Before we get into this, I want to say that I am not entirely sure if I consider myself a feminist or not. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, and I am honestly leaning toward maybe not. This is definitely a controversial stance to take, and if I was a man and expressed that I was not 100% behind modern feminism, or had a lot of problems with mainstream feminism, in any kind of public way, there would definitely be the 2017 guillotine in my future: a viral twitter post mocking me and maybe even doxxing me.
It’s a complicated thing. I think most people don’t even know what feminism is anymore.
I think that modern feminism is narrow, myopic, non-inclusive, and has been largely co-opted by Pepsi and Hollywood figureheads to make their brands seem authentic. Emma Watson and Taylor Swift drop the F word all the time to applause and big money, meanwhile American black women can barely get a hashtag when they’re killed by police and die in childbirth at higher rates than women living in third world countries.
Despite feminism being so mainstream, it seems like nobody still gives a shit about most women. How are we living in a society where I can buy the word feminism on a mug, a sweatshirt, a necklace, and a throw pillow right now, and have them delivered to me by next week if I want, but a man who is known for sexually assaulting women is my fucking president?
There’s also a whole group of “feminists” dedicated just to hating trans women. How are you gonna call yourself any kind of feminist if you point blank hate any kind of woman? What the fuck is that? Speaking of what the fuck, companies and celebs make bank off of faux empowerment chic fashion, like sweatshirts that have “Feminist” emblazoned across the front, which are worn by “Woke AF” western liberals who congratulate themselves for being so cosmopolitan, all while these clothes are being pieced together by tortured women in third world countries.
“If you really got feminism, you wouldn’t be posting an essay congratulating yourself for fucking your fat wife, who is not even fat.”
Feminism is supposed to be radical. It’s about dismantling oppressive power structures. It’s about looking deep inside yourself and actively trying to be less shitty. It’s not about buying a slave labor made Forever 21 denim jacket that has pizza and cat patches on the front and “male tears” written four times in ombre pastel font on the back, so you can get the feeling of jerking off without getting your hands sticky. It’s not about telling femme women they are betraying their sex by visiting Sephora. It’s not about bragging rights for doing literally the bare minimum of being a decent person.
How watered down, decontextualized, and totally meaningless mainstream feminism has become is largely illustrated by a lot of its critics, who claim that it has ruined women, ruined marriage, ruined America, and also ruined their chances of getting laid. It’s also illustrated by a lot of the people who claim they are feminists. Both groups of people seem to actually have no fucking idea what feminism means.
Like this motherfucker.
If you don’t spend your life on the internet watching Space Ghost Coast To Coast and inundating yourself with memes to numb your existential terror, you may have missed the “I love this woman and her curvy body” meme.
Basically, a skinny guy with a statistically thin, average looking wife, wrote an Instagram post congratulating himself for being woke enough to want to stick his dick in her, even though she’s fat. It went viral. A lot of assholes other than me had a lot to say about it.
In case you are wondering, that is not what feminism is, and it didn’t take long for people to rip him a new asshole. Wanting to fuck a woman who is not a size 0 doesn’t make you a fucking radical feminist. It just makes you a pragmatist in a country where the average woman is a size 16-18.
Here’s the original post, where you can take a look at his wife’s “thick thighs, big booty, cute little side roll, etc.”
As a legitimate fat bitch, this bothers me for a few reasons. If you want confirmation that I’m a real world fat bitch and not one of those thin girls that announces I’m fat every 20 minutes because society has successfully conditioned me to constantly seek validation that I am not totally disgusting, take a look at my Instagram. I’m really fat. I’m really not even average looking probably. And I’m really not sorry about it.
I’m just gonna go through a few points from Robbie Tripp, “The Paul Revere Of Chubby Chasing,” “The Magellan of Fupa Circumnavigation,” “Alleged Fat Chick Connoisseur Who Apparently Has Never Seen One Before,” and talk about everything I think really shows he doesn’t get anything he is actually talking about.
“I love this woman and her curvy body.”
Nice. If only he had stopped there.
“As a teenager, I was often teased by my friends for my attraction to girls on the thicker side, ones who were shorter and curvier, girls that the average (basic) bro might refer to as “chubby” or even “fat.”
While I really vibe with making the word fat just another descriptor, like “tall” or “brown-eyed,” that’s not what he’s doing. He’s also making her body about him. A man setting the stage to go out of his way to remind people that other men find his wife’s body gross, but not finding her gross elevates him as an enlightened man, is grosser than even my side roll, probably.
“Then, as I became a man and started to educate myself on issues such as feminism and how the media marginalizes women by portraying a very narrow and very specific standard of beauty (thin, tall, lean) I realized how many men have bought into that lie.”
If you really got feminism, you wouldn’t be posting an essay congratulating yourself for fucking your fat wife, who is not even fat. Discussing women’s bodies like they are some kind of anomalous thing is actually a huge part of the problem. Acting like women who are larger than a size 2 are fat, and that fat is the worst thing you could be, is a problem. The average American woman wears a size 16 or 18. I actually wear the same jeans size as the average American woman.
Despite being the average, I can’t get that size in many stores, I still consider myself fat, and so does everyone else. Robbie Tripp’s “curvy wife” is actually most likely statistically thin, for an American. The fact that this educated feminist felt the need to qualify and defend his wife’s statistically thin body and his attraction to it in a pretty gross Instagram essay about her “big booty” is kinda messed up.
“A real woman is not a porn star or a bikini mannequin or a movie character. She’s real. She has beautiful stretch marks on her hips and cute little dimples on her booty.”
Again, feminism is not about stacking women against each other to prove points, or deciding what is real based on your own convenience or ideals. While mannequins and movie characters are not real women, porn stars are actual people. And maybe I have just watched more porn than this guy, but I have seen weirder shit on porn actors’ bodies than I have ever seen on a real life person. And as somebody who has slept with people of a number of genders and ages throughout my life, I have seen some shit on peoples bodies, let me tell you, my dog. You can enjoy both your average wife and Sasha Grey. You don’t get “I’m Not Like The Other Guys” points for making a spectacle of your wife’s body.
Also, I take issue with having to pretend that all naturally occurring marks of surviving on this hell planet have to be romanticized. We get scars. We get stretch marks. Even though we as a society have decided to pretend that only women get cellulite, men get it too sometimes. Can we all please calm down and accept the inherent grossness of our meat suits? Men, women, and others out there listen to me, not every aspect of your body has to be sexy or perfect to be valid. We are dumb cosmic mistakes that get lumpy and weird and saggy over time. Don’t worry about it. Come watch TV.
“Girls, don’t ever fool yourself by thinking you have to fit a certain mold to be loved and appreciated. There is a guy out there who is going to celebrate you for exactly who you are.”
The fact that he has spent this entire thing talking about how fat his statistically thin wife is really undermines the authentic love message he’s trying to express. Also, women are told they have to do very specific things to be valid and attractive. We aren’t fooling ourselves buddy.
Question: Is taking pics of your wife all day, and tagging them with every plus size related hashtag you can find for follows on Instagram, a genuine and pure celebration of her body?
Am I a bitter curmudgeon if I am skeptical?
Does anyone else find Robbie Tripp’s whole deal kind of gross?
Support Isadora’s writing on our site by subscribing to our newsletter on this link, Subscribe here!
Isadora Teich is a freelance writer and traveler. They’ve written social media copy, tabloids, news, erotica, opinion pieces, quizzes, have worked on film scripts, and do some ghostwriting from time to time. Isadora lives for artistic experimentation and is working on a novel.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glamthane/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/GlamThane