Fat Rolls and Cash Rolls, or What Do Men Value?

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I’ve been meaning to write this ever since The Onion published a sarcastic piece on men and the move to have more representative body types in fashion and the media. “It’s very discouraging,” the article said. “Instead of seeing only rail-thin models, they’re now exposed to accurate representations of women whose proportions mimic those of actual human females.” The piece was posted all over social media with notes about how men really had come to think that all women should look like airbrushed skinnyfat fashion models – huh? I’ve danced with women with stretch marks, c-section scars, flat asses, big asses, and breast implants literally falling out, and they all got paid, because men thought they were sexy. I used to dance with a woman who had a face like Marilyn Monroe and a body like Gabourey Sidibe and she banked. I danced with a woman whose stage name was Hamhock who had an ass the size of, well, two of my asses, and men valued her body and sensuality. I’ve danced as a two hundred pound stripper, and men paid me.

Today I read this article, in which a beautiful, blond, average sized woman says that when she wraps herself in her husband’s arms at night she thinks he’s imagining a thinner, more perfect woman there instead of the “mess” of her body. The takeaway? Her husband doesn’t need to see our boobs.

I promise you, lady, men like the way you look. If you took your clothes off in a strip club they’d throw money at you. The problem is what the media tells you (and men) that men want, not what men actually want.

These pictures are my attempt to insert a little reality into the ongoing internet dialogue about men, the media, and women’s bodies:

Obviously this isn’t the way I pose on stage, but this is how I really look. It’s a lot like how a lot of women really look when we aren’t posing in outfits that complement our shapes.

Men like how women really look. They even pay us to look that way. Chill out with the shame thing.

* Does it seem like I wrote this before? I did, way back in 2007 with more words and less pictures.