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Read other letters about this article
"Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world admires." -- James Joyce, "Ulysses"
I'm a 29-year-old white man who likes all forms of female beauty, from willowy sylphs to zaftig goddesses with plump rumps and thick thighs. Regardless of size, I like supple, womanly women. Is this really a "fetish," and am I guilty of forcing women to commit "slow suicide" to please me?
Why are goddesses curvy, and not scrawny-haunched, hard-body harridans? Surely there must be a reason, but maybe the entire anthropological history of humankind is wrong and Debra Dickerson is right.
My wife has proportions identical to Buffy the Body, whose shape is no less healthy than a ripe piece of fruit. That's just the way she is, no matter what she eats or how she exercises. I adore my wife's body -- it makes me happy, and I like to make her happy with my adoration. So, what's unhealthier: feeling adored and finding pleasure in the body you were blessed with, or feeling ashamed and overshadowed by a standard of beauty that is not natural for you (or, perhaps, for any woman)?
Sometimes treating a woman like a goddess elevates a man's basest desires. What could be more positive than that? Why reduce it to a fetish?
