Fat’s life: Another look inside the world of feederism

Online letter from Jill to ‘Dr. Feeder’: “I am a feedee from Boston in desperate need of a feeder. I have tried dieting and I know my mission is to be fat. I feel I can’t do it alone. I fantasize about meeting a dominant man who is a Feeder…How do I get fat on my own? What foods? Can you give me a sample daily diet?”

Response to Jill’s letter from ‘Dr. Feeder’: “See my article ‘How To Get Fat‘. The kinds of foods don’t matter so much. Eat what you enjoy the most, especially if it’s fattening. The more you enjoy overeating, the more you will overeat. A lot of variety is also important”.

In a previous blog on fat fetishism, I noted that the fetish also included ‘feederism’ and ‘gaining’ in which sexual arousal and gratification is stimulated through the person (referred to as the ‘feedee’) gaining body fat. Feederism is a practice carried out by many fat admirers within the context of their sexual relationships and is where the individuals concerned obtain sexual gratification from the encouraging and gaining of body fat through excessive food eating. Sexual gratification may also be facilitated and/or enhanced the eating behaviour itself, and/or from the feedee becoming fatter – known as ‘gaining’ – where either one or both individuals in the sexual relationship participate in activities that result in the gaining of excess body fat.

Since writing my previous article on the topic, I have briefly written about feederism in two of my academic papers on sexual paraphilias (one in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in relation to a case study I wrote on fart fetishism, and the other in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions on how the internet has facilitated scientific research into paraphilias – see ‘Further reading’ below). However, I was also interviewed for the Discovery Channel’s television programme Forbidden about American Gabi Jones from Colorado (aka ‘Gaining Gabi’) who appeared in the episode ‘Pleasure and Pain’.

At the time when the television programme was being recorded, Gabi weighed 490 pounds and her sole aim was to get even fatter and heavier (before she became a feedee she was 250 pounds). It is also her career and her thousands of online fans pay money who pay $20 a month to watch her eat as well as sending her food to eat (you can check out her online website here, but pleased be warned that it contains explicit sexual content). She also claims that she becomes sexually aroused when eating excessively.

“When I indulge, I never rush. I take my time and treat all meals as very sexual experiences. I love being fat and the idea of getting large excites me…For as long as I remember, I always loved the idea of getting softer and being this piece of art that I am creating…My body is a work of art”.

She claims she does it to show that women can be empowered and that fat can be sexy. She’s also a campaigner for ‘fat acceptance’. However, the (US) National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) is anti-feederism. The NAAFA exists “to help build a society in which people of every size are accepted with dignity and equality in all aspects of life” but has specifically noted in its manifesto that:

“NAAFA supports an individual’s right to control all choices concerning his or her own body. NAAFA opposes the practice of feeders, in which one partner in a sexual relationship expects and encourages another partner to gain weight…That all bodies, of all sizes, are joyous and that individuals of all sizes can and should expect and demand respect from sexual partners for their bodies just as they are. That people of all sizes become empowered to demand respect for their bodies in the context of sexual relationships, without attempting to lose or gain weight in order to win a partner’s approval or attract or retain that partner’s desire”.

At the time she was interviewed, Gabi had two ‘feeders’ – one male (Kenyon, from Kansas, US) and one female (nicknamed ‘Hearts’, from Colorado). As the show’s production notes reported:

“Kenyon lives in a small town in Kansas…Gabi says that Kenyon has actually been a fan of hers since he was 12 or 13 [years old], he discovered her online. Gabi says that she wouldn’t have anything to do with him because he was not of age, but after [Kenyon’s 18th birthday she] accepted him into her life as her food slave. Kenyon says that he had fantasized for years about feeding her live in person…He is now totally devoted to Gabi and she is happy to have him as part of her ‘chosen family’ and hopes to move him out from Kansas to Colorado to live with her fulltime someday soon…Hearts makes sure that Gabi has all the food she could want and need. Gabi also feeds her. It’s not a sexual thing or anything – ‘we’re not lesbians, we’re just really close friends’ – but when they feed each other it’s ‘sexy and fun’. They met in college at the start of this year and haven’t left each other’s side since…Hearts is also gaining. Gabi got her into it one day when they were lying on her bed and Hearts noticed how soft Gabi’s tummy was. This made her decide she wanted to get fat too. Hearts is currently 201 pounds and her goal weight is 400 pounds…Gabi says there are two types of gainers – ‘feedees’ who’ll eat anything and ‘foodees’ who’ll eat only quality food, not junk. Gabi says she identifies more with a foodie”.

