Editorial: Your Momma's so fat that she's worshiped by Neo-Pagans

Hi folks,

Warning: if you have a tendency to misread or completely ignore what is written on a page, please head straight to the rest of the articles in the magazine and refrain from perusing this editorial any further.  If you find this editorial offensive then you’ve completely misunderstood my point and it’s your own sorry fault.  (In other words: the views expressed in this editorial are not those held by Cardiff University Pagan Society and are solely the opinions of the author.)

So, welcome to Issue 12 of Offerings, and to a new academic year for Cardiff University and the Pagan Society.  If you’re new to the society, I hope you have a great first term (read: spend all your student loan on beer and other alcoholic beverages, leaving you with a whopping 30p to feed yourself for the next three months.)  To kick-start a Pagan Society year of ‘love and light’, here’s a little rant I made earlier…

I was at a belly dancing workshop somewhere near the Midlands trying my best to get my arrhythmic body to move in the ways the instructor was showing us.  I thought I was doing okay until the instructor told us that the Goddess wouldn’t have given us bosoms if she didn’t want us to shake them, and that having curves (rolls of fat) was better for belly dancing and that skinny girls just couldn’t do it.  I looked down at my rather unimpressive cleavage and 8-stone, size 10 figure and suddenly felt ugly. (And you try shaking 34B breasts to a fast Eastern beat while attempting to fling around the fat you just don’t have!)

I’m sure the instructor didn’t mean to make me feel that way or express prejudice against thin people, but the fact is that she did highlight something quite prevalent in the New Age and Pagan communities: that fat women are more Goddess-like than skinny ones.  And the sad thing is that it all comes from a useful and reasonable tenet: that the human body should not be judged based on size or shape. 

Maybe that’s one thing that brings larger women to Paganism – we don’t tend to look at a size 14, 16, or 24 and see something ugly, but instead look past their appearance to their spirit, wisdom, and personality.  This is completely anathema to today’s consumerist society, in which ‘sexy’ is equated with stick-thin, skeletal models and actresses that look a bit like matchsticks.  The fact is that Paganism says plus sizes are sexy too.  Why?  Because many of our Goddesses are ladies of a fuller figure as well. 

That’s just great, and I love this idea.  But then it gets taken one step further, and women are compared to the Neolithic ‘Venus of Willendorf’ or ‘sleeping woman’ figures with huge breasts, huge waists, huge hips, and tiny everything else.  Our Mother Goddesses are pictured as large, full-breasted women with child-bearing hips, their huge bellies holding the bounty of the land.  We are reminded that in many ancient cultures fat women were seen as more beautiful because their weight was proof of the fertility and fecundity of the land around them.  And suddenly, “all women are beautiful” becomes “large women have the curves of the Goddess”, and waifs like me (anybody smaller than size 12) get relegated to maiden-like, naïve, unfertile (and therefore unsexy) Goddess figures.  Thin bodies suddenly become a little less sacred than large ones, in what is essentially a fertility religion. 

Yeah yeah, so big may indeed be beautiful, and large ladies should not be judged based on their size… But neither should skinny ones.  I may not have huge breasts and a voluptuous waist size, but I’m proud of my body not because of its size but because it is healthy and enables me to live my life to the fullest.  It’s time for a Pagan rethink of the body in relation to size and weight, and a rethink that doesn’t continually hearken back to the feminist 60’s and 70’s and outdated, desperate reclamations of the fuller figure – just because something that may have been Neolithic porn (there’s no evidence that Venus of Willendorf represents a Goddess at all), and because many classical Greek and Roman Goddesses were drawn during a time when larger sizes on women was considered beautiful, does not mean that fat = sacred.  And if it does, maybe one of the tests of initiation should be how far over your belt your belly hangs, or how long it has been since you last saw your feet. 

And think about it a bit further: if we associate large women with fertility and the Mother Goddess, and therefore see them as sexy and sacred, then we’d better seriously think about the sacredness of infertile women.  The fact that I can reproduce and have a working uterus and ovaries does not validate my claim to being Pagan, nor does it put me more in touch with the sacred earth, and it certainly doesn’t make my body more sacred.  If we’re going to think that way, then we might as well send ourselves back to the Middle Ages and make all our women into baby-making machines. 

As Pagans we have such a rich tapestry of symbolism and myth to refer to in our spiritual lives.  The problems (and rants!) arise when we try to apply that symbolism and imagery to our value judgements of others.

If we really are happy with our bodies, we shouldn’t need to refer back to fat divine figures to prove to others that our bodies are sacred and beautiful – our bodies should be seen as sacred and sexy regardless of the size our Goddesses are depicted as. 

Blessings,

Kim Huggens

Editor, Offerings

President, C.U.P.S 2003-2005, 2006-2007