rei

hello, lovelies! to give you an alternative to the endless scroll, I dug into the archives and pulled out some of my favourite posts.

here, you'll find lots of sweet encouragement, tenderness, support, and a good amount of shameless craving 🥵

(of course, if you need more, you can always ask for exactly what you want.)

choose your own encouragement

don't have the energy to eat? sweet and doting feeder

insisting you're skinny and have to keep eating

gained accidentally and decided you like it

you've put on some relationship weight and I'm obsessed

there's a million tastes you want to experience

handling anxieties and insecurities

worried what people will say if you keep gaining

believing things will be okay if you stop restricting

scared of getting fat as much as you want it

advice

exploring kink when your mind and body aren't on the same page

tender love and care

treating a feedee like a beloved treasure

if you need to feel love for your body

perfect dates

at the movie theatre

thanksgiving dinner

at a restaurant, or several

summertime by the shoreline

daydreaming about summer picnics and ice cream

musings / encouragement / personal fave posts

what makes "helpless" so hot?

it's the devotion for me, babe

aww, did somebody eat too much?

I want you to eat for me

out of control / can't stop

do you really want me to keep going? yes

go on then, beg

it's all the little sounds you make...

we can stop if you want to. but you don't want to stop.

I know I can be overeager, but I just want you bigger

we agreed you'd eat until I said you're done

things y’all say that get me like 🥵

life is stressful. comfort eating is satisfying.

I want you to feel safe with me, pet

when your full belly is stretched tight, I just wanna...

you're doing so well. just a little more

Last year I wrote a popular article about why the thin partners of fat people owe them not just their respect, care, and affection, but indeed they - we - owe them solidarity. A lot of that article is spent laying out the bigotry that fat people face in the world on a daily basis and trying to make it clear how thin people like myself can be good to the fat folks we want to be with, whether that’s sexually, romantically, or otherwise.

In many ways that article was really a prelude to something else I’ve wanted to write about for quite some time. I and many others are militant that being attracted to fat people is not a fetish. Depending on who you ask, it’s a preference or an orientation, but not something that deserves nearly the amount of hand-wringing it gets. 

However.

Being attracted to fat people is the ticket to entry to a larger world of kink and fetish-play that extends far beyond vanilla sex that happens to involve a fat body. 

Beneath the horrors of anti-fat bigotry and the beauty of relationships with or between fat people, is an entire world of sex and sexuality that centres on fatness above and beyond beautiful bodies. I have been working on this article for quite some time, but in particular with @fatliberation's recent post about feedism, I want to talk about that - and how I think it offers unique opportunities for healing.

Deviance, Fat, Fetish, and Kink

For those of us attracted to fat people, the claim that such an orientation is fetishistic has been deeply hurtful and, to most of us, is completely wrong. After all: being attracted to thin people isn’t a fetish - why would people with a different body type be any different? But it goes deeper than that. As Najarian and Nee wrote in their brilliant 2023 paper “Fat Beyond the Fetish”:

The reality of fat attraction is more complex than fetishism allows. Fat bodies are admired in fluctuating and unstable ways across social, cultural, historical, and demographic boundaries, making it impossible to provide any sort of comprehensive definition of or persuasive explanation for fat beauty. Sociological and psychological research has focused (too much) on the deviancy of fat attraction, leading researchers to speculate about, among other topics, the possibility that “fat admiration stems from an idealization of individuals who challenge social norms about sexual identity and appearance” (Swami and Tovée 2009, 90).13 While it can be useful to theorize various forms of sexual desire (related to fatness or not) that challenge dominant and restrictive standards perpetuated by many contemporary societies, imagining fat attraction as subversive and deviant sustains prevailing suspicions toward fat beauty, closeting fat bodies and the people who admire fat bodies and repositioning them outside the realm of socially acceptable behavior. This logic implicitly (and perhaps unintentionally, though perhaps not) blames individuals for failing to abide by the oppressive circumstances of the culture they inhabit rather than critiquing society for failing to account for the diversity of its population. But fat sexualities are not deviant sexualities.

The use of the word deviant here is a profound one, and for younger people like myself, it’s hard to grasp the power of what that word means, especially in a sexual context. As Peter Conrad and Joseph W. Schneider wrote in their breakthrough work Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness (1980), there was a historical moment in post-Enlightenment Europe that led to the development of the very idea of a ‘social problem.’ Echoing historian of ideas Michel Foucault, while there’s something attractive about a move away from a punitive system of punishing sins towards ‘treatment’ of a ‘sickness,’ Conrad and Schneider are resolute that this transformation of how we viewed phenomena such as homosexuality was still tied up in many of the assumptions of prior systems. A sin, in other words, became a sickness.

This kind of thinking was what led the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to declare homosexuality a mental disorder in 1952. The same normative thinking, wherein cis, straight, monogamous couples are the only way to be “healthy” similarly led BDSM to be put in the category of sexual deviancy. It took decades of queer activism to remove homosexuality as a sickness from the DSM, and for BDSM only in 2014 - and even still, the medical and psychological communities love to demonize and pathologize any form of ‘alternative’ sexualities. 

The same story is sadly even more hegemonic in terms of fatness, where its vilification has been hegemonic and virtually immovable for almost a century. As has been written about constantly by fat people and allies, fatness is a unique category of social marginalization with a huge degree of permission, and indeed encouragement from society at large. While racism, for example, often requires some minimal degree of euphemism, everyone in society (including, and indeed especially other fat people) has an incredible degree of not just permission, but indeed encouragement, to view fat people as lazy, dumb, unfeeling, unworthy, and, for our purposes here, non-sexual. 

So, if you’re someone who is attracted to fat people and, for the sake of argument, you find the idea of people (including yourself or others) getting fatter attractive, where does that leave you? What happens, in other words, if you’re a feedist? 

Before I go into the specifics of what it means to be a feedist, I want to lay out the three arguments I want to make in this essay. They are as follows: 

Firstly, the attraction towards fat people is perfectly normal, and indeed beautiful and uplifting

Secondly, any form of kink behavior related to fat people needs to be viewed through a lens of social justice and sex positivity, lest any invisible anti-fat bias creep in around the edges. 

Lastly, feedism, as a particularly reviled instance of fat-oriented kink, can offer unique pathways towards healing ant pushing back against anti-fat bias, done correctly and consensually.

