Do All Polyamorous People Look Like That?

...and other reflections on life as fat polyamorous woman.

I have never been a thin person. When I was younger, I was less fat - in the "small-fat, my mom is bothered by it, and I wore a mother of the bride dress to prom" size range, rather than my present size 20 "I hear you talking like being my size would be your worst nightmare without thinking about it, mid-fat, middle-aged mom in both body and vibes" size. I've been polyamorous since I was 19 - so I have a lot of life experience as a fat polyam lady - and a lot of friends of many sizes whose experiences I draw on when I say something is "typical" if I call it out as either a monogamous or polyamorous experience.

As both those vivid descriptions of my size illustrate, I'm acutely aware of personal and systemic fatphobia and how it affects my life and relationships. I feel pretty lucky that for the most part, both systemically and personally, it's been background rather than foreground "noise" in my life.

What do I mean by that? I mean I get "it's so impressive someone your size has good labs!" and a reminder they'd rather I were smaller at the doctor's office when they insist on running extra baseline tests before doing the ones for the issue I came for, but they DO do the tests I need, instead of direct medical neglect or denial of my issue until I lose more weight. I mean in my personal life I get quiet missing of dating opportunities much more than people outwardly rejecting me for my weight (there are always a few of those loud direct rejections online). I mean I have enough privilege along other axes (I'm white, I'm reasonably pretty, I put on weight in a "favored" configuration until about a size 16 so people enjoy pretending they can't see how big I am because it's hourglassy) that I get less direct rudeness when I'm the "extra friend" when a friend is getting hit on out, that people are more likely to find me "acceptable fat," and my thin friends forget I don't fit in the biggest size in their stores until I'm on the higher end of the weights I cycle through these days.

None of those are polyamorous experiences, you might be saying. Like so much else about relationships - there is not some magical portal we move through when we change the style we relate in that removes the cultural context we're operating in and changes the biases we're living through and with. This can mean that the fat folks in your polycule are quick to be disillusioned from the idea that polyamory or polyam people are more enlightened or more progressive (just as folks of color in your polycule might be - polyamorous people are just people and we have all kinds of biases that we say are "just preferences" and don't often examine fully). So the two biggest 'dating' issues that affect fat women of my acquaintance (and fat women I hear about and don't know well! I and the ones I know seem pretty typical) are: 1) having dating option scarcity compared to our compatriots who are higher on the pretty privilege/conventional prettiness scale; and 2) being made to be or being made to feel like the secret girlfriend. These are pretty much equally problems in monogamy as in polyamory - and in fact the second might in some ways be a bigger problem in polyamory.

Let's address that second one, being a "secret girlfriend" or "only for seeing at home," first. In polyamory, legitimate concerns about privacy, the closeted status of some partners, not being open in all environments, can mean that someone doesn't mean badly by "hiding" your relationship in some contexts, but can trigger history or trauma around this issue. However, working together to decide ways to be public in some ways, in what places you can be open, or compromising on having no partners come to +1 events if particular partners can't, can help reassure partners with negative history on this topic. I've had (and I've spoken to others who had similar experiences) partners make decisions about who they bring to work parties or weddings sort of suspiciously framed around beauty standards of thinness, youth, having the right hair and makeup to be the most presentable partner rather than around longevity of connection or professed intensity of relationship or professed commitment. [Watching a partner take a 'very casual date' to a 'very important event' because they look better on their arm to their boss or That Uncle is an experience that helped put a nail in the coffin of one of my relationships, many years ago, and that caused friction in many relationships I've heard about from friends and clients.] I wish this was a thing I could say has only happened to me. Having whole relationships that are "only at home" is a thing I've never really stood for - but I've definitely been the "very much a secondary" who didn't interact with someone's friends, in a way I don't do anymore, that felt like it had much of the same effect. They aren't admitting they're seeing you to anyone who matters, and they're happy to admit in private that you're great, hot, whatever, but not out front.

