Facebook vs Tess Holiday

I came across this article whilst scrolling through Facebook today-

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/facebook-ban-size-26-model-8030503?ICID=FB_mirror_main

For those of you who are too lazy to read, it's about how Facebook removed and banned a campaign picture of Tess Holiday in lingerie. Tess is a plus size model (size 26) who has divided opinion since becoming one of the first plus size models to be signed to a major agency. Facebook apparently cited the following reasons-

It (she) violates health and safety standards

 "The image depicts a body or body parts in a undesirable manner. Ads may not depict a state of health or body weight as being perfect or extremely undesirable."

The word 'undesirable' pops up an awful lot during the article.

So, I have a few pretty big issues with this. Firstly, who died and made Facebook the leading authority on desirability?!

Secondly, regardless of your own personal opinion of her size, the fact is that there are people out there who are a similar size to Tess Holiday. Why don't they get to see themselves represented I'm the media. Why do they have to see their own body types removed from Facebook for "violating health and fitness standards"? I can't say I follow Tess to closely, all I know is that she is undoubtedly stunning and has a 'fuck you' attitude when it comes to people slamming her purely because of her size.

I could scroll through my feed right now and screen grab pictures of celebrities in bikinis, articles about the latest and most likely unhealthiest fad diet, or super skinny models. That's what we are bombarded with day in and day out. But surely if you're going represent one end of the spectrum, you're going to have to represent the whole damn thing? You want to be inclusive, right Facebook? If pictures of a plus size woman in lingerie are "undesirable" then maybe you should consider all pictures of lingerie clad women undesirable instead of alienating a fairly large  (no pun intended ) portion of your user base. Just a suggestion.

I was reading through some of the comments on the article, and they were indicative of the comment section under anything written about over weight people ever. A lot of people seemed terribly concerned about her health, when she has time and time again come out to say that she's in very good health. Fat doesn't always equal unhealthy, just as skinny doesn't always equal healthy. I don't ever recall Holiday saying she is or wants to be a good role model. She's just a woman doing her job. And to be honest, her attitude is whats healthy. She promotes body positivity regardless of shape or size and that should be applauded and encouraged instead of being stamped out by the largest social media network in the world.

Facebook 's action in this sends a very powerful message. They readily allow pictures of half naked women to pollute the site, as long as they are under a certain size. Facebook has essentially told all of its plus size users that we are "undesirable "

I'm not ok with that.

Getting back on the horse

I always find it difficult to dip a toe back into the online dating world after something winds down. Even when you finish up something casual, there's still a level of rejection. So any foray into Tinder or its companions are very short lived and absent minded. I just lose interest for a while. 

Then I start romanticising what just finished and start to doubt myself. I feel less like a strong, empowered woman braving the dating world and more like... well.... a fool. I  essentially go on a massive downer for a few days and avoid all dating apps like the plague. And drink a lot of wine.

But not this time. This time I tried to get straight back on the horse. I was furiously swiping the next day. I even went as far as googling 'bbw dating ' and that was a whole level of weird I just wasn't prepared for. Don't Google that, and certainly don't sign up for anything. Shit gets real weird, real fast. 

I really think at this point I'm really not built for online dating. I'm not a serial dater, I've neither the memory or the attention span to successfully date more than one person at a time. I tried it, names got confused and I felt a bit...... yucky. (That's not a judgement on anyone who does, it's just not for me ). But maybe it's just dating that's not for me in general. As I've said I'm a very cynical person, more so than I even thought apparently, and am naturally a bit of a pessimist. I expect the worst of guys, and of situations as a way of avoiding disappointment. Maybe that's what needs to change? Can I really expect a guy to take me seriously when I doubt him from the get go?

When enough is enough

I got chatting to a guy on Tinder a couple of months ago. Really nice guy, lots to chat about. We had a few great dates, some good sex and then...... that was pretty much it. We've kept in touch, tried to make dates but but they never happened. The flakiness was always on his end. I have a busy schedule with work but I'm a big believer that if you want to see someone you make the time. You just do.

So the question is, when is enough enough? When is the right time to draw a line under something and stop wasting each others time? When do you stop listening to excuses and accept that he's just not that into it?

Situations like this always make me second guess myself. Am I being to demanding? Expecting too much? Or am I just being strung along like a fool?

