As a plus size woman living in a world where fatness is still seen as an oddity, the stigma of fat bodies as being everything but desirable still remains. People try their damnedest to disarm fat women of their sexuality, regarding it as a joke or as a fetish – in my book, that’s not okay. Believing what I had been taught by society, my experiences of being in the bedroom as a fat woman have lurched from hiding under the covers, to trying too hard, to being completely brazen and letting my inhibitions go. I’ve since (thankfully) learnt that body type is not a prerequisite to sexiness, but the way that you feel about your body is – however that doesn’t stop fat sexuality being somewhat of a taboo subject.

In the last few years there has been an influx of fat visibility, but it seems that the increasingly open conversations that we have about sex aren’t extended to fat women. The media has a no holds barred approach to fat sexuality, particularly where plus-size women are concerned – most obviously, in films. Women who are outside of the aesthetic ideal that society promotes, are often depicted as a joke where movies are concerned – fat women often portray the token fat girl (TFG), the curvy counterpart to the slim best friend. In many comedy films, the TFG plays the role of wing(wo)man and is paired with the reluctant male friend, what’s more, she is expected to be humbled by this. As an audience we are meant to feel sorry for the guy, and happy for the TFG as it doesn’t matter that it’s a pity-shag, because the fat girl is actually getting some, right? The idea of a curvy coupling is often reserved as the punchline for a joke, this kind of portrayal leads many to abuse the sexuality of fat girls in real life. By these standards we are a box to be ticked off, we are the last pickings at the end of a drunken night, we are expected to accept the pity-sex with open arms because our ‘lovers’ are doing us a favour. If you can happily sleep with a fat girl and revel in the experience, yet be embarrassed to hold her hand in public, you do not deserve to have any relationship with her body – sexual or otherwise.

On the flip-side of this, yet just as abhorrent, fat women are often seen as a fetish. Apropos of nothing, we are expected to fill some kind of sexual fantasy – sorry, what? I’ll say this once and once only, fat women are not a fetish. We are not there to fill a sexual void and we are not there to act as a passive vessel that you’ve developed some kind of fantasy about.

Fat women, more often than not, have been on a journey with their bodies. Learning to live in a world that goes against everything that you are is tiresome, and achieving enjoyable, no holds barred sex can be such a victory for many. We voluptuous vixens need to acknowledge the fact that we deserve better sex, we are as entitled to respect in the bedroom as our slimmer counterparts and ladies, we should never, ever be left unsatisfied. Simply put, if someone cannot mentally grasp the truth that you are worthy of having an undeniably pleasurable sex life, then you’re better off taking matters into your own hands.