Let’s dig in.

Fat Attraction

It’s almost bizarre to have to ask the question, but psychologists, sexologists, and medical practitioners have routinely explored why some people are attracted to fat people and others are not. Many of us, being peered at under the microscope, have pushed back: why? Hanne Blank, a fat activist, writes scathingly of this ‘curiosity’:

“Fat people have sex. Sweet, tender, luscious sex. Sweaty, feral, sheet-ripping sex. Shivery, jiggly, gasping sex. Sentimental, slow, face-cradling sex. Even as you read these words, there are fat people out there somewhere joyously getting their freak on. Not only that, but fat people are falling in love, having hook-ups, being crushed-out, putting on sexy lingerie, being the objects of other people’s lust, flirting, primping before hot dates, melting a little as they read romantic notes from their sweeties, seducing and being seduced, and having shuddering, toe-curling orgasms that are as big as they are. It’s only natural.”

Gurleen Khandpur, writing in Media/Culture,  follows in spirit with: “While sexual, romantic and/or intimate acts between people where at least one individual is fat (Fat Sex) are deemed atypical, abnormal, fetishistic and even abusive, such encounters between able-bodied individuals who are thin or of average weight (Thin Sex) are deemed normal and desirable” and that “fat prejudice and thin privilege underlie this discrepancy.” 

Another way to put this is to say that to classify the attraction to fat people as abnormal or, at the very least, harmful to fat people because it “encourages” them to remain fat, is to say that both fat people are inherently unattractive and unworthy of attraction, but that being fat itself is bad. (We’re not going to even indulge the “what about their health” argument here - the science is wildly complex on the relationship between fat, health, and most ‘solutions’ are merely attempts to sell something from an ideological or commercial viewpoint).

This means that when fat people - and those who find them attractive - can enjoy a genuine connection that celebrates fatness, it can have a kind of dual significance. Most of us like to feel attractive and wanted, but if you’ve been told you’re ugly, unworthy, and sinful just for existing in your body, imagine how much more significant it is to have someone who says “Nah, you’re hot just the way you are.” It’s also why, as I wrote in “You Owe Your Fat Partner Solidarity,” it’s so important that potential thin partners also understand the fat experience and be an ally to fat people as best they can. But as someone who has had the privilege to be able to share my attraction with people who hadn’t had that (consensual) experience of lust, I can tell you personally, it’s been really special both to me and them. 

Fat Admiration and Fat-Forward Sexualities

Those of us who are significantly, primarily, or solely attracted to fat bodies are sometimes labeled as “fat admirers” (FAs for short). This is a strange term in many ways because it still inherently pathologizes fat bodies - ever met a ‘thin admirer’? - but it also can be helpful in conceptualizing people who, as I say, are significantly, primarily, or solely attracted to fat people. Because of its narrowness and, for some of us, the somewhat cringey connotations around “admiration,” I’ll generally use “fat-forward sexualities” as my term of choice in this article and note the importance of the word forward for a moment.

Sexualities that significantly centre attraction to people in fat bodies are not inherently interested only in those same bodies. As an older study from 2009 showed among surveyed men who were “fat admirers” (FAs), those with a fat-forward sexuality had a much broader range of body-types that they found attractive than so-called “normal” people. As someone with this kind of attraction, I feel both proud and grateful that I have access to desire for a significant range of how humans show up in the world – and, honestly, I feel really sad for people who don’t.

Source: Wikipedia User Mewtu synthesizing data from: Swami, Viren, and Martin J. Tovée. "Big beautiful women: The body size preferences of male fat admirers." Journal of Sex Research 46, no. 1 (2009): 89-96.

At the same time as Najarian and Nee push back against fat-oriented attraction as being fetishistic, they do think there is something unique about this world, as well. As they write: 

”We have found it useful to adopt the discursive framework of what we call fat-forward sexualities, which opens a range of opportunities to theorize, articulate, and describe the alluring complexity of fat attraction and fat sexuality.” [emphasis added]

They are careful to hit home the challenge of defining any sexuality because of the inherent breadth of any sexual community and, at the same time, the danger of cementing one particular understanding that can become restricting, and even oppressive, to the people it is supposed to identify. In their “sketches” of fat-forward sexualities, they identify six features:

Attraction to fatness transcends the straight male (white) gaze and is deeply implicated in queerness; furthermore, the role of lesbians and gay men in making space for fat attraction is often overlooked and under-valued;

Attraction to fatness has often been (and to me anecdotally, is increasingly) associated with transness. Expressions of gender euphoria related to fatness are commonplace in trans communities (even at the same time as disordered eating and anti-fatness are also extremely strong) and can be deeply beautiful;

Attraction to fatness can break down familiar stereotypes even in a cis-heterosexual context, and they believe fat-forward sexuality always retains a “queer subtext,” citing from Don Kulick’s essay on fat porn in 2005 where he notes that “[fat porn] displaces erotic pleasure from the genitals and disperses it to other parts of the body, thereby reconfiguring what can count as a pleasurable body” (while also retaining a reflexively critical view of pornography, too);

Attraction to fatness takes myriad combinations, with fat people actively, happily choosing to date one another, fat people seeking out contrastingly thin partners (as some of mine have in the past), and thin people seeking out fat partners;

Attraction to fatness is not the only, and sometimes it is not even the primary reason, why someone may be attracted to a particular fat person. As I have had to say to my partner and other fat partners over the years: fat people are not interchangeable for someone with a fat-forward sexuality simply because they’re fat.

Attraction to fatness is a broad field that contains pluralities of different forms of sexual attraction, just like queerness, and there is no overarching “right” way to embody a fat-forward sexuality.

Because of the diversity of experiences, orientations, and, unfortunately, the range of positive and negative behaviours from those with fat-forward sexualities, one of the groups that are most suspicious of fat admirers are often fat people themselves. This is because there can be so much internalized shame about being attracted to fat people that sometimes their worst abusers can be the people who find them most attractive. One of the tamest, but most common versions of this is the “secret fat girlfriend” (sadly, women generally get this the most), but there are other, more ugly instances of this kind of internalized shame being taken out on others in cruel and dismissive ways.

