Is Putting a Label on Every Aspect of Our Being Making Us Happier?

The weird and divisive narrative of mixed-weight relationships

Image generated on Midjourney by the author

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I didn’t realize I was in a mixed-weight marriage until Forbes published an article discussing feedback on Penelope Featherington and Colin Bridgerton, this season's featured couple in Netflix’s hit series Bridgerton.

Telling us that some people think our world isn’t ready for this “unrealistic” pairing of a fat and a thin person on screen.

Judging from the gist of the public discussion around this article, fat-phobic, misogynist people are not prepared to see a mixed-weight relationship where *gasp*, the woman is fat.

Because weight isn’t the issue. It’s gender.

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The outrage about Penelope and Colin doing the nasty on screen isn’t about their differing body fat percentages. It’s about the fact that saying the world isn’t ready for mixed-weight romance is deeply biased and misogynistic.

Pretending mixed-weight romances are something we’ve never seen on a screen before is ridiculous. Are you trying to make us negate all the prominent examples of such mixed-weight relationships we have seen? Prominently featured on TV and in Movies.

All those mixed-weight pairings of fat men and thin women, as the Speechprof points out in this video on TikTok:

@speechprofIt’s almost like this is only an issue when it applies to women…

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Apparently, fat men are just men, but fat women are just fat. Beautiful women can love fat men. They’re still men, after all.

And as the Austrian novelist and essayist Friedrich Torberg tells us in Tante Jolesch: Or, The Decline of the West in Anecdotes:

“Every bit a man is more handsome than a monkey, is luxury.”

A saying Austrians cherish and love to repeat with gusto since the book was published in 1975.

No one questioned how “The King of Queens” managed to ensnare Carrie. Despite Kevin James — the “King” — being so much heavier than Leah Rimini, who plays his wife Carrie. I never even noticed the weight difference.

What made me question their relationship was the fact he’s also a petulant man-child. But no one wondered why a woman would put up with this either.

But obviously, a man isn’t supposed to (publicly) overlook the fact that a woman is fat. Handsome men loving fat women is an unheard-of anomaly. At least if you want to believe some chronically online commenters.

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But reality disagrees with the notion that the world has never seen fat women in a relationship with thin men.

Look around. Plus-sized women with thin, fit men are everywhere.

I’m one of them. I’ve always been in mixed-weight relationships. Every single one of my previous partners was thinner than me. I just didn’t know that there was a label attached to it.

Despite the fact that my plus size has fluctuated from a little plus to a big PLUS and back all my life, nobody ever asked why I’m allowed to be in partnerships with thin men. And I never had issues attracting said men.

As Virgie Tovar so succinctly put it in the Forbes article:

one thing I know for 100% certainty, is that fat people have and always will be loved & lusted after.”

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Still, I could have done without this new label. Society already applies enough labels that other me.

I’m mixed race. And all relationships I ever had were mixed-race relationships. Mixed-whatever labels have always made me feel a little icky. As if there’s something abnormal about me and my heritage. Or about me being with my partner.

And there is, I guess. At least, people perceive it as such.

I live in a predominantly white country. When I was born, biracial couples in Austria were rare. Seeing my mom with four little brown kids with curly hair on the streets of Vienna was a stop-and-stare affair.

Biracial marriages like my parents weren’t even legal in the US until a year after I was born.

If you wonder what it was like in those days, watch my mother's favorite movie.

The 1967 movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” starring the marvelous Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Portier. It tells the story of a privileged young white woman who brings her black fiance to her parent's house for dinner without forewarning them.

The ensuing plot is a story of confusion, bias and prejudice on all sides. And of overcoming them. In the beginning both her parents and his parents don’t think this relationship is a good idea.

But you know, love conquers…

I can imagine my mother felt a lot like the young woman in the movie when she sprung my black father on my unsuspecting grandparents. And I can relate.

When my first boyfriend took me home to his parents for the first time, he didn’t tell his parents I was black either. And it wasn’t a great experience as you can imagine.

Looking back, I think I was more worried about being overweight than about my skin color at the time. But there you have it: You never know which of your personal attributes will raise someone's hackles.

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So now I have a new label. Another one.

It seems we’re in a time that is desperate to stick labels on everything.

We meticulously label every aspect of our being. Very granularly. Our gender, our sexuality, our skin color, our weight, our political leaning, our class.

I can’t say this feels helpful. It feels confining. And divisive.

When I was young, I was sure that liberal progress was about losing the labels we attach to people. I imagined that one day, we would no longer refer to people by their attributes.

That one day, I wouldn’t be pointed out as the fat, black girl with the blue jacket. I would become just the girl in the blue jacket.

But it doesn’t seem to be going that way. Is it?

I’m now an African-European, BlPOC, plus-sized, cis-gendered, hetero-sexual, left-wing, flexitarian, able-bodied, neurotypical (I think), older woman, thank you very much — or that fat black bitch to my enemies.

And I wonder, why are we doing this?

Are people trying to make sense of the modern world's chaos by putting things into neat little boxes?

Do we have to label everything we observe? Do these labels foster community? Do they all have to sound slightly off-putting and reductive?

And what parts of our existence do we choose to label? Which parts go unnoticed or at least unspoken?

Labeling a relationship as mixed-weight highlights a singular aspect of a situation as noteworthy. One that, in my case, isn’t the most important one.

But this label makes it seem that we’re suffering from a condition that needs to be named.

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Of course, I’ve always been aware that my boyfriends were thinner than me—I’m not blind. They were also taller, whiter, and older. They differed from me in so many aspects.

I’ve been in mixed-weight, mixed-race, mixed-height, mixed-sex, mixed-occupation, mixed-eye color, mixed-income and sometimes mixed-political affiliation relationships.

Isn’t that what life is? Being in relationships with people who differ from you in some aspects and are similar to you in others?

Should I have been aware that specific differences between me and my partners were and are noteworthy? So exceptional that we need to make up new descriptive words for them?

That we need to make sure everyone is aware of the difference?

Or is this just another symptom of ensuring everyone knows their place in society?

A society that divides us into smaller and smaller groups, not just gender, not just race, but also sexuality, religion, food preferences, or weight.

Groups so small that they become powerless and have no chance of effecting any societal change. Unless, of course, we choose to ignore the labels and realize they don’t matter because we really are all the same.

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