She gets described as sexy and fat over and over, in luscious detail, but not in a fetishizing way. It doesn’t buy into her self-loathing, but challenges it frequently. The story doesn’t buy into dieting at all, it counters it. It’s a cut above most fat negative romances. But you have to slog through all that fatphobia to get there. And the scenes where she stands up to her mom are great. Plus the scenes where Min actually eats and enjoys food are pretty damn satisfying. Sure, she eventually stops dieting and learns to love her body and know she’s sexy (because the hero shows her how). Plus she has a mother who is emotionally abusive in intensely fatphobic ways. The fat heroine has a pretty intense amount of self-loathing around being fat. And there’s a scene with a donut that I won’t spoil for you, but it’s wonderful. It’s a fun retelling of the Cinderella story. The dialogue is zingy like a 30s romantic comedy directed by Howard Hawks, and the sex is really hot. The hero is a complex, nuanced character and she sees right through his charm.
The fat heroine is smart, angry, sexy, and complicated. It’s hilarious, and charming, and extremely well written. I fell hard for Bet Me, by Jennifer Crusie, years ago, and reread it about once a year. Which frankly I really need in my reading life these days. They all have something in common: they are funny, lighthearted fluff. I’m going to talk about three m/f romances centering fat heroines that I particularly appreciate. Sure she may learn to trust he actually wants her by the end, but the bulk of the story is mired in fatphobia. Despite the happy endings, they reinforce fatphobia.
I think of these as fat negative romances. Sometimes they get bullied or harassed for being fat, often to rescued by the hero. Sometimes they learn to accept their size through the love of a good man (or in at least one case, men). Sometimes, if I get lucky, the sex is really hot.
Mostly what I find is characters with lots of self-loathing, who diet continuously, cover up immediately after sex, and assume that the hero doesn’t really want them or that a thin woman is going to steal him.
It’s hard to find a good m/f romance centering a fat heroine. It was written and posted in February 2017.
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