There is a great deal written about how badly fat people are treated in the dating and sex world, including by their would-be admirers, but fat voices can, should, and do speak for themselves in this respect.

And while I am frustrated that people like me need an identifying label just for being attracted to people we find hot, being attracted to fat people is beautiful. I feel deeply grateful that, for whatever unknown reason, I have been wired to find softness beautiful to behold and sensuous to touch.

More important than my take as a thin person, however, is what fat people themselves are saying:

Marie Southard Ospina, writing about her experience as a fat person encountering Big Beautiful Women (BBW) and Big Handsome Man (BHM) porn, notes appreciatively the “images or clips of fat babes lovingly caressing their bellies, zooming into the waves of their bodies as they dance, posing like classic pin-ups, or delighting in the movement of their jiggling thighs. They capture their fatness in ways we are told, both overtly and covertly, are off limits for people without flat tummies and thigh gaps.” And that: “In all the content I’ve seen, though, fatness is framed as intriguing, powerful, sensual and beautiful. There is no hint of shame – a word that is arguably meant to govern our entire sense of self-understanding as fat people.”

I could write a treatise on the different fat people I’ve found attractive, but Ospina’s writing here about why she likes people like me says more than I think I ever could: 

“It’s people who think every stretch mark and roll is a turn-on who subsequently turn me on; people who know that I want them to bite and suck and dig their fingers into every inch of my body, as anyone remotely kinky of a smaller size might want and expect of partners.”

Feedism 

All of this preamble pushing back on the bigotry that fat people, and, to a lesser extent, those of us who find them attractive, face, is to really hit home just what a unique category of social exclusion fatness really is. I have yet to see any evidence why being attracted to fat people is bad in any way, let alone a form of fetishism, any more than being attracted to someone particularly tall, muscular, or with red hair is. But that’s about a generality; now I want to talk about a particularity:

Kinks and fetishes generally take shape in one of two ways: either someone is attracted to something fairly common and has a fixation and need for that thing that it becomes a core part of their sexuality above and beyond what it means to others, and/or they are attracted to things that are generally considered non-sexual (e.g., feet, knives, diapers, etc.). 

In the context of fatness, if we correctly reject the premise that being attracted to a fat body itself is abnormal, then there is still an entire world that exists as part of that latter category of traditionally non-sexual things that have become sexual for some. This, to me, is where the conversation about feedism starts.

Academic literature on feedism is woefully inadequate and often sex-negative and pathologizing. Most often they make the mistake of equating a heightened attraction to or preference for fat people as the same as feedism (which, a la Najarian and Nee, it is obviously not), but the occasional articles from the early 2000s generally are resolute in perceiving feedism as a unsalvageably patriarchal, dehumanizingly fetishistic, and anti-fat practice. I won’t bother to mention the gonzo journalism that has largely defined coverage on feedism since the very beginning and largely continues to. 

One of the earliest articles to “define” feedism, in 2004 Social Semiotics paper, states: 

“Feederism [sic] is an underground fat sexual practice that involves women who allow themselves to be submissively force-fed through a funnel by a dominant male master, who derives sexual excitement from watching his submissive servant grow fatter and fatter as he forces her to eat more and more. [...] Disturbingly, men who engage in this sexual practice fetish (known as “feeders”) often force-feed the feedee to the point where she is completely is immobilized.” 

A more nuanced and empirical, though still somewhat negative, study on feedism in 2013 in the International Journal of the Social Sciences concluded that:

“[W]hen it comes to feederism, men are still in control of the behavior and of how women are portrayed and treated as feedees. Although some of the [circa 2012 feedist] websites discussed here may be advancing transgressive ideas about fat women as sexual beings, the objectification of women as sex objects is further perpetuated by these same websites. [...] At its extreme, ideas about control over women involve manipulating their bodies using dangerous means, and the lines between consent and sexual assault are blurred. Consent is a difficult term to define in a culture where patriarchal values about sex have been internalized by members of society. Still, [online feedist spaces have] the potential to create loving, supportive communities for people of size rather than exploitative communities that mimic the offline world”

A smattering of papers and articles, such as Don Kulick’s 2005 book of essays on fat, and a masters thesis in 2008 by Alyshia Bestard, Feederism: an Exploratory Study into the Stigma of Erotic Weight Gain, were some of the first attempts to treat feedism with a more curious, and occasionally appreciative, approach. Both from her interviews and secondary research, Bestard defined “feederism [sic]  asexual practice where participants are aroused by thoughts and actions pertaining to weight gain either in themselves or in another person.” Encouragingly, Bestard concluded that her interviewees all expressed autonomy and pragmatism around both their fantasies and (often rare) real-world practices in feedist dynamics, especially as it related to weight gain. 

The largest and most encompassing study of feedism is Kathy Charles’ and Michael Palkowski’s 2015 Feederism: Eating, Weight Gain, and Sexual Pleasure (summarized in a great interview). They interview 23 feedists of all orientations and focus on a series of questions that delve deeply and with care into the origins, experiences, and challenges of living as a feedist. To summarize the whole study would do it a disservice, but there are a few things worth noting:

Firstly, while weight gain is an essential element to almost every study participant, many respondents felt that they shared a broader sense of connectivity around the transgressiveness of attraction to, sex with, and the aesthetics around fat people and fatness.

Secondly, the researchers noted with surprise just how young many feedists earliest inclinations emerged in early childhood.

Thirdly, as the authors say: “the interviewees in this research presented a very different picture [than the one in popular culture] with agency at the heart of how they talked about themselves and feederism” and that the rejected binaries around feeders and feedees and “preferred subtle variations that eliminated the implied power dynamic.”

And lastly, and most importantly, both the authors identified the diversity of both people who identified as feedists and the ways in which they practiced (i.e., from the purely fantastical to the materially intense); this breadth, they said, is almost completely unrepresented in any other popular or academic representations.

In their conclusion the authors felt it  was possible to be an ethical, healthy feedist, provided one practiced with what we might today call a risk-informed kink practice and with an awareness of individual health needs, physical, emotional, or otherwise. Despite its age, and its methodological limitations (e.g., 23 interviews), Charles’ and Palkowksi’s book remains one of the definitive texts on the community. 

