught him with only the most perfectly angled selfies. The truth is, he sees in me the girl that he loves, he loves the curves of my body, he loves my intelligence, and my sense of humor. He loves all the parts of me, the ones that will never change and those that will, and he learns to love at every evolution.