Channel 4 in the UK last night showed a programme called "Fat Girls and Feeders". To begin with it followed men who had a penchant for what they described as "fat girls" the bigger the better. One guy from the UK had gone to the States to try to meet some women as he couldn't find any big enough at home. The women he met at a specialised nightclub all seemed to be happy with their size, and were happy that men found them attractive.

The programme then took a different shift. It concentrated on a couple who lived in Arizona. When they met, the woman was about 280 lbs (20 stones). Her boyfriend (who she later married) really liked fat women, and wanted her to be the biggest/fattest woman in the world. Together, they embarked on an "enlargement programme". Over the next 10 years of their marriage, her weight went up to over 826 lbs (59 stones). During this time, he took nude Polaroid photographs of her on which he clearly marked her weight and posteds them on the Internet for other "FA's (Fat Admirers) to look at. He then made some videos of her which he sold over the Internet and through specialist outlets. I have to say, that his wife was a willing party and even did the voice-overs on the videos. He kept telling her how beautiful she was and enjoyed the fact that she was now totally dependant on him. As she was so big, she couldn''t get out of bed or walk about. The last video he made of her was oefforts to try to get out of bed un-aided. She was swinging her bulk from side to side to give her momentum to get to the edge of the bed - it was quite sad to watch. Her husband though, admitted that he found it a real turn on.

After they had made this video, his wife decided that for the sake of her health she wanted to reduce her weight. After much discussion, she had a stomach stapling procedure and she succeeded in reducing her weight by half to about 500 lgs (29 stones). She was still big, but at least now she could walk small distances and was not totally reliant on her husband. She admitted that they had had to have marriage guidance councelling as her husband didn't find her attractive because she had lost weight and thought that she had "sold out". She was asked if she had her time over again, if she would allow herself to get so big just to pkease someone else. Her answer: probably not. Her husband though, has still not given up on the fact that she may wish to re-start gaining weight. He is building a house with wider doorways, so that she can easily fit through without turning sideways, and with everything on one level.

The other case that was focussed on was a girl who was once known as the world's fattest model. She met a man and moved into his apartment with him. It was a short time later that she realized that she was virtually a prisoner. She couldn't get down the stairs to get out. He would leave her alone all day with nothing else to do but eat junk food to fatten her up. Eventually her mother managed to persuade the emergency services that they had to get her out of the apartment and they forced entry. In the 2 years that she had been there, she had put on over 280 lbs (20 stones). They estimated that when they found her she had about 24 hours to live without medical attention. The guy she had taken up with was a "feeder". He used emotional blackmail to get her to eat more and at times even added bulking agents to her food and weight gain powders. There are sites on the Internet that show you how to force feed someone. This girl did acknowledge that if she hadn't got out when she did, he probably would have kept feeding her until she burst.

You have to wonder if some of the girls get sucked into this as they have low self-esteem about being overweight in the first place. Once someone starts telling them how amazing they look, but that they would look even better with 20 lbs more on .....

All in all it was a very sad programme. These 2 women had got through it, albeit with damage to their health, but you were left to wonder how many more had not.

Maybe this is just me, but I find this sort of behavior twisted, sadistic and yes...abusive. I understand that she was a willing participant in all this, but it's still very, very sad.

I hope this isn't offensive to post, but I recently read about this phenomenon in Dan Savage's Savage Love column. Here is a link for those interested. This is a sex column so don't click on it if you don't want to read stuff like that.

Savage Love "Chubby Chaser"

Here's the link to Channel 4's story about the program, and further newsclips on the subject as well .. http://www.channel4.com/health/micr...ders/index.html

Doreen