Mistakes were made...
Usually I agree with most of the advice you dispense. But your advice to ACLU—a caring loving uncle—was questionable. I'm a criminal defense lawyer and had a case where a father was driving down the street in his van and noticed the young man who had had sex with his daughter. Pulling over and jumping out he proceeded to confront and get whacked with a folding metal sign by the young man and his friend, and when the police arrived they arrested the father. Threatening or inflicting violence is a crime that can get a person arrested. If your readers do get arrested, remember the Fifth Amendment right to say nothing, and that anything you say to the police can and will be used against you in a court of law.Lawyers Always Worry
Re: the dominant women who likes getting her boyfriend fat. Since the woman is a fitness nut, she probably already knows this, but the advice you gave her is actually quite bad for the guy's health. Being a little overweight isn't that unhealthy, but having a fluctuating weight (yoyo dieting) is much worse for you. She's better off getting him moderately overweight and then stopping.Big Mistake
Another letter and my responses to al three after the jump...
I was just listening to your show (number 157), in which you gave great advice to a girl who was having some trouble dealing with her small body/big rack proportions and the attention she receives. My only beef with your comment to her was a moment in which you told her "better to have a big rack than a big red baboon butt" or something like that, thus validating my own worst fear about my own proportions. I'm 23, of average height, pretty, and slender, but I have got what our friends in the hip-hop community like to call a "gadunkadunk" [sp?]. (I've had black men and women tell me—I'm white—that I have a black bootie. I think its a compliment. And I had my white male friend tell me that white boys—"sorry"—like it the other way round, big breasts and small butt).Try as I might (I run and bike), that thing isn't going anywhere. Considering the fact that I have very small breasts and zero waist or stomach, I do feel like a ridiculous baboon sometimes. I know that I'm attractive, but it's hard to feel hot when you see proportions that seem absurd in the mirror (dresses just don't hang right, my bra and underwear comes in very different sizes). And your comment really drove that already constant feeling home for me. (Yes, yes, let's not internalize the crap other people say, even you, Dan Savage, but hey, I'm a mortal woman).
With big breasts, at least you can tell when someone is checking out your rack. I often just throw suspicious glances behind me as I'm walking away from the leerer -in-question (My ass has been slapped on the street before. And I feel - like the woman w/the large breasts, totally gross about hauling this bootie sometimes). Also, being told that you're "shapely" but "slender" by your mom's good male friend, and knowing he's referring to your ass, is never very comfortable. That's an aside though. In general, our culture definitely values either shapely women with breasts and butt (J.Lo), or models with breasts and no ass (Victoria's Secret). I feel like my body is flip-flopped. And, as you seemed to say on your program, better to have the big-rack situation, than the other way round.
In any case, I'm not dragging my big ass to you begging for an apology - just wanted to put my own reaction out there. I'm going to put on a long, tight-fitting t-shirt over my arse now. But first, I'll go for a run.
Baboon Butt
LAW: In my family people were constantly threatened to kill each other while I was growing up. Parents threatened to kill their children, siblings threatened to kill each other, aunts threatened to kill nieces, uncles threatened to kill nephews, and grandparents threatened to slit everyone's throats in our sleep. It was an expression that telegraphed intense displeasure. These threats weren't meant literally, LAW, nor were they taken literally. But to be on the safe said perhaps ACLU should toss a "figuratively speaking" in after he threatens to murder his niece's boyfriend with his bare hands.
BM: I stand corrected—although I did say, in that response, that FAT's boyfriend had a right to assume certain risks, even at the risk of shortening his life, in pursuit of pleasure: "Even if indulging your fetish shaves a year or two off his life, well, people throw away decades of their lives for lesser pleasures. People smoke, ride motorcycles without helmets, and stick their rear ends in the air in skank-ass sex clubs. Our bodies are our own, FAT; they're ours to use, abuse, and, since we're all going to die one day, they're ours to use up.... It's ultimately up to your boyfriend to determine whether the pleasures of submitting to you—including the pleasure of indulging your fetish—are worth the risks to his health." If understated the risks of yo-yo dieting, but if FAT's boyfriend, once acquainted with those risks, wants to run 'em because it turns his girlfriend on, that's his right.
BB: I'm sorry you were hurt by that response. But I wasn't referring to big, meaty, sexy human butts when I said it was better to have big tits than a "big red baboon butt." I meant it was better to have a big, sexy human rack than to have actual red butt of an actually red-butted baboon. Forgive me if I made you feel bad about your ass. And I would encourage you to do exactly what I encouraged the girl with the big rack to do: love your body. Don't be self-conscious about your ass; embrace it, accept it, show it off to your advantage. Some folks have big, curvy butts, BB, and some folks love big, curvy butts. Your butt has the power to attract and land you a quality ass man. Use that power for good.
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