Subsequent research, limited though it has been, has largely tended to agree with this characterization, while still noting that kink-related safety, particularly for fat participants, remains problematically underdeveloped. Najarian and Knee’s recent work to de-stigmatize fat-related sexual behaviour is one of the most full-throatedly supportive academic works that even touches on feedism. Although almost a decade old now, Bestard's and the Charles-Palkowski studies remain some of the most encompassing and rigorous to date. The dearth of research on feedism, even within fat studies itself, continues to be a significant issue.

Feedism in its Own Terms

I cannot begin to speak for the feedist community in all of its breadth. As a member of that community, though, and one who situates myself firmly in relation to other movements like fat liberation and sex-positive feminism, I do think I can offer a little insight from my vantage point to start to clarify and cohere the rough terrain of feedism today.

Feedism (or, archaically, “feederism”) I define aa a field (rather than a unity) of kinky orientations, behaviours, practices, preferences, language, beliefs, and fantasies that all exist as part of, and yet also go beyond, the experience of fat admiration. Elements beyond fat admiration involve sexualization of aspects of the fat experience, including sometimes negative experiences (e.g., ill-suited clothes, furniture, etc.), food and eating, and bodily transformation.Any aspect of this field can take place with a partner or alone, and by and with fat and thin people, together or alone. 

Note that I have and will consistently refer to feedism as a kink and not a fetish to mark the distinction between a desire (a kink) for this particular non-traditional sexual experience amongst feedists, and a non-negotiable, or sometimes pathological need (a fetish, or a paraphilia) for it, which exists for some, but certainly not all feedists.

While I believe all feedists are necessarily implicated in some sort of fat-forward sexuality, such as being a fat admirer, it is important to note that not every person with a fat-forward sexuality is necessarily a feedist. 

Source: author.

From both my lived experience and reading the academic literature, I have come to see feedism as having four fundamental components that mix and mingle to produce innumerable individual experiences. 

Source: author.

These components are very broad, and many feedists will only show up partially, and sometimes not at all, in different aspects, but collectively they represent the broad field that I concieve of as feedism, and necessarily each creates a sub-spectrum or spectrums within which feedist identities are formed.

Firstly, almost all feedists have some kind of overarching attraction to or with fatness, whether in themselves or others. Because feedists live in all types of bodies, some of the variations of attraction may run in one or multiple directions: someone may like their fatness to be attractive to others; some may like fat in general, including theirs; and some still may only be attracted to fatness in others. Each is as valid as any other. Sizes and shapes of attraction within the community vary immensely: some people may be attracted to a person, including themselves, with a stuffed, non-pregnant belly that’s comparatively thin, while others may prefer people as large as  “inifini-fats.” The image of feedists only being attracted to people who are immobile is categorically wrong and harmful not just how feedist are perceived, but also ignores the beautiful diversity of

Secondly, many feedists have a specific and sexual attraction to the imagery, noises, senses, smells, and feelings related to eating and food, often in large quantities. Some feedist blogs, for example, will intersperse images of fat people with GIFs of food being cooked, served, or eaten without any reference to a body at all. Furthermore, some feedists enjoy listening to and/or recording the sounds of food being digested, burps, or other bodily and/or social processes related to food and eating. 

Thirdly, many feedists have a sexual attraction to the lived reality of, and/or fantasies related to, bodily transformation, especially weight gain, but also variously the enlargement of particular body parts (e.g., breast, ass, stomach, feet, etc. “expansion”). In this sense, feedism often overlaps with people who have “transformation” or “expansion” fetishes, such as those related to giants/esses, inflation, blueberries (yes, you read that right), breast expansion, transformations related to monsters or furries (e.g., werewolves), or otherwise. This range of attraction is important to characterize as having both an in-person and fantastical dimension: some feedists, whether because of internalized anti-fatness or otherwise, may choose never to engage with physical changes in their own or others’ bodies. In addition, some feedist's desires exist only in fantastical terms; there are lots of people in the community who enjoy fantasies of fatness on a cosmic scale, with people reaching the size of planets or galaxies. This is considerably less common, but insofar as it’s a fantasy that exists in writing and visual art, it’s mostly harmless. There’s a massive amount of breadth in this particular aspect of the kink, but the common touch-point here is that there’s generally a visual or narrative experience of someone experiencing something growing larger. Amusingly, the timeline of this can range from the instantaneous to things that occur over the course of decades or more. 

Lastly, and perhaps most sensitively, many feedists have a specific attraction to particular aspects of the lived experiences of fat people. The aspects of this component of feedism are easily the most wide-ranging component of feedism. Elements of feedist attraction related to the fat experience could include things like:

Celebration of physical aspects of fatness, like stretch marks, that are often derided as negative;

Play, both negative and positive, with the real or fantasized needs of a person in a fat body, particularly related to the eroticisation of care, like being served food, helped with daily chores, bodily cleanliness, and so on;

Play, both negative and positive, with different aspects of how fat bodies interact with the world, like whether or not they fit furniture, clothing, or infrastructure;

Play, both positive and negative, with different elements of language related to fatness, such as affirmative pet names (“my little chubster”) or consensual degradation (“you’ve really let yourself go”). As with any kink, done consensually and in a risk-aware way, anything is possible to be played with, but meaningful kink- and fat liberation-education are essential to doing this in a way that can preserve safety and, ideally, open up opportunities for healing. On this last count, for example, for some people, language that could be considered obscene (“my fatty” / “my piggy”) may be considered deeply intimate and meaningful between consenting partners;

Play, both positive and negative, with symbols of the fat experience that are generally held against fat people, such as scales, weigh-ins, bodily changes, or otherwise.

Any kind of play with negative stereotypes, no matter how consensual and potentially liberating, will always stir challenging reactions from people who witness it without context, and especially if they have non-consensual lived experience with that stereotype. For fat folks in particular, generally used to life-long marginalization and social ostracisation, I don’t blame them in the slightest. Seeing a feedist engaging with fat people on the internet, especially women, in a way that either explicitly plays with fatphobic tropes or, as I have often seen, openly celebrates fatness too much, can create an incredibly negative and sometimes traumatic reaction for all involved, but especially for that fat person.

The important thing to communicate, both from the perspective of creating safety for those who might wish to play in feedist spaces, and for analytical rigour, is that feedism is a wide-ranging kink with innumerable facets, sub-communities, and personal ways that it shows up. That diversity, with the proper safety protocols in place, means there can be space for anyone who wants to dive in.