Some guys are clever about it though. They know what to say to keep you dangling, what to say to make you feel like you're asking for too much. This guy is like that, we haven't seen each other in over a month but he'll still text me pretty much every day. There's always the promise of him being in the city by the weekend, but inevitably something will happen. Then he'll somehow manage to talk me out of having a problem with it. It's fucking brain bending ninja voodoo Vulcan mind games. But I generally don't have the balls to just walk away. I'll put up with it, and put up with it,until he's the one who walks away.

How do you convince yourself that you're worth more when you don't really believe that you are? How can you expect someone else to believe that you're worth more when you don't yourself?

It's something I walked away from tonight, but I know it's only a matter of time before I'm in that situation again. It has gotten to the point where I just don't see myself as an attractive person, or sexy, or worthy of effort. And maybe that's something I need to stop blaming men for and start blaming myself.

The thing about being fat...

So, the thing about being fat is that it sort of becomes your identity. It's who you are, you're the fat chick. And as much as you try to run away from it by being the girl with the pink hair, or the girl with the tattoos, that's how people will recognise you. 'You know katrina..... the big girl'. And as such, it becomes very deeply ingrained in you. You feel like the fat chick, you expect to be treated like the fat chick and it really lowers the bar for what you deem acceptable treatment.

The place I've found this to have the most disastrous effect is in my dating life. Not only do I feel the need to justify myself to men before we even meet, I also use it as an excuse for THEIR shitty behaviour. I've run back to guys who have treated me like crap out of the sheer fear of not having anyone at all. I have a 'no body else will want me mentality'. I've let guys away with really awful things because, frankly, I feel like I deserve it. Because I feel like because of my size, I deserve no better. Which is, of course, bullshit.

But it is an endless cycle. 'He didn't seem to have a good time- I obviously wasn't what he was expecting ' 'he hasn't text me in a few days, I'm obviously too fat for him'.

The thing about being fat is that no matter how many times you try to make yourself feel beautiful, or someone tells you that you ARE beautiful, you can never actually feel it. When you live in a culture where being fat is one of the worst things you can be,  the simplist compliment is almost impossible to take. When you spend hours dolling yourself up and everyone tells you that you look amazing, it's still there in the back of your head. That niggling little voice that constantly reminds you that you look good, BUT.....

I hate getting compliments. They make me feel incredibly awkward because I can never accept them at face value. My mind has warped to look for the insult in every single compliment. If a guy ever expresses any genuine interest, my mind almost can't process it. Like..... why? Is this a joke?  Am I the punch line? And it's that attitude that has probably scared off more guys than my jiggly bits ever have. When your mind works a certain way even the most innocent of things can take on a very malevolent meaning. I'll give you an example-

Many moons ago, I was in bed with a guy I was "seeing" (very casually, in fact, casually isn't casual enough a word).  We had just been up to no good and were doing usual uninterested post coital pillow talk when I asked 'if I was a Pokemon, which one would I be?' BIG. FUCKING. MISTAKE. Considering that he'd not 5 minutes previous been inside me, I thought it'd be something like Vulpix because I'm cute and can be quite firey. I thought wrong. Very wrong. Because apparently the Pokemon I most closely resemble is..... Snorlax. Yep. Big, fat, lazy, always blocking the road Snorlax.

Now I KNOW that's funny, and I can laugh at it now. In no way do i think there was ever any malice behind it, but at the time when I was lying beside him naked that really, really hurt me. An alarming amount. And it's stuck with me to an extent. It really bothered me that that was the way he saw me. And when it inevitably didn't work out I already knew why.

So, the thing about being fat is that it makes you incredibly sensitive to..... everything.

The good, the bad and the ugly

Like most people, my experience in the dating world has been.... varied. I've had some wonderful relationships, truly happy ones with truly lovely people. I've also had some terrible ones, with terrible people. And unfortunately, those are the ones that tend to stick with us. I'll admit I'm guilty of tarring all guys with the same brush (I'm a cynic, remember) so I tend to expect the same treatment from all guys. My boss is always banging on about the laws of attraction, so maybe I'm stuck in a loop of a self fullfilling prophecy. I expect bad things to happen, therefore they do. Shit.

