Laura Antoniou’s Some Women: a brief report of my favorite essay 

Title (as given to the record by the creator): Laura Antoniou’s Some Women: a brief report of my favorite essay 
Date(s) of creation: Issue 4: October 1995
Creator / author / publisher: Cuirdyke & MsDaddy’s girl, FaT GiRL
Physical description: The page is primarily text but on the right there is an ad for Stormy Leather featuring a photograph of a feminine person wearing lipstick and eyeshadow in a dark top with a plunging neckline and long gloves that go up to their biceps.
Reference #:  FG4-037
Links: [ PDF ]

Laura Antoniou’s Some Women: a brief report of my favorite essay 

By Cuirdyke & MsDaddy’s girl

I always seem to be at the small end of any bell curve ever plotted. All of my important interests and defining characteristics are far from the norm. So I really enjoy finding something that brings together two or more of them. This is the first reason that “Heavy S/M Fat Brats Speak Out” by Christine is my favorite essay in Some Women.

Reading an essay by another fat lesbian, who is proud of who she is, was affirming. I recognized myself in a lot of what she had to say. I, too, have struggled with fatphobia, both within myself and in society. As a fat woman, I am bombarded daily with the message that it is not OK to be what I am, and it took me a long time to realize that it was that message, not my body, that is really not OK. 

In the short time that I have been in the S/M scene, I have observed, like Christine, an unusual acceptance of fat women. As Christine says. I find myself appreciated for what I like to do, not just what I look like. In fact, I hadn’t even thought about it much until I read her article. Now, as I do think about it. It seems fitting. Coming out into the S/M scene was. for me, an act of accepting and acknowledging an important and valuable part of myself, a part that had been deeply hidden because society had taught me that it was unacceptable and bad. Now, as I exalt in my new freedom to be myself, to receive and enjoy the sensations I crave, it is appropriate that my fat body is the vehicle for these sensations and is accepted. Society condemns both S/M and fat. It gives me particular pleasure to reflect on the fact that it is through this fat body that I experience the exquisite pain/pleasure of S/M.

When I’m in a scene, I don’t worry about what I look like. I’m focused on what I’m feeling, and on what my top is doing and demanding of me. If anyone watching doesn’t like my body because it is fat. That is her problem; it doesn’t trouble me.

The situation is. of course, not perfectly idyllic. I still encounter internalized fatphobia in other women. and I’m not completely free of it yet myself. But when I look around at a play parry or S&Mazons meeting and see other fat women enjoying themselves and their bodies. It feels very good. At the Philadelphia Leather contest. I watched as a fat woman won the title. I felt proud of the community I had recently become a part of. She had been my favorite as I watched the contest, and it was gratifying to see that the winner was not selected based on the larger society’s standards of beauty. In closing. I want to echo Christine’s plea, “will fat ever be a simple descriptive word?” I am a fat S/M dyke, and I like being what I am.

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