Peacocks and Patterns

Clearly dating has been on my mind lately. It took one person expressing exactly how I feel to make me realize that I'm going about this all wrong. Let me explain the dilemma:

I'm corpulent. I don't mind being large, although I would like to be stronger and more active, and when I can, I work towards that goal. Size and looks matter less to me than weakness. I despise weakness.

While it is absolutely true that fat women marry all the time somewhere, in my immediate acquaintance it's an extreme improbability. I know exactly two plus-size women who actually go on dates, but they are no closer to marriage than I am, and you know my statistics from my last post. They date constantly - more often than the skinny women, even - and have active sex lives (relatively), but while men seem eager to use them, or to express physical attraction, they don't commit permanently. I watch them get their hearts broken, and sometimes I'm jealous that men express attraction (something that has never happened to me, even when I did date), but it costs them so much.

The problem for me is having faith that I, a fat woman, will someday be attractive to somebody. Because of our cultural dating patterns, this attraction is necessary for marriage, and I want to be married. I often fully believe that I will marry. And then somebody reminds me that men don't date women like me.

 

I belong to a large (650+) group of like-minded, middle-aged singles. We spend a lot of time thinking about dating each-other. With that many people, patterns emerge in the way we socialize. The group is about two-thirds female, and all personality types appear. The beginning of our largest meeting looks something like this:

1) Independent, responsible women come first and find seats against the walls. They usually bring a craft or hobby to occupy them. They are thoughtful, and probably hoping to be approached by independent, responsible men. It never happens, because the independent, responsible men have duties to attend while the irresponsible ones avoid them. And because other women.

2) Women begin to cluster, blocking the independent ones against the walls in estrogen bubbles. Cowardly men too late to be shuffled into active service sit alone on the aisles, as far as possible away from the estrogen-related festivities and chicken-like conversations. They maintain a manly distance from all other attendees.

3) As the room fills, men and women begin scootching nearer each-other to allow newcomers. This is only acceptable as long as the men shoot a glance at the nearby females to make sure they understand that they are not who the gentlemen hoped to be sitting by.

4) Those who are arriving later often stay in the various foyers and hallways to socialize for as long as possible, and after the meetings as well. These societies form a different but related pattern. The women are often in conversational groups divided by attractiveness. Thin, sharp women with high heels, pencil skirts, and dyed and styled hair chat confidently with each-other, and with tall men carrying ipads. The dumpier women - large, more conservatively dressed, with odd or lumpy faces, greying hair, or sometimes ethnic differences - cluster eagerly around a single man: the few, generous souls willing to associate with them out of an odd mixture of vanity and charity. These are peacocks, and the women volunteer as tailfeathers.

I am not a tailfeather, for anyone. I'm the delusional, independent type that gets trapped against the wall by dear friends. But my dear tailfeathers everywhere - I wish you some sense of personal pride. No peacock is ever going to ask you on a date. If he dated you, he would lose his other tailfeathers, and then what would he be but a plucked chicken? What is he now, but a rooster in a dress?