I Lost 40lbs Only To Find Out Some Men Still Like Thick Women

When I saw the movie About Last Night, the Kevin Hart film starring Joy Bryant, a rotund black guy in the audience hollered out loud when he saw how thin Joy appeared in her underwear.

“She’d hurt my hip!” he exclaimed, as his hefty female partner laughed along with him, likely confident that her man would never want a woman as thin as Bryant.

Yes, Joy is pretty thin. However, that doesn't make her any less of a beautiful and amazing actress. 

It was a form of skinny shaming that didn’t come from a woman, but from a man.

He was a big guy stuffed into his movie seat, and part of me wondered if he really was only trying to make his woman feel better about being “overweighted,” as my young son used to say when he was an adolescent.

Or perhaps he really preferred bigger women — although there was no need to shame Joy to express his desires.

Either way, I love to hear the opinions of men and women and their views on the ideal body, which can vary widely. I like it when people are honest, yet kind, like the guy who clucked at me in the hot tub the other day, asking if I’d lost a lot of weight.

I’d told him that yes, my once 183 pounds packed onto my 5-feet 11-inch frame had decreased by 40 pounds. I also told him my husband said he preferred “a little meat on my bones” — something that surprised me because I thought all guys liked it when women thinned down. The man in the hot tub agreed, and cracked me up when he admitted, “Yeah, I ain’t never like a neck bone.”

The thing I’ve learned about the human body is to allow God to craft it into the body that I like the most, keeping others’ opinions in mind, but at bay. No need to go crazy with diet pills or harmful practices. The weight lifting, HIIT cardio, “Lean Out” fat transporters and “Muscle Egg” flavored drinkable egg whites are working fine for me, bless the Lord.

It’s just fascinating to hear the views of others about my body now that I’ve put myself in the spotlight for others to judge said body. Back when I dropped about 20 pounds previously and returned to my corporate job in 2004, I learned that white guys generally like thinner women by the way they responded to my form. Black guys, on average, tend to like us with curves and a little junk in the trunk — but that, too, varies with the individual man.

Stepping into the world of bodybuilding has brought a whole new breed of men into my life that think muscles are sexy on women. It’s kind of a different world than the one from the 1980s, when aerobics and spandex were all the rage. These days some guys actually find it looks good for women to have “traps” and “lat spreads” and good muscle separation. And I love that.

Yet, the shaming needn’t be there for anyone — fat or thin or all points in between.

It’s like when I was fresh out of high school and came home from college on a break and beamed to my best friend about working out and lifting weights using the Nautilus machines (women hardly stepped foot in the weight rooms that we now saunter into boldly.)

“My aunt is into all that weight lifting stuff,” she said. “All those muscles are like a man.”

“It’s better than flab,” I answered.

“Hmph!” was all she could say, in a way that us “youngin’s” used to say when someone got told off. Essentially, it was a “cased your face to the human race” moment.

No matter the preference, it’s apparent some men will go for thin girls, some for thicker — and some love the slender yet muscular look. It’s all love. What’s deeper beneath the layers of skin, body fat and muscles is what really matters most.

Paula Neal Mooney is the author of several books, and her essays and articles have been featured in national print magazines such as Writer's Digest, and in major online publications like Yahoo, and Examiner.

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