So how do we as polyamorous folks address this? The boundaries we set to protect ourselves can go in a couple directions. (And it's been just about 20 years; I've messed things up in all directions of having no boundaries, trying the boundaries too firmly in both directions, and settling where I am now, which works for me - but you'll decide what works for you.) The first is that you fuckboy harder than the person who is refusing to be open with/about you. You're not sharing about THEM. They're YOUR secondary who doesn't count and you don't share them on social media or take them as a plus one anywhere on invite them to the important events in your life. This works best if you have a large and supportive friend group or other partners who are open and think this is shit behavior you shouldn't tolerate. It's a good step if they're pleasant company when you're alone and sexually compatible but not a great fit for a big relationship anyway. This does backfire if you want more; it will hurt your own feelings instead of giving you the actual control you want to take. The other direction you can go is, of course, exactly the opposite: include a requirement of openness in your relationship negotiations. That's where I'm at now. A certain amount of openness is necessary to date me. I don't need a guarantee of [x] number of parties a year, but I need to know we intend to integrate our social lives if things work out and I won't be a secret. Going too far and pushing people who don't love social media into digital PDA they aren't comfy with is a possible side effect of this.

All of this is complicated by the idea that polyamorous people "look a certain way" - and that this look is kind of bad, and kind of fat and unkempt, but also alternative - because a lot of people are offended by this. (Frankly, so am I, sort of. There was a mid-aughts sense that we should all be manic pixie dream girls if we lived in big cities that I absolutely could not live up to, paired with me being a young person in a kink scene where that meant that I was "supposed" to be smaller, and aging into "well now you get to be fat but only if you let yourself go EXCEPT your hair which has to be manic panic-ed still" is WILD. No thank you.) This adds to the number of polyam people who contribute to the broader culture's tendency to talk about my body as something they fear or hate having. The top result for what polyamorous people look like is a reddit post that says we're chubby nerds and then people saying no! NOT ALL of us! which is fair, not all of us. I know folks of every shape and size who are polyam. But the diet-culture vociferousness with which people jump to defend themselves against this claim is a lot. (and I'm going to include a picture of me where you can see I'm fat but I look real good, as well as a more average one, with this post, so I'm part of the problem, haha.)

Let's turn to the ways it's a little harder to find a date/ it feels like there's a bit more "option scarcity" compared to our thin compatriots. The "do you have honest pictures on your dating profile" is an anxiety inducing question for me (and most of my fat friends - I've only had a couple clients mention it and I don't know if that's typical). I've had a bunch of negging dudes try to imply that full-body pictures were somehow not clear indicators that I'm fat, despite being... my whole fat boday, in recent photos, doing things. Then also, there's the little, everyday ways I get treated as invisible next to my thinner friends or next to men at meetups, especially by strangers, but also by acquaintances and by A Certain Kind of Guy - these people also struggle to take me seriously no matter my level of expertise or to believe I'm running an event even if theyre introduced to me as the person running things, preferring to talk over my shoulder to men or thinner women. Women are not immune from this, although women who do this tend to default to a man they believe is in charge and be strangers to me. These (in and of themselves minor) interactions build up over the years into a big feeling that I'm harder to date, or at least that there are fewer people whose physical standards I meet, or that I need to dress up at all times to be taken seriously. Despite all of this, I have not been significantly single in 20 years, and I've usually had 2+ partners - so it's not like there's actual scarcity - it's just that I've had partners and friends who in our 20s it felt like were absolutely saturated at all times, and as a polyam extrovert who is sort of always dating in the background, (except when I was falling apart from health problems) it feels like a lot of rejection- and my similarly situated friends who are less deeply extroverted experience more of this issue compared to their partners.

I want to sum up, then, by pointing out that your dating life is what you make of it - while you may experience the systemic issues that come with fatphobic marginalization, you won't be substantially limited by it any more than you would be under monogamy, and polyamory gives you the opportunity to have more partners and work around the possible downsides it has.