Stuffies

In typical (i.e., civilian) boy-meets-boy or boy-meets-girl scenarios, the attraction is generally there from the beginning. Whether they meet on the dance floor, bar, library, coffee shop or online, each individual’s physical presentation clearly attracted the other person. If they didn’t attract, the relationship would never germinate. You can almost read their minds: “Gee, I really like that person. He looks like just my type…plus he’s witty, funny and relaxed.” The relationship proceeds and compatibility is assessed over the next months/years, but rarely do you encounter a civilian saying, “gee, they really are so perfect for me…if only they weighed another 100 pounds.” People may wish for certain attributes on their partner to be slightly better than what they got (a longer/thicker penis, bigger breasts, more/less height, different eye/hair color, etc) but for the most part, relationships can overcome these superficialities due to compromise and perspective (and by perspective, I mean the more you see who’s out there, the more you realize you probably have a good thing with your partner).

Conversely, for the gainer world, the immediate attractions that one guy feels for another may or may not be as important as the gainer’s change in size…and presumably, his change in subsequent attractiveness. Using the above example, an admirer might say, “Gee, I really like that guy, he seems like just my type…witty, funny, relaxed…if he just had another 100 lbs on his body.” As you can see, the attractions here are almost displaced — temporarily put on hold until some arbitrary goal is met. And it really is arbitrary — we may think another guy would look great with 100 lbs of fat and muscle on him, but do we really know? How will his face fill out? Will he develop dramatic stretchmarks, and are those appealing? How will his overall body look after the gain? These are unknown variables, yet the gainer-encourager relationships seem to be based, to some degree, on this initial leap of faith.

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Fatnesse Follies: Finding attraction and romance in the gaining world

This is a whole article about all the issues revolving around physical attraction for gay gainers and encouragers. As a (mostly) straight feeder chick, I find this article very familiar in some places and very strange in others.

First of all, the writer talks about a gainer community, which isn’t something I’ve ever experienced in regards to my specific fetish. I am kind of in awe that the author ha seen enough face-to-face relationships play out that they can make these kind of generalizations. Most feeders and feedees I’ve met have to make do with chat roomsand webcams. 

Second, that whole bit about attractiveness being “temporarily put on hold” I found fascinating. I can’t say I’ve ever based my physical attraction on someone for what they might become instead of what they already were (related: I’ll always choose sex now over what might never happen in the future.) I have definitely fantasized about what some of my (long term, non feederist) partners have looked like if they weighed more or developed a penchant for stuffing, but I tended to view these as variations on the same person rather than deal makers or breakers. I take it as a given that someone’s appearance will change due to circumstances, as they age, or whether they suddenly turn Goth.

That said, I’ve also screened online feedees for those with similar ideals to myself when it comes to stuffing and gaining. A “no limits” feedee disturbs me the same way a “no limits” sub does, because I feel like feederism still doesn’t have any hard guidelines for what you should and should not do during what I think of as a form of edge play. The other main reason I’ve broken it off after a couple weeks of IMs is the level of participation they allowed me to have. Some feedees already had very definite ideas of what they were going to look like, and I didn’t like feeling that I was simply an accessory voyeur. Some feedees were so eager to please that it made me uncomfortable—you shouldn’t be changing yourself that much just for an Internet hookup!

After explaining my woes to a friend of mine, they told me that what I was actually looking for was the same kind of dynamic in a dom/sub relationship, and the majority of feederists might not even know what that was. I keep forgetting how little overlap there can be between sexuality communities, and how many feederists think BDSM is “out there” when they’re already practicing an unusual form of sexuality.