Feedist Dynamics 

The above pillars of feedism are the most general conceptualization of the contours of someone’s sexual experience. You can almost think of them as breaking down the acronym of BDSM which, as we all know, only begins to crack the surface of what it means to be in the kink world. If you’re a feedist and you’re attracted to some aspect of the four pillars, this still says nothing about your role in a feedist dynamic. There are two key considerations here.

Source: author.

Firstly, feedism has a range of roles that people can take on and move between within scenes and relationships. There are four overarching roles, with many subtle nuances underneath -- each of these roles can be inhabited by a person of any gender or sexuality and multiple roles can be inhabited at the same time.

Feedees - feedees are people who enjoy the experience of being fed and/or gaining weight. They may remain thin or fat, or change to become fatter or thinner, over the course of a scene or relationship. Their size is not the determining factor in their identification - rather it is the role they wish to fulfill in a given context.

Feeders - feeders are people who enjoy feeding people and/or watching and helping them gain weight. As noted above but especially important with feeders, this role is not singular and may be inhabited with one or all of the others within the feedist pantheon.

Gainers - gainers is a term, firstly, often used amongst gay men to refer to those who wish to gain weight. In broader usage, however, it is sometimes used to distinguish feedees who enjoy being fed but do not wish to gain weight, from those who wish to gain weight, even if no one is actively feeding them. Someone who gains weight erotically if they do not have a partner may be called a ‘solo-gainer.’

Encouragers - an encourager is a loose term for someone who is a fat admirer and enjoys watching eroticised weight gain, but does not actively feed a partner. 

Maintainer - a maintainer is another loose term for someone who has reached a particular size, perhaps after being a gainer and/or a feedee, and while likely (though not always) maintaining a relationship to that prior identity has now "arrived" at a particular point of weight or size and is maintaining that puporsefully - in some bodies, it is worth noting, this may take considerable work, so, a maintainer should not necessarily be perceived as a passive role.

Each of these roles is often highly dynamic over the course of a person’s life. Many feedees can develop feeder tendencies, and vice versa, and the body sizes of everyone involved in the kink can and often do change dramatically over the course of their normal lives. I’m more of an encourager myself and I have put on weight in relationships I have been in, even when my partner did not.

Everyone's bodies are changing all the time, but some of us have the good sense to eroticise that. Lucky us, huh?

Secondly, and returning to BDSM, each of these roles takes place within the context of a power dynamic. It’s important to say that in any relationship with a fat and thin partner, just like an interracial couple, there is an inherent social imbalance of power. But how we are treated in society doesn’t necessarily reflect the dynamic in the bedroom. 

Increasingly in sex we talk about tops and bottoms, and, in kink communities, obviously, we think about domsDoms and subs, but it’s important to map out the distinctions here as a reminder of how they relate to the more specific instances of kink. 

Tops and bottoms, specifically understood, refer to the physical roles that people play - i.e., are they generally on top, directing the sexual experience, on the bottom, in a position of receiving, or are they versatile?

Dominants and submissives are, as the name suggests, social roles about how we express dominance or submission, to whom, and in what contexts (which, if you’re a switch like me, will vary). 

All can show up in a large variety of combinations, all of which can be quite fluid.

Souce: author

Imagine this example:

A fat femme is wearing a strapon and penetrating her thin male partner from behind. She’s eating a doughnut and telling her partner how much bigger she’s going to get than him with each thrust and what a pathetic little worm he is for being so small.

We’ve just witnessed a fat woman who’s a top, a feedee, a Domme, and it sounds like has a bit of a humiliation kink. There are plenty of these people in the world, but we don’t often let them take the spotlight (if you know any more, honestly, please send them my way). The diversity in any kink scene is always its greatest strength.

Risk Aware Consensual Kink in the Context of Feedism

This is both a very broad overview of feedism, and a fairly anodyne one. I’m not talking about the social imbalances between fat and non-fat partners that exist generally, and the many ways that people can get hurt in a feedist dynamic - just like in any kink-related context. Consent and prioritizing safety are key at every step of the way. Predators and malefactors, sadly, do exist and, to push back on a stereotype, they exist at every size and within every role in feedism, just like they do in any community. 

There is sadly a complete dearth of risk aware consensual kink (RACK) materials that feedists can draw on, but its general principles can and should be adapted to inform feedist play and thinking. It’s worth going back and reading Gary Switch’s original writing on the origins of RACK out of the idea of “Safe, Sane, and Consensual” kink practices. The metaphors that Switch uses, too, of BDSM being like rock climbing - easy to create safety in, but never 100% danger-free - are readily applicable. In essence, embracing RACK in a feedist relationship means at a minimum:

Creating space for informed and ongoing consent in the relationship or dynamic, and each aspect of it;

Creating safety, both physical and emotional, for each of the partners in both scenes and beyond the bedroom - and while in the case of fatness, we may jump immediately to questions of health, the emotional needs of both partners are absolutely critical here, too. 

Practicing aftercare during a scene and actively dialoguing as play partners, lovers, friends, or community members about fatphobia and how it impacts the different members of a scene or interaction.

Feedism as a Healing Kink 

I’ve had the privilege over the past few years to finally ‘come out’ to partners and a few friends as a feedist. The experience has been truly life-changing. After years of being terrified of rejection by lovers and other people I care about, I’ve come to see that there is a small but mighty community of people who want to celebrate fat bodies (theirs or others), fight back against fatphobia, and have unique, beautiful erotic experiences while we do so. I’ve never been in a gaining dynamic with a partner and, given its real-world rarity, I have my doubts I ever will; but that doesn’t matter to me as much as you might think. 

One of the reasons that it doesn’t is that I have been able to witness the truly transformative power of partners understanding that the changes in their body are not ones they ever have to be ashamed of around me. I had a partner recently who stepped on the scale for the first time in years and cried as I held them, knowing just that seeing the numbers was arousing to me and that whatever they said, they had nothing to fear about how much I was attracted to them. Other partners have played with unintentional weight gain and ill-fitted clothes - turning what might normally have been a mortifying and brutalizing experience into something fun and sexy. Sometimes we play with the language of fatness as a way to reclaim and desensitize what those words mean: when someone is my beautiful fat darling, it can help take some of the stings off of it. 

