Is a big bottom coming between you and a relationship?

[fortunately for J-Lo she is already married to someone who thinks her bottom is hot]

It is if you want to have a relationship with columnist and author Sam de Brito. He wrote a few weeks back in the Sun-Herald a controversial column about how he doesn’t feel attracted to women with big bums.

I disagree with so much of what he’s written and I’ve told him that in an email. Particularly the part about women denigrating men for how they look (did he miss the storyline in Sex & The City where Charlotte marries the bald guy with the hairy back?).
He writes……

It’s not that I consider it a fatal flaw in a gal – some of my best
female friends and relatives have huge arses – it’s just that I’m not
attracted to chicks with big patooties.

But here’s the thing – by admitting this in print – I’ve guaranteed
myself a minimum of twenty mocking emails, three angry phone-calls from
the aforementioned female friends and at least one face-to-face
smack-down with a fat chick.

Jessica Biel….

Sam continues:

“Millions of guys, rightly or wrongly, daily dismiss or accept partners based on their body fat.

Men are obsessed with bodies and, thanks to the influences of
pornography, beer adverts and high fashion, there’s more than enough
fodder to convince us that if a woman is not sporting a tight rig,
she’s somehow less desirable.

I’m as big a victim of this syndrome as anyone and admit that all of
my serious relationships have been with women who made me sigh
pleasantly when they disrobed.

This is because undressing a woman is like unwrapping a Christmas
present from your Grandma. If you don’t like what you get, you just
have to smile and pretend to be excited for the next two hours (or
twenty years).

The thing is, our fixation on hardbodies is completely socialised –
many of you could no doubt cite other eras that prize a Rubenesque
figure in womankind, while Hispanic and black cultures hold the big
booty as the archetype of femineity.

This merely serves to prove how powerful a lifetime of media imagery can be.

I wasn’t born with a preference for women with small bums and flat
stomachs, it is not a default setting hard-wired into my circuit board,
rather it’s been soldered there year after year thanks to swimsuit
calendars, Bond movies and surf magazines.

When you’re a young bloke down the beach or at the pool with your
mates, chicks are callously rejected because they “have a fat arse” and
dudes whose girls are tidy are lauded as legends because they have
attracted said glamour.

This is why women worldwide flagellate themselves with diets and
eating disorders in order to fit a body aesthetic encouraged by the
media and fashion designers, yet if men display impressionability to
the same influences we’re considered arseholes, stupid or superficial.

They are actually two sides of the same coin and while males are not
‘victims’ of the same calibre as body-obsessed women, men and boys are
certainly affected by the fear and loathing of fat – which is probably
why you didn’t see white rock stars or George Clooney squiring tubby
chicks to the Oscars last night.

Women, however, are ones who buy the magazines, clothes and potions that drive this ‘ideal’;men like me, who are attracted to it, are merely the by-product.”

Look, Sam is obviously being honest about the way he feels. That’s one thing. But I’m irked that he claims to speak for all men. Because to believe they all think that way? That’s a pretty bleak view of men. My view is brighter.

You can read the whole column here.