Accordingly, he said nothing. Even if part of him desperately wanted to ask what had gone wrong on her second date.
Shoulders slumped, he navigated back to the main list of threads.
A new topic had appeared. One started by April, entitled A Big Fat Shame. When he clicked, her post appeared, and it filled his entire monitor.
It was eloquent. It was heartfelt. It was direct.
It was also an answer to the question he hadn’t been enough of an asshole to ask.
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: I’ve wanted to talk about this issue for years now, but I wasn’t sure how to begin the conversation. I’ve been especially nervous because the people in this community—all of you—mean so much to me, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings or alienate any of you. But the simple truth is that some of you have hurt MY feelings, albeit inadvertently, just as I’m sure I’ve done the same to some or all of you without understanding how. (If so, please tell me. I want to know and do better.)
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: So here’s the thing: I’m fat. Very fat, in fact. Not chubby or merely curvy. FAT. A good part of the reason I was originally drawn to this particular OTP was, I think, for that reason. Lavinia’s story resonated with me. Her character isn’t fat in either book!canon or show!canon, but in book!canon, as you know, she’s described as unattractive in terms of conventional beauty. Several of Aeneas’s men even call her ugly. As we’ve discussed many times, the choice of Summer Diaz—who’s gorgeous even without makeup and in dull, unflattering clothing—to play Lavinia undercut the resonance of that story line, but echoes of it are still there in the show, even so.
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: I think I desperately needed to read and watch the story of how a woman most considered homely or downright hideous could earn respect, admiration, desire, and eventually love from the man she desired and loved herself. (Aeneas, of course.) I needed to witness how her character, her choices, and her words would come to mean more to him, in the end, than whether the rest of the world would call her pretty.
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: I wanted that because of my family history. I wanted that because of my personal and romantic history too. I can’t tell you how many times a date, or a boyfriend, or someone I considered a friend, has shamed me for my size. Sometimes they do so directly, but more often in ways I’m sure they consider subtle or don’t consider at all. They do it by urging me to work out or take a walk with them every time I see them, or by discussing their ostensible concern for my health, or by pushing me toward what they consider more nutritionally sound food choices.
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: But I’m not looking to be fixed. I want to be loved and liked and desired not because of my size, not despite my size, but because I’m ME. My character, my choices, my words. Each time someone I care about shows they don’t care about me that same way, it hurts. It hurts more than I can easily express.
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: So this ship, this community, is important to me. It’s reassurance that better things are possible for me, and better relationships, and even real, abiding, passionate love. Not because of my size, not despite my size, but because I’m me.
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: That’s why it’s painful to me when fics coming out of our community use fatness as shorthand for greed, for evil, for ugliness, or for laziness. I’m stunned by how often it occurs, given that one half of the couple we all ship is not considered conventionally attractive in book!canon. The Lavinia/Aeneas relationship, at least in the books, is fundamentally about rejecting appearances in favor of character. Yet I see fat-shaming frequently in Lavineas fanfiction, and it feels like a slap every single time.
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: To be clear, I don’t think fat-shaming is usually a conscious choice in our fics. Hatred of fatness, disdain toward fat people, is so widespread in our culture, it comes out in ways we don’t intend, and I include myself in that statement. Being fat myself doesn’t exempt me from having to consider my words and actions thoughtfully when it comes to fatness, because I’m part of this culture too.
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: I’m not asking you to celebrate my fatness or make Lavinia fat in your stories or go back and change any old fics with fat-shaming in them. I AM asking, though, for you to be thoughtful any time you reference fatness in your writing. I want you to think of me and ask yourself, “Would the implications of this hurt ULS?” If the answer is yes, please do better—for me, for yourself, and for everyone else.
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: As I wrote earlier, I don’t want to hurt your feelings or alienate any of you, because you’re my friends and my community. But I thought this was important, so I said it, and hopefully by discussing the issue, we can become an even better, more inclusive community than we already are.
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: Thank you, and I’m sorry this ran so long.
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: TL;DR: Please don’t make fat people automatically awful or ugly or lazy in your fics. It makes me, an actual fat person, sad.
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: P.S. When I say I’m fat, I’m not insulting myself. I don’t use fat as a pejorative, as some do. For me, it’s merely an adjective, like blond, or tall, or (TopMeAeneas’s favorite) TUMESCENT. Whether it’s offensive depends entirely on context, as with many descriptors.
Marcus sat back in the too-hard hotel chair and let out a slow breath.
Among all the fics he’d recommended to her over the years, at least a few included fat secondary or tertiary characters. He suspected the descriptions of those characters would now make him cringe.
Shit.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Not by far.
They do it by urging me to work out, she’d written, or by pushing me toward what they consider more nutritionally sound food choices.
With his goddamn life at stake, he would swear—swear—that his invitation to the gym, to the buffet, hadn’t been a paternalistic nudge toward more exercise or so-called better nutrition. But with her background, he could see how she might interpret his words that way. He could see why she’d gone chilly, and why she’d pulled away from him, and why she hadn’t wanted to look him in the eye for the rest of that endless cab ride.
Given her personal history, given the infamous, all-consuming concern for appearances he’d playacted in front of cameras for years, of course she’d believe the worst of him. She didn’t yet know him well enough to do otherwise. Even with Book!AeneasWouldNever—
He pinched his forehead between his thumb and forefinger, pressing so hard, he half expected to leave fingerprints.
How had he overlooked it? How had he forgotten? She’d asked even Book!AeneasWouldNever, her longtime, faithful friend, whether her appearance had spurred him to cut off contact with her. Because she’d thought those photos of their dinner together were his first real glimpse of her, and she didn’t know he’d already seen her by that point. Already admired her. Already found her unbearably sexy.
Not because of her size. Not despite her size. Because she was . . . April. Ulsie. Her.
And no, she hadn’t seemed especially bothered by the cruel opinions of Twitter randos. But she’d been clear about that distinction in her Twitter DMs, hadn’t she?
I don’t give a shit what strangers think. Just the people I care about.