Academically, there have been an increasing number of papers published over the last few years. For instance, Dr. Lesley Terry and her colleagues have also published papers on feederism in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. The first was a case study (which I outlined in my previous blog), and more recently an interesting experiment that assessed individuals’ arousal to feederism compared to ‘normal’ sexual activity and neutral activity. A total of 30 volunteers (15 men and 15 women) were assessed using penile plethysmography (for the males) and vaginal photoplethysmography (for the females) – none of who were feeders or feedees. The paper reported that:

“The volunteers were all shown sexual, neutral, and feeding still images while listening to audio recordings of sexual, neutral, and feeding stories. Participants did not genitally respond to feeding stimuli. However, both men and women subjectively rated feeding stimuli as more sexually arousing than neutral stimuli…the results of this study provide limited, but suggestive, evidence that feederism may be an exaggeration of a more normative pattern of subjective sexual arousal in response to feeding stimuli that exists in the general population.

Dr. Ariane Prohaska has published papers on feederism in such journals as the International Journal of Social Science Studies and Deviant Behavior. In one of her studies, she carried out a content analysis of feederism-related websites and examining feederism within heterosexual relationships. She concluded that feederism websites can take many forms “such as groups, advice sites, personal ads, and pornography. The content analysis also revealed that the internet is a place where fat women can find a community of similar others to support them”. She also noted that although feedersim has been classified as a transgressive sexual behaviour, it “usually mimics patriarchal sex in the process”. She also claimed that at its extreme “feederism is an abusive behavior dangerous to the partner (usually the woman) who desires to gain weight as quickly as possible”. As highlighted in the case of Gabi above, Dr. Prohaska concludes that feederism is a communal behavior, but she also notes:

“[W]hen it comes to feederism, men are still in control of the behavior and of how women are portrayed and treated as feedees. Although some of the websites discussed here may be advancing transgressive ideas about fat women as sexual beings, the objectification of women as sex objects is further perpetuated by these same websites. Bodies matter; normative ideas about fat women and heterosexual sex offline are perpetuated online. The internet is patriarchal as offline society. At its extreme, ideas about control over women involve manipulating their bodies using dangerous means, and the lines between consent and sexual assault are blurred. Consent is a difficult term to define in a culture where patriarchal values about sex have been internalized by members of society. Still, the internet has the potential to create loving, supportive communities for people of size rather than exploitative communities that mimic the offline world”.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Charles, K., & Palkowski, M. (2015). Feederism: Eating, Weight Gain, and Sexual Pleasure. Palgrave Macmillan.

Griffiths, M.D. (2012). The use of online methodologies in studying paraphilia: A review. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 1, 143-150.

Griffiths, M.D. (2013). Eproctophilia in a young adult male: A case study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 42, 1383-1386.

Haslam, D.W. (2014). Obesity and Sexuality. In Controversies in Obesity (pp. 45-51). London: Springer.

Kyrölä, K. (2011). Adults growing sideways: Feederist pornography and fantasies of infantilism. Lambda Nordica: Tidskrift om homosexualitet, 16(2-3), 128-158.

Monaghan, L. (2005). Big handsome men, bears, and others: Virtual constructions of ‘fat male embodiment’. Body and Society, 11, 81-111.

Murray, S. (2004). Locating aesthetics: Sexing the fat woman. Social Semiotics, 14, 237-247.

Prohaska, A. (2013). Feederism: Transgressive behavior or same old patriarchal sex? International Journal of Social Science Studies, 1(2), 104-112.

Prohaska, A. (2014). Help me get fat! Feederism as communal deviance on the internet. Deviant Behavior, 35(4), 263-274.

Swami, V. & Furnham, A. (2009). Big and beautiful: Attractiveness and health ratings of the female body by male ‘‘fat admirers’’. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38, 201-208.

Swami, V., & Tovee, M.J. (2006). The influence of body weight on the physical attractiveness preferences of feminist and non-feminist heterosexual women and lesbians. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 30, 252-257.

Swami, V. & Tovee, M.J. (2009). Big beautiful women: the body size preferences of male fat admirers. Journal of Sex Research, 46, 89-96.

Terry, L. L., Suschinsky, K. D., Lalumiere, M. L., & Vasey, P. L. (2012). Feederism: an exaggeration of a normative mate selection preference? Archives of Sexual Behavior, 41(1), 249-260

Terry, L.L. & Vasey, P.L. (2011). Feederism in a woman. Archives of Sexial Behavior, 40, 639-645.