Talking about chubby girls in literature

[pdxnyc]

There are a bunch of these I've noticed.

John Updike's story, 'A Constellation of Events': it's about an upper middle-class woman who starts an affair with a neighbor. She is self-conscious about her weight and there are some great lines like, "Betty lifted her sweater to look at her pale belly. Baby fat. Middle age had softened her middle. But, then, Lydia (the wife of the guy Betty is sleeping with) was an athlete, tomboyish and lean, swift on skis, with that something Roman and androgynous and enigmatic about her looks. It was what Rafe was used to; the contrast had startled him."

Nathanael West's 'Miss Lonelyhearts': The main character goes away to the country with his estranged wife, Betty, and he watches her, naked, hanging up clothes to dry. "She looked a little fat, but when she lifted her arms the fat disappeared."

Then, in Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer', there's a prostitute who is a supporting character. I don't have the book handy, but basically there's a sequence where she decides she's just going to stay in the main guy's apartment for a few weeks. She gets chubby because she's so sedentary, and one day when he comes home, she grabs her belly and says, 'Look what happened to me!' As some of you may know, that book is a treasure trove of erotica in general, let alone this one narrow type.

[Guest chefandfoodee]

Check out The Three Fat Women of Antibes by W. Somerset Maugham.

[gdawg1414]

How about Grushenka in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov?

"And now after four years the sensitive, injured and pathetic little orphan had become a plump, rosy beauty of the Russian type, a woman of bold and determined character, proud and insolent."

"And three times she kissed the certainly charming, though rather fat, hand of Grushenka in a sort of rapture."

"It was that softness, that voluptuousness of her bodily movements, that catlike noiselessness. Yet it was a vigorous, ample body. Under the shawl could be seen full broad shoulders, a high, still quite girlish bosom. Her figure suggested the lines of the Venus of Milo, though already in somewhat exaggerated proportions. That could be divined. Connoisseurs of Russian beauty could have foretold with certainty that this fresh, still youthful beauty would lose its harmony by the age of thirty, would "spread"; that the face would become puffy, and that wrinkles would very soon appear upon her forehead and round the eyes; the complexion would grow coarse and red perhaps- in fact, that it was the beauty of the moment, the fleeting beauty which is so often met with in Russian women."

[Batman76]

There's a 60s era children's book called a Knights Castle by Edward Eager where these kids get a toy castle that comes alive at night and they get shrunk down into it, becoming part of the story of Ivanhoe. Messing with the castle changes the story, so when they put in a bunch of toy cars and modern houses they find that the hero Ivanhoes become a sci if obsessed nerd and the slim beautiful love interest Rowena does nothing but lay around eating all day I exasperation, getting remarkably plump from toasted marshmallows . All she does is stuff herself in the scene she's in.

[Batman76]

Another remembrance:

In the Sharpe series of historical fiction books, there's a Portugese girl that's the main characters love interest in a few books. When first met in a war zone she's very slender, but at the end of the book when she's spent some time in luxury in a peaceful city, Sharpe notes while she looks good, she's put on some weight. Every encounter after that sees her with a richer lover and noticeably heavier. The last time she's seen her lover is a general and she's gotten downright fat, while still looking enchanting.

Sharpe's wife, a tough as nails Spanish guerrilla leader, teases him over how much weight her rival has gained and his preference for skinny girls. She tells him that once the war is over she plans on becoming extremely fat just to tease him.

[Guest wd44]

From Isaac Asimov's Foundation, the voluptuous vixen Bliss talks about her weight:

"Are the people on Gaia vegetarian?" asked Pelorat.

"A lot are." Bliss nodded her head vigorously. "It depends on what nutrients the body needs in particular cases. Lately I haven't been hungry for meat, so I suppose I don't need any. And I haven't been aching for anything sweet. Cheese tastes good, and shrimp. I think I probably need to lose weight." She slapped her right buttock with a resounding noise. "I need to lose five or six pounds right here."

"I don't see why," said Pelorat. "It gives you something comfortable to sit on."

Bliss twisted to look down at her rear as best she might. "Oh well, it doesn't matter. Weight goes up or down as it ought. I shouldn't concern myself."

[jacknife]

I Cornac Mcarthy's  Cities of the Plain three cowboys are in a whorehouse. As near as I can remember it was something like…

"I don't know about you two, but I'm goin' to get me a fat one.

"That sounds about right"

"Yep, when you get your mind set on a fat girl, won't nothin' else satisfy.

"Well pick you one out boy"

"I like that big'un in the corner, in the green dress."

"Hell boy, she'll bounce you off the ceiling."

"Not the All American cowboy. I'll stick like a cocklebur."

[Batman76]

This is an old thread, but Ive thought of several more:

the Malazan Book of the Fallen is a lengthy series of very lengthy fantasy books, several of which have tangential weight gain in side characters to the point its author might have some fa tendencies. It's been a few years, so I don't remember the exact books or names but I remember:

A side character Rucket is a member of the Rat Catchers (aka the thieves and mages) guild is a very thin, very tall, very leggy red head girl with stunning good looks. When her city is occupied by dark elves she uses a spell to disguise herself as a shockingly obese woman, were talking half ton here. She's still thin on the 'inside' and thus isn't encumbered, but she looks and feels enormous, bowling people out of her way as she walks and intimidating everyone with her massive size. Her self confidence oozes in every scene and when delivering a message to the leader of the resistance, a man she seduced before, she comes onto him in a restaraunt while gobbling his food, he's obviously aroused, and is seen gorging twice afterwards. She idly comments to another rat catcher that she loves the attention she gets as an obese woman, how she can gorge herself without feeling self conscious and plans to get that fat for real. He points out that if she gets that fat for real she'd barely be able to move and would have trouble breathing. The only other time she's seen she's out if her fat guise and sadly any increase isn't commented upon.

Here's where her obese disguise is first shown: http://www.manybooks4u.com/Fantasy/e4791_236.html

A reoccurring main character Mage named Tattersail is commented as being very beautiful and quite heavy, describing herself as the fat lady with the spells. She has several handsome male lovers.

 

A character named Felisin the younger is an tragic, beautiful girl kidnapped by a pacifist cult as the messiah of their apocalypse, one where the world indulges to death. She goes hard into the role, or roll, and when next seen has become monumentally obese on a diet of sweet meats and, pot, to the pont she rests on pillows of her own fat and can barely sit up. She seems very happy in her obesity when she's last seen and is constantly pleasures by willing acolytes.

[Tony Watt]

Life in the Fat Lane was a favorite of my younger self. If I remember correctly, it even reads much like the stories on dimensions magazine. Lara, is a homecoming queen who finds out she has a rare syndrome which causes her to gain 100 pounds quickly. Admittedly, it's a novel for young adults so I haven't read it this side of 2000, but it was one of my first indulgences into what I barely knew to be my interest in women.

[Batman76]

It doesn't have many sexual descriptions, lot on mental state though.

[montuemon]

That was what got me searching