Feedism, like BDSM, includes a massive range of things that people find attractive. Some of those will be quite disturbing to the more vanilla folks in the world - and especially to those who have not disentangled their own internalized fatphobia. But like all good kinks, the opportunity to de-stigmatize, to celebrate the unusual, and to be our weird, wonderful selves is the ultimate joy. Bon appetit.

Resources

Feedist Resources 

Feedism & Fat Liberation Action Points | Feedists for Fat Liberation 

Resource List - feedism and fat liberation | Cheeseburgers in Paradise, Tumblr  

How do you feel about fat kinks? | RIOTS, NOT DIETS!, Tumblr

How Kink Helped Me to Learn to Love My Fat Body | Kinkly 

6 Assumptions About Fat Fetishism I'd Love For Us to Reconsider | Everyday Feminism 

Fat and Kink Resources

BBW Porn Encouraged Me to Have Better Sex | Vice

Being A Fat, Black Femme in Kink | Spectrum Journal 

Plus Size Women Are Reclaiming Cow Print After Years Of Fatphobic Jokes | Refinery29

Personal Stories

“Such a pretty face”: What it’s like to date while fat | Vox 

Take The Cake: Secret Relationships With Fat Women | Ravishly 

This will be a quick overview over how to become massive. This will be a rather scientific approach on how to increase white adipose tissue growth (i.e., fat gain), slow down metabolism and decrease muscle gain.

The 10 commandments:

1. Have a high-carb and low-protein breakfast. This will keep you hungry during the day.

2. Don't have breakfast within the first hour after waking, so your body will be more likely to store energy in the form of fat.

3. Try to build the majority of your diet on carbs. Carbs are highly likely to turn into fat, while proteins and fats are less likely. This is because they trigger a different hormonal response

4. Don't consume too much garlic, caffeine, green tea and spinach, since they contain nutrients that will increase fat burn

5. Fruits are fine, they can actually help you gain weight because of insoline spikes

6. Rest 15-30 minutes before eating. This is so your muscle cells close and don't absorb/burn much of the energy

7. Don't shower or bathe cold, don't swim regularly and put on warm clothes during winter. Cold exposure not only burns a lot of calories, your body will actually form brown fat tissue, which is a kind of fat designed to burn fat for warmth

8. Dig into dairy products and white grains (e.g., wheat-products) for an increase in fat gain

9. Have 2-3 high-calorie meals during the day and add snacks in-between as you wish.

10. Sweetness is your friend, no matter if sugar or artificial sweeteners

Following these 10 commandments will make it almost impossible to not gain weight. Combine this with a lot of stuffing and a high caloric excess (e.g., eating 5000+ calories per day) and you will presumably be putting on several pounds per week.

Some of you may feel discouraged that you will never be able to eat enough food to gain a substantial amount of weight. If you’ve been struggling with getting enough calories or feeling overwhelmed with the amount of food required to reach your goal weight, there are a few tricks which may help.

To gain a pound a week you need 500 extra calories a day. If you are finding it too difficult to eat an extra 500 calories a day, just eat normally and drink a little more than half a cup of heavy cream daily before bed instead of increasing your meal portions (½ cup plus 2 Tablespoons of cream to be exact:).It is also the cheapest way to gain weight.

This is actually the main method used by most successful gainers. If you ever wondered how other feedees are able to gain quickly, it’s always heavy cream. They may make it look like they are constantly eating, but in actuality they just eat normally most of the time (when not filming) and use heavy cream to supplement their normal diet. 

Alternately, you can eat normally the whole week, but add a 1750 calorie shake on Saturday and Sunday, which will also lead to a gain of 1 pound per week. If 1750 calories is too much for you in one sitting, make a 1166 calorie shake Fri/Sat/Sun. Preferably right before bed. This is great for those of you who may be lactose intolerant and thus unable to consume heavy cream.

You can also try eating larger meals less frequently. You can make a 1k+ calorie shake for brunch then let your body digest for 7 hours before having a 1k calorie dinner, followed by a 1k calorie dessert/snack right before bed, six or seven hours later. By waiting 6 or 7 hours between meals you give your body time to digest, which can improve appetite. This doesn’t always work for everyone, however, as some people actually find their appetite improves eating smaller meals more frequently so listen to your body. 

Popping that button at work and hoping no one notice your belly spilling out? Relax- everyone knows you’ve been packing on the pounds.

Chair getting a little too snug but you don’t want to ask your manager for a supersized one? Don’t ask. Keep trying to squeeze all your flab in and out of it, until you get stuck and have to squeal and oink for someone to help free you.

Turning red when your family can’t stop commenting on your size? On your appetite? On how our of shape you’ve gotten?. On how your shirt doesn’t stretch enough to cover all those rolls? I know it turns you on. You can’t help thinking about what they’ll say when you’ve doubled your weight. Or tripled it.

Shamefully trying to hold back all that gas after you’ve stuffed yourself silly? You know you can’t. That’s what having a diet of desserts and fast food does to you- just let it out like a true slobby pig.

Friends noticing how you’re huffing and puffing and breaking into a sweat just trying to keep up with them? First you were struggling to get up stairs, now even short walks leave you winded. All your friends wonder what happened to you....getting so out of shape you’re waddling and wheezing just walking a short distance.

Appetite out of control? Embarrassed by the looks the cashier gives you? It’s already so embarrassing all the fast food places know you by name...and they also know your order and waistline keeps getting bigger and bigger everytime they see you. Go on, show off. Let them see what a fat pig can really eat....

But squishing the pudge you’ve gained back makes you feel like being a glutton again. Like gorging on all the junk food you can find, ingesting tens of thousands of calories that will make your body swell. That will have your belly slumping heavily over your waistbands in no time, your thighs dimpling like crazy, your hips flaring out bulbous and thick, straining your shirts on either side. Your jaw blurring into your neck, chub collecting under your chin. Your cheeks: softening a bit curvier, then puffing to full roundness, then bulging, outright bulging with fat. 

Okay, so recently, I saw someone say that they couldn’t wait for their next payday so they could do a stuffing session, apologising that they didn’t have $40 to spare.

That seems a lot of money to me so I thought I’d make a basic guide. It’ll focus on being economic, but you can use it as a starter’s guide if you need one.

