On Curves

‘More than half of women hate the sight of their naked bodies.’ ‘The secrets of losing belly fat.’ ‘Sex moves that burn 400 calories.’ ‘By age 6, girls start to express concerns about their own weight or shape.’ ‘Only four per cent of women globally consider themselves beautiful.’ ‘By adolescence, studies show that young people are receiving an estimated 5,260 “attractiveness messages” per year from television commercials.’

These are just a few snippets of the headlines, adverts and news articles I found within minutes on the web about women’s bodies and how they feel about them. I actually live in a cosy little cocoon in which I see a lot less of this than most people; I long ago stopped reading the women’s magazines that are really just a marketing vehicle to get you to buy stuff, I don’t watch telly (I mean it, I can play a DVD but have no TV services) and I don’t do a lot of recreational shopping. I'm also wary of taking information from magazine surveys and beauty company research at face value. But there's no escaping the fact that there is enormous pressure on women to look a certain way. And mostly that way is thin.

Now, I don’t have the time to produce an academic treatise on all of this. But I do write smutty stories. And when I saw the call for submissions to Coming Together: With Curves, I thought I could do a little tiny something to help redress the balance. To present a character who is both curvy and confident. Because there’s one thing I know for sure - that self-consciousness about your flabby bits does not make for enjoyment of sex. It’s unusual for me to even describe a character’s physical appearance in any great depth; I usually leave that up to the reader. But given the prevalence of Photoshopped images of size zero models, I think there’s a need to show that women – and men – come in all shapes and sizes. And that their size does not define them, their appearance does not tell you who they are, the number on their clothing labels does not make them good or bad or healthy or lazy or ugly or sexy or kind or mean or... you get the message. 

If you’re interested, I read a blog post recently by Hanne Blank entitled Real Women, in which she points out that ‘Real women do not look like just one thing.’

All the buy links for Coming Together with Curves are here and profits go to the charity Parkinsons UK.