Guest Author - Guest Editor

Beauty is cheap in rich countries. ~ Stephen King

I love fat guys! You might like guys with black hair and green eyes, like Ian McShane, or you may go for the pale and powerful, like Daniel Craig. But I like fat guys, like Jack Black.

I like fat guys because I understand them better than regular guys. Fat guys don't seek approval and, very unlike fat (or even skinny) girls, they never apologize for their looks. Take 'em or leave 'em is their attitude, one that I so envy.

Now, I'm going to make a confession to you: As of last May, I have gone from weighing 300 pounds to 219 pounds and I hope to be under 200 pounds this summer for the first time since I was 12 years old! And as I get healthier every month, and better looking according to what others have repeatedly said to me, I think that my preference for fat guys is a rebellion against our culture.

You know how the old story goes: Being young and seen as beautiful makes you valuable in our culture whether you're male or female. Everyone else can just disappear please. But as the Stephen King quote from above says, here that valued beauty is easily attained if not impossible to maintain.

In the US we can get plastic surgery or buy tons of make-up to alter our true appearance and I'm not saying this is a bad thing necessarily. I mean, what girl can say she's never wanted to be prettier and happier? What boy can say he's never wanted to be handsome and respected?

Except our culture confuses the two and tells us, through the media and advertising, that one leads to the other, which we know is not true but want to believe anyway. Earning beauty and nothing else is a lot easier than working towards a PhD or a law degree or running a successful company isn't it?

Our modern ideals of beauty are strongly driven by a multi-billion dollar advertising industry. These ideals are not intrinsic cultural or biological preferences but are manufactured for profit. Now I love profit every bit as much as the next girl, but it seems that when it comes to our looks our ideals of beauty - made up and repeatedly pushed on us - always put women at a disadvantage to men and to each other (older versus younger, this race versus that race, etc).

As I age, I understand that most women grow powerful with time because we are not as concerned with being seen as beautiful as we were when we were younger. And it seems that it is because of this acquisition of power and inner security that older women are called ugly. We all know that being labeled ugly diminishes a person making him or her vulnerable to the approval of others.

One of my all-time favorite quotes about this topic is by American medical reformer and educator, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen:

"To seek approval is to have no resting place, no sanctuary. Like all judgment, approval encourages constant striving. It makes us uncertain of who we are and of our true value. Approval cannot be trusted. It can be withdrawn at any time no matter what our track record has been. It is as nourishing of real growth as cotton candy yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it".

This quote liberated me because it said what I'd been feeling my entire life: exhausted and sad from begging for approval from a culture that would never, ever give it to me as an obese woman. Reading this quote last year proved to be a big turning point in my life because it helped me to decide to get on with the goals in my life that were meaningful and attainable.

I do not think it is a coincidence that this decision and my first-ever, serious and successful weight loss have happened at the same time because for the first time I am losing weight for my health and not my looks.

My intention, my motivation changed from false to true, and so the result is true and of substance. As Coco Chanel said, "How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone."

So if you find yourself getting caught up in a never-ending cycle of self-hatred because you believe you're not pretty enough, think about what Dr. Remen and Coco have said.

Find rest and relief in your character, your spirit, and your mind and applaud everything about yourself that is true and real. All the rest is just a manufactured advertisement. God bless all those fat guys out there. Now one of them just needs to take me out on a date ...