On Fatness Being Beautiful

A while ago I took one of those bias tests online, which tests your prejudices towards various marginalized groups. The results weren't very interesting, except for one thing: I am apparently positively biased towards fat people.

I certainly would hate to be fat myself (obviously, since I'm trying to lose weight) but fatness in other people doesn't bother me at all, and I do tend to associate it with positive things like being a good cook and having a cheerful personality.

My positive bias might be connected to my rabbit obsession. Rabbits, like all animals, are much cuter when fat. When I pretend my stuffed animals are having conversations, they are always very proud of their fatness (the vain one even goes on crash fatness diets, like butter with everything), and base their opinion of others' attractiveness largely on weight. Maybe with these conversations I have brainwashed myself into appreciating fatness. It just looks so cozy and soft: I think maybe it's cuter because it makes everything look more like a baby?

Little R isn't actually fat (she is 50% percentile for height and weight), but since she's a baby, she has fat rolls on her arms and legs, a little pot belly, and a double chin. I love her fatness so much, both because it makes her all squishy and because I like the way it looks. I enjoy dressing her in tight clothes that show off the belly (or leg rolls eee!). I tell her multiple times a day that she is fat or chubby (usually something like "Look at this fat little baby! What a little belly! Belly belly belly!").

Today though it occurred to me that maybe I'm giving her a complex about her weight. After all, in the non-stuffed rabbit world, being fat (especially if female) is incredibly judged, and affects your career, relationship prospects and health negatively. Is it weird to go on and on about how fat she is? Should I stop? Of course, maybe I am just overthinking the whole thing, since she is a tiny baby and has no concept of body image, weight issues, or anything else.

I Love Rabbits

I have a great great love for rabbits. They are my favorite animal, the heroes of one of my very favorite books (Watership Down), and overall just so totally cute! It is a source of great joy to me that little R was born in the Year of the Rabbit (and is even a Golden Rabbit: how cute is that?), as I have always regretted my Chinese zodiac sign is only a Horse.

Basically I love rabbits because they are cute. However, since this is really pretty shallow, I enjoy imputing a wide variety of moral qualities to them: for instance, that they are kind, patient and morally pure (since they are not aggressive and don't hurt other animals). The fantasy version of a rabbit that exists in my head acts as sort of a moral compass for me. This is one of the reasons I kind of don't want a pet rabbit, because then it would just be a cute furry animal and it would be harder to go around pretending rabbits are super-beings.

I still like looking at them though. This really cheesy video of a cartoon rabbit singing Europop makes me happy every single time I watch.