This is Part 2 of a series
Part 1: So Where Are The Thick Romance Heroines?
Part 2: Slender Is A Status Symbol
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The Ultimate Decider.

I’ve been thinking rather hard about thick v’s thin.

There’s been images of “thick” women on Facebook that caught my attention, and I posted about them, here, and wondered why we still insist on the “perfect” image of thin heroines in our books and movies.

And there’s the fact that “thin” is bloody expensive to acquire these days, which I also wrote about.

Thick vs thin is a very personal debate.  Unlike smoking, it doesn’t affect anyone else but you, and the “you” we’re talking about is, alas, mostly women, who are the gender of the race that must use appearance as the primary tool to attract a mate (unlike peacocks, where it is the male that gets to preen for the female).  So for the sake of this discussion, I have to bring this post back to focus on me.  I can’t and won’t speak for anyone else.   I suspect my thinking and my decisions are unique, just like every woman’s should be.

One of the things I noticed about the “thick” woman being spread about Facebook was that male applause was in the distinct minority.  This isn’t actually a can of worms I want to open today, except to say that I noticed the lack of male approval.

I’m also a bit of a clothes horse, when I can afford it.  I love to sew, and I love colours, and I love new clothes.  I love and adore going to the Romantic Times Convention because it gives me the perfect excuse to dress up in outrageous dresses that I could never wear anywhere else.  I also have (had) an enormous closet of shoes.

At the moment, I don’t fit into most of my great clothes, and they’re all years old, anyway, because I won’t buy new ones while I’m carrying this extra weight.  Frankly, a lot of fashions look terrible on a thick body, and I feel self-conscious and uncomfortable wearing them.  So I don’t.

Then there’s sex.  I’m sorry, but a thick woman trying to look alluring in skimpy lingerie defies logic.  There’s nothing sexy about it at all – not to me (and remember, this is purely my perspective for right now).  Sexiness is far more about attitude, yes, but if you look in the mirror and what you see makes you feel ridiculous, trying to maintain your sexy mindset is a struggle.

I won’t go into too much detail about loss of flexibility, and how a thick body limits creativity and inventiveness in the bedroom.  If you’re curious, try reading an old post of mine, “How to Start Looking More Sexy – Body Appearance“, which will give you some more food for thought.

All of these items are superficial.  If I used them as an excuse to blow thousands of dollars of our limited household budget on a quest for a new slender me, then you would be quite right to call me selfish, vane and worse.

But there’s one winning argument why I should do this that out-ranks everything I’ve said so far:  My health.

There’s overwhelming data, undeniable mountains of it, proving that older overweight women are at risk for a long list of diseases.  Most of the diseases are fatal.  They start at heart attacks and end with higher odds of contracting a dozen different cancers.  The list of diseases in between are no picnic.  By losing weight, I eliminate or diminish the odds of these diseases to close to zero.

My vanity says “take the excuse and run.”  Logic says “I don’t want to die, why am I still debating this?”

So I’ve stopped debating.  This is my choice.  I’m voting for thin.

I’m going to motivate myself with all the vanity excuses, but I’m really doing it because I want to live.  I have no idea how I’m supposed to afford it, but I’ll figure it out.

What about you?