I often look back at how different things where back when my parents met. They lived around the corner from each other their entire lives. Then they lived together. It was a very different world back then. There was no Tinder, no plenty of fish. Chances were that you'd marry someone who lived within 10 minutes of you. It's hard at times not to put that up on a pedalstool and yearn for days gone by.

But then I think of all the opportunities the modern world has afforded me, and suddenly it doesn't seem so bad. Modern life and modern technology have completely reshaped how we date. They've made sex incredibly easy to find, but love much harder. Even our phones present us with a buffet of options, we can all afford to be that much more choosey. And while that might suit those who want to play the field and have no intention of settling down, what about those who don't?

The impression I get from a lot of single friends, and Ive asked around, is that relationships are almost a thing of the past. People are perfectly happy playing the field for the majority of their 20's before inevitably bowing to societal pressure. There's a part of that makes me really..... sad. I'm not for one second suggesting that everyone should settle down with the first person who professes their love, but in my opinion playing the field is crap! And I've seen people throw away something of actual substance to see if the grass is greener on the other side. And 9 times out of 10 it's just not. It's almost..... unusual to want to settle down in your 20's.

Perhaps I have lofty notions of love. And the worst thing you can have as an Irish person is notions. But I've seen the way my parents look at each other and I want that. I unashamedly want that, I'd struggle to see why anyone wouldn't! It's beautiful, it's safe, it's secure, it's fucking sickeningly happy..... of course I want it!!

Texters

Over the years I've identified several different types of texters. Below are what I deem the absolute WORST and the ones who aren't so bad-

The drip feeder

The drip feeder is generally someone you've been on a few dates with, maybe slept with. Before, texts would have been flying back and forth, hours of texty fun. But then, the messages start to trickle out, instead of hours of conversation you'll get a 'hey, what's up'. You'll reply, then get another similarly inane text an hour. I HATE IT!!!! I can only assume that by their logic they're keeping their options open. Or testing my limits to see how little effort they'll actually have to put in to keep me on the line. You wanna know the worst thing about drop feeders is? I ALWAYS FUCKING TEXT BACK.

The vanisher 

The vanisher is someone you've dated who just suddenly disappears into thin air. No explanation no reasoning, just kaput. I like to think that every vanisher I've ever encountered was abducted by aliens and is currently living out eternity having their arses probed by something spikey.

The sudden reappearer 

This is occasionally stage two of the vanisher. After you've sullenly resigned yourself to another failed exploit, they'll pop back up at 2 or 3 in the morning with an inexplicably chirpy message. Pop back down. Go away. NO!!

The polite one

Love these guys. They'll just send a text a say or so later saying 'was lovely to meet you, but I just didn't feel a connection' Absolutely fine my friend, and you're a gem for letting me know. Keep being a good guy!

The serial sexter 

These guys are pretty easy to spot. It generally doesn't even get to a date stage because he has tried to drag every single down a dark alley and have sex with it. He tries to turn everything into something sexual. He'll probably send you an unsolicited dick pic at 2 in the afternoon. While you're in work. Sketchy.

The one who asks for your number but never texts you

What??

So that's my list, anything I've missed? 

"Bad men"

There's always the chance that I do all this on purpose. That I subconsciously surround myself with "bad men" so when they inevitably disappear, I won't have to ask myself any probing questions.

What if it's not my weight? It's always been my go to reason when anything goes wrong. But what of all those years of insecurities I carry around with me actually read as..... needyness and I don't even notice? What if it's my personality that's pushing guys away? What then?

I have this idea in my head that if one day I woke up and decided that I was no longer settling for scraps, I'd never get anything at all. And that,  to me, is utterly devastating. To be honest I'm too afraid to find out if it's true. All my adult life has been scraps. The guy who wants to keep it casual, the guy who doesn't take you seriously, the guy who 'really likes you but just doesn't have the time right now', the let's keep in touch but not meet up guy, the guy who seems wonderful until you have sex and then is suddenly not so wonderful. The guy who was secretly seeing other people and wants to see how that goes. The guy who you just plain weren't good enough for.

What if I'm drawn to these "bad men", who are only bad in any sense because we don't want the same things, because despite how sad they make me, they're just easier? I know that routine like the back of my hand. Great conversation, fantastic few dates, really good sex..... radio silence. As sad as it is, that's my comfort zone. That's where I live, that's what I  know. It's gotten to the stage now where if someone did want something more from me..... I wouldn't have a clue how to approach it!