I Like Big...Whats?

...and I can not lie: I've never understood the fascination with fundaments.

I mean, by now everybody knows exactly how little bodies in general mean to me, right? I know that's strange, but(t)...if you have to be attracted to the outermost layer of a person, why on earth would you focus on that specific part?
Both genders do it, so there's got to be some evolutionary reason why asses are where it's at. Me, I look at an ass, and I think that's the part the shit tumbles out of. Hence I don't look at them very often. I'm nobody's coprophiliac.

Name another body part that seems to garner more than its fair share of attention. On women, it's breasts. And while I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't like boobs, as a man it has been drilled into me, over and over and over again, that I better not be caught looking at them because that's tantamount to rape. Now, I disagree with this notion quite strongly, but disagreeing with notions like this will get you nowhere.  So I don't look at breasts, either. Not unless and until I'm allowed to, at any rate.

That leaves faces, and that's the one part of the body that tells you something useful about the person underneath. You can tell a lot from a long look at a face. You can get a pretty fair gauge of empathy just from the depth of the eyes. You can tell if someone smiles a lot (even if they're not smiling when you look at them). You can tell how much pain they're in, and sometimes how long they've felt that pain. I seem to be particularly good at noticing pain that's been locked away.Not bad for a guy as supposedly unobservant as I've been told I am..

I'm attracted to faces. You want to get me warm? A warm smile does it every time.

Anyway, back to the behind. As I was saying, the bean-blower has just never held any interest for me. I'm practically alone among male humans in that regard. Popular music is just full of anal referents, from the iconic 'Baby Got Back' on up to this summer's feel-good-about-yourself-and-especially-your-bum song, "All About That Bass." If you're being told to shake something in popular music, it's a pretty safe bet it's your butt.

Body image songs.

I'm still waiting for a really good one. No matter the song or the good intentions behind it, there always seems to be a word or a line that jars, something that lifts me out of the song and says to me this singer doesn't really mean it.

Let's take "Baby Got Back" as an example.. Sir Mix-A-Lot was quoted in 1992:

"The song doesn't just say I like large butts, you know? The song is talking about women who damn near kill themselves to try to look like those beanpole models that you see in Vogue magazine."

Fantastic sentiment, otherwise damn near perfect song, marred in the very first verse. C'mon, we all know it:

"when a girl walks in with an itty-bitty waist and a round thing in your face, you get sprung..."

Hang on a second. What's that "itty-bitty waist" doing in there? Tiny waist, big ass, what kind of unnatural shape is that, anyway? Even if that's normal, why exactly does the waist have to be small?

To say nothing of the fact that the butt and the waist are the only two body parts mentioned here. Even for a song focussing only on bodies, that seems kind of narrow.

Then there's Meghan Trainor: "All About That Bass". This one suffers from the opposite problem:

I'm bringin' booty back
Go ahead and tell them skinny bitches that
No I'm just playin' I know you think you're fat
But I'm here to tell ya
Every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top

Again, lovely sentiment. But did she have to call them skinny women "bitches"? Was that really necessary? Oh, hang on, she said "no, I'm just playin'." Ah. Okay. That excuses that, then.

No it doesn't. I've heard "I'm just playin'" used to justify pretty much every hurtful thing that has never been said to me, and more importantly, to others. It's often said to fat women (always women...) Remember the schoolyard chant? "Fatty, fatty, two-by-four, can't get through the bathroom door"? Did you ever think to ask the person those words were addressed to if she thought the "game" was fun?

No, there's nothing wrong with being fat. Of course there isn't. But there's nothing wrong with being skinny either.Being skinny doesn't make you a "bitch". Being bitchy all the time makes you a bitch, and those come in all shapes and sizes.

There are lots of other body acceptance songs out there -- MIKA's "Big Girl, You are Beautiful" comes to mind. It has its issues too...it comes across as a fetishist's song, kind of creepy in places. That's the inevitable line you walk when you write these songs that focus on the body like it's the only thing that matters.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but these song are always, without exception, about women. Now, believe me, I'm extremely sensitive to the body image plight that nearly every woman wrestles with. But I'm here to tell you us men have body issues, too. In spades. Women aren't quite as shallow as men are (in general): guys without six-packs can still aspire to be friends with women, at least. But we all know what gets your motors revving: biceps, triceps, abs, delts. quads...Where's our body acceptance song, anyway?