Basics:

Don’t waste money and time on empty calories. Things like chocolate and other sugary foods with little bulk to them are fun to eat, but they don’t actually take up much room in your stomach and are likely to make you feel nauseous early on.

Buy in bulk. If you’re looking at actual food rather than snacks, meals made from pasta and other foods that can be bought in larger amounts are usually quite cost effective. Rice, pasta and noodles are all good. (see below for pasta recipes)

I mentioned time. Time is your main enemy. The body takes around twenty to thirty minutes to realise it is full, so eat what you can before the food wall sets in!

Variation is important. Flavours and, more importantly, textures can get old fast. Make sure you’re eating something you like and switch it up if you need to. Sweet and salty flavours work well. If you plan to eat a gallon of ice cream, keep something crunchy and savoury nearby.

Liquids are brilliant for bloating but not good if you want to fit as much solid food in as you can. After a high carb meal, a glass of water can make all the difference, but if you’re trying to gain, steer clear of drinking until you’ve eaten what you need to!

Condiments are important if you’re trying to eat a large amount of dry carbs; they break up the flavour and texture, so keep a bottle handy.

Food groups:

If you’re into stuffing but are trying not to gain weight, it can be done. Try loading up with low calorie vegetables that still have a lot of mass. Aside from that, certain food groups can have a huge effect on your stuffing sessions.

Protein: hard to break down. Protein will fill you up much faster than other foods, which is why people try to eat as much as possible when dieting. You wont be able to eat as much as you’d like and the food wall will last much longer.

Sugar: As mentioned before, sugar induces nausea and usually isn’t bulky enough. 

Dairy: Things like ice cream can be amazing for stuffing and milk is great for cooling the heat of spicy food but it’s almost impossible to ingest high amounts of dairy without vomiting, so be careful.

Carbohydrates: these should be your main focus, especially if you’re gaining. Complex carbs like pasta, rice and bread are the best for stuffing and tend to expand once liquids are consumed. Baked goods are great because you can make them yourself for a reasonable price or look in your local bakery section for good deals. Pick up a bag of cookies or a box of doughnuts for a cheap session.

Recipes:

I’m a big fan of pasta. Well, I like Italian food in general; pizza is great if you’ve got some money to spare, a phone and you don’t feel like cooking. Pasta is easy to cook and you’ll probably accidentally cook more than you need to. Leftovers are great.

Spaghetti Bolognese:

There’s no real way to make this but this is how I do it. It’s pretty much a blend of what my mother (a chef) and a friend I met on tumblr taught me. 

Ingredients:

minced beef

tinned chopped tomatoes

tomato passata

garlic

onion

herbs/spices (I use oregano, basil and paprika)

sugar

salt

oil

Chop the onion.

Add oil to a pot and turn the stove onto a medium heat. Add the mince a stir it gently until all of the meat has changed colour.

Add onions and stir briskly to allow the onions to cook slightly before adding the tomatoes and passata.

Open clove of garlic and crush three sections into the pot. Add a few pinches of each herb/spice (this is open to interpretation, add however much you like) and sweeten with a spoonful of sugar (more if it tastes too much like tomato).

Allow to simmer, stirring occasionally for twenty minutes.

Cook pasta, serve and add grated parmesan cheese if preferred.

Sometimes I just add a little butter, cheese and oregano to cooked pasta, or I’ll add a cheap jar of sauce if I’m lazy. It’s ridiculously cost effective and perfect for stuffing.

Some BBC pasta recipes that tend to be quite healthy

 TLDR/more ideas:

So, as tempting as it may be to just go to the shop and buy a ton of junk food, that’s expensive and not that effective. Some cheap ways of stuffing include:

buying a family pack of baked goods

frozen pizzas

pasta + cheap sauce

budget noodles

boxes of mac n cheese

BREAD (really bread is just great, buy something nice from a bakery and stuff it with whatever fillings you’d like)

for gainers:

add cheese to everything (although cheese, especially when melted, acts the same way protein does to your appetite)

Tools You may Use~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• WEIGHT GAIN GOAL DATE CALCULATOR

• GAIN CALCULATOR

• BMR CALCULATOR

• MYFITNESSPAL

• FLIPP

• CALORIC INTAKE ESTIMATOR (select: Muscle Gainz)

Other Beneficial Links~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 How to Gain Weight:  

25 Foods that will Make you Hungry: 

Weight Gain Foods: 

BMI stock Charts: 

BMI Comparison Charts (40-80BMi demonstrated): 

Body Composition: 

Volume of the Human Stomach

TERMS TO KNOW~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BMR | Basal Metabolic Rate. what your body needs calorie wise in order to sustain its vital functions (return to zero, aka if you laid in bed all day doing nothing what your body needs calorie wise to continue fueling itself)

BMI | body mass index

GW | Goal Weight

CW | Current Weight

LW | lowest weight

Immobile | to be bed bound, in this case as a direct or indirect result of weight gain.

FA/FFA | Fat admirer. Someone who identifies as being attracted to people who may fall along the spectrum of fatness (in obvious varying degrees)

Encourager | Someone who may or may not identify as a feeder who likes to see others eat & possibly gain weight. Often the softcore end of the FA spectrum

Feeder | Someone who either in person or online is interested in spurring or causing another person’s weight gain.

Feedee | Someone who wants to be fed to gain.

Foodee | Someone who loves food, is passionate about the culinary arts.

BHM | Big handsome man

BBW | big beautiful woman

BASIC THEORY~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How does a person gain weight? In theory, whenever your calories IN are more numerous than your  calories OUT, you will see weight gain. My personal belief is this gain is compounding, as weight increase generally means activity decrease, thus being easier to continue to gain weight over time as much as your BMR will be directly impacted by your gain (more calories needed to sustain/maintain higher weight). For someone who is accidentally or unintentionally gaining, this usually looks like <500 calories more than their required BMR in a day. 500cal+BMR/BMR would in theory result in 1lb of weight gain in a week (52 weeks in a year = 52lbs). For someone who is intentionally gaining, it isn’t unheard of for someone eating a surplus of 1500-3500cal a day to see 1lbs a day (1500-3500+BMR/BMR a day = 3-7lbs a week) or 150lbs-374lbs in a year (both numbers are dramatically noticeable gains if you are hoping to do so in secret). With the help of an online encourager (and from my personal experience) you can expect to see upwards of 5-20lbs in a month gaining, while those with in person feeders often see more aggressive results. Use any of the above calculators to get your BMR as a base line - and the Prokerela calculator if you have a target date for your weight gains (ex: if you were 180lbs today and wanted to weigh 400lbs in 18 months) and it will provide you your approximate necessary caloric intake to get you to said weight by the date.

