I’m fat. My husband is not. He’s conventionally attractive and extremely athletic (he recently undertook a 42-mile run, just for fun).
That’s not to say that fat people can’t also be athletic, of course, but I myself am decidedly not; he and I are polar opposites. Like many fat women (like many women full stop), I’ve had a complicated and not always healthy relationship with my body over the years, but these days I’m in a pretty good place. I’ve worked hard to overcome the anti-fat bias I learned growing up in the Noughties, and am able to love and appreciate my body for all the amazing things it helps me do: growing my daughter, moving, eating, laughing, breathing, typing these words.
My husband does not have a complicated relationship with my body; he just thinks it’s awesome, and has never made any secret of his desire for me. Despite that, though, I sometimes feel self-conscious when we meet new people as a couple, and even more so when I’m introduced to friends he knows through his various outdoor pursuits. While I’m proud and confident in who I am, I still convince myself I’m not what they’re expecting, that they’re assuming I’ll be some lithe girl in lycra, and when they discover what I actually look like, they’ll be shocked.
Basically, I worry they’ll judge us unevenly matched. I know intellectually that this isn’t the case, but it can be difficult to believe that when I so rarely see other couples who look like us represented in the .