Gaining: Kink or Lifestyle?

According to an expanding member of our community, gaining for the kink is doomed to failure, whereas successful gaining is characterized by embracing the attendant aesthetic and lifestyle. Does this thesis hold up under scrutiny?

Gaining as a Kink

If you’re hornier than a Mormon rabbit, perhaps gaining for the kink is a tenable game plan. The reality, however, is that most of us experience weeks or months where our “gaining instincts” (arousal) are not with us. This is not a point of shame, but of normal hormonal fluctuations. You don’t have to gain for anyone. It’s your body. Blah, blah, blah—I can spit out the validating aphorisms to which you’re accustomed, but when your brain is flooding you with intense “meh,” you’ll probably need more than the gainer equivalent of a Walmart pep rally. 

Similar tactics allowed me to retain close to my highest weight for over two years, but I never recaptured the passion of my original gaining experience. And even after fixing my health issues, the passion was still muted.

Further deconstruction is required.

Fat Aesthetic

We’ve talked before about how gaining involves letting go of being “conventionally attractive,” whatever the fuck that means. So let me say it: thin guys are a form of hot; fat guys are a form of hot. They don’t have to be identical, and nobody has to have a preference for either one. You’re allowed to be fat and prefer thin guys and vice verse. You’re allowed to love both. You’re allowed to LOVE the way being fat looks aesthetically regardless of sexuality.

Believing this will leave many people with objections. For every person with a rational explanation for their feelings, ten more will argue based in part on a troubling belief in patriarchal hierarchies. Let me explain: there is a particularly pernicious form of reactionary evolutionary biology that abuses science not to explain old social concepts and hierarchies, but to justify them. It was advantageous for men to be fit enough to provide for their families, some insist, therefore being attracted to fit men is the best attraction. This tenuous rationale is used to browbeat fat-positive people, gainers, and ultimately fat people themselves.

(A quick aside about health: weight loss can improve health for some, but weight loss is not in the cards for everyone. Some people lose weight easily, while for others it is grueling, and expecting them to work ten times as hard for the same results isn’t tough love—it’s cruel. Regardless, not everyone has the same values. If one can respect someone who decides to drink regularly, one can respect someone that overeats.)

How we value body image might not be perfectly arbitrary, but it is absurd that the draconian ages of yore constitute a cogent refutation of fat positivity. Instead, evaluate the world with compassion and morality that consults history rather than binding itself to a twisted, mythical version of history. We can build a more humane social norm in which the individual is happy to pursue thinness or fatness according to their values and desires.

I make fun of suburban white girls who paint everything white and say, “Wow, it’s so much better now than the fine mahogany.” But I don’t hate white furniture: it’s just not my style. I appreciate most forms of music, even if I don’t go out of my way to listen to most genres. Fatness looks neither good nor bad in a vacuum. It simply is. And you’re allowed to like it just as much as you’re allowed to prefer stripes over solids.

The Always Eating Lifestyle

Deprogramming my immense Protestant guilt is a bigger project than simply leaving a backwards church, unfortunately. Years later, I must expunge feelings of guilt toward gluttony, among the coolest of the deadly sins. 

But if you’re not being an asshole about it, who really cares if you spend more money on rice and pizza than your less attractive brother who’s half your size? Food is a resource, which inspires questions economic rather than merely moral. 

Is overeating a symptom of the manic consumerism that diverts resources from those in need? Answering yes risks assuming that a capitalist system would provide for the needy if only each individual would get off his fat ass and swap out fries for kale. 

This is delusional: no matter how much people shift their spending habits, money will still travel upwards. There is no version of the United States (your country might be better in this regard) under its current laws in which “eating smartly” would divert extra resources to those living in poverty. The system is designed to make sure that doesn’t happen. This means that until there’s reform, consumer choice has little impact on the outcomes of classes of people that traditionally struggle.

Therefore, get as fat as you please while advocating for change that benefits others. You should not feel guilty for eating, especially in this world. Better to acknowledge mass donations to TotallyNotHomophobicCharityDotCom or similar nonsense will not fix the deeply entrenched systemic problems ordained long ago by affluent incels obsessed with bloodletting and race science.

Conclusion

Gaining doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You’re not a preternaturally free individual who shuts out the world while you’re gaining, then goes about living as a member of society otherwise. You have to be comfortable with your fatness all the time.

The fun of the kink will grow with you, yes, but you’ll also have to unlearn anti-fat sentiments. You’re giving up one thing for another, and that’s FINE. Embrace the beauty your growing figure embodies, both in an erotic and a platonic sense. Or maybe you'll decide being thinner is more your jam, and that's fine too. Just remember, there is no shame in eating more and weighing more than everyone you know. Somebody has to be number one: who says it can’t be you?

Happy gaining, my friends.