TECHNIQUES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Overview: Additional tips and tricks, methods - some old “wives tales” and other unproven sentiments.

1. Don’t drink water before or during meals. Water is a necessity, but we hear about using water as a substitute for other drinks & drinking between bites as a means to lose weight, not gain. Drink (homo) milk instead.

2. Stop drinking 1-2% or skim milk! (160 calories versus 40-75 per serving)

3. Use creamer (10%+) instead of milk in cereal.

4. Eat more often! Despite the “benefits” of gaining to be had from putting “your body into starvation mode”, this isn’t healthy nor is it a viable option in the long run. 

5. Use bigger plates & fill them!

6. Weigh yourself & keep logs of calories in & out, as well as weight !

7. If you are having a hard time because you have a fast metabolism, or have a natural inclination to be athletic/muscular - double, triple, or quadruple your current food intake !

8. Intermittent fasting can be beneficial, however try to limit food intake to hours in a day versus staggered days of eating & not eating - 12PM-8PM for example, or 12PM-12AM.

9. Nuts & carbs are your best friend.

10. peanuts, cashews, and olive oil - yogurt, fruit pies and granola bars are all healthy fatty snacks as well 

11. (Stolen from Wikihow) Eat late at night. Without even upping your food intake, changing your eating times can facilitate the weight gaining process. Have a big dinner late at night and after that? Pile on dessert. A recent study shows that people who snack after 8 p.m. have higher body mass indexes (BMIs) than people who don’t nosh at night, even though they don’t eat significantly more total daily calories

12. Eat fast food.

13. Buy snacks you love, and buy them in bulk on sale (check flipp app for coupons/flyers, go to Costco etc.)

14. Eat meal replacement snacks as a second snack or between meals.

15. Grazing can be a good maintenance trick for people trying to rewire their brains to lose weight, but consistently eating (making sure you have a snack in your hand or within your arms reach) for 10-12 hours a day is a surefire way to put on weight.

16. Use desjardin breakfast drinks, ensure, k brand, or other stir-in meal replacements in your milk on top of your meal.

17. High fat foods and high protein foods will be a major help.

18. Limit your physical activity ! Fuck walking, drive. Fuck taking the stairs, be lazy !

19. Make friends in your community that also enjoy gaining weight, or feeding - hell, even make some plus size friends who love to go out and eat- the power of having friends around who also want to snack all the time is lucrative !

In no particular order:

1. Replace everything you can with the higher calorie version. This may seem obvious but also consider alternative ingredients and increasing quantity of ingredients, for example swapping milk or water with heavy cream, adding double the butter that’s called for, etc. I know that that’s a no-brainer but it really does make a difference if you’re cooking a lot at home.

2. Surround yourself with snacks. When I shop and get a bunch of snacks, I just leave the grocery bag next to where I sit on my couch. Cookies, chips, poptarts, pastries, hand pies, you name it. So any time I’m feeling peckish or I’m just bored and need something to do, I have something within arms reach. I can mindlessly pack away an extra couple thousand calories a day this way and not even notice.

3. Create smaller goals. This one can be a little challenging, of course we all want to hit our ultimate goal as quickly as possible. But it’s so easy to get discouraged when you’re looking at a number that seems so far away. Breaking your goals up into manageable chunks makes the process quicker and more successful than lamenting over not gaining “fast enough” and losing steam. It also gives you reason to celebrate more often than if you’re only looking forward to the next 50-100lbs. For example, say you’re starting on 01/01 at 300 and your ultimate goal is 350. For the month of January your goal is to hit 310, for February it’s 320, and so on and so forth. That way you’re only really “pushing” for the gain for a few days at a time, if you even need to push at all. I hope that makes sense lol

4. That belly tapping thing actually works, lightly tap above your navel and continue tapping as you move from center to left. It may take a couple rounds of this, but in less than a minute you should feel your stomach start feeling empty again. It really really works, it’s also great for when you’re stuffed to the point where another bite will make you sick - just do the tapping thing and the pain and nausea dissipates. I don’t know the science behind this but it’s something I use on a weekly basis and has been a lifesaver.

5. Diet soda. I’ve always been a Diet Coke addict but I’ve found in my gaining journey that the days I drink Diet Coke I am OBSESSED with sweets and sugary treats. Otherwise I’m not too into sweet things, but when I’m chugging aspartame? Oh god it’s game over, I’d eat straight sugar if I had to.

6. Buy the bigger clothes in advance and wear them. This one is hit or miss, cause I love feeling my clothes bursting at the seams, but on the other hand it takes a lot of effort to get super fat and maintain it, so being comfortable as possible is also a must. I do wear the super tight ones still too, but I alternate depending on the day. If you have clothes that are (temporarily) loose on you, not only will you be comfortable but you’ll also have the added benefit of feeling yourself outgrow those too, which to me is more impressive than outgrowing something that was already a little snug.

7. Preset meals; if you’re a fast food junkie like I am and eat every one of your meals out of a greasy brown bag, this is a game changer. Spend a little time making lists of what you like from fast food places and their respective calorie counts. Then come up with realistic 2000+ calorie meals from that. Not stuffings so much as just a casual everyday lunch. So if you know that you need to hit a minimum calories per day, it’s super quick to order exactly what you need and you don’t have to put any effort into it. A lot of apps let you save your favorites to a separate list anyhow.

8. Fast food apps. If you don’t have a rewards app for every fast food place in a 20 mile radius of your home, are you even a feedee? All jokes aside, the amount of free or deeply discounted food I get every day is insane and I am so proud of my points balances lol this is one of my top hacks, I eat so much fast food anyway why wouldn’t I reap the rewards from that?

9. Eat before bed. Most of my eating happens within 2 hours of me falling asleep at night. I would conservatively say half of my daily calorie intake happens in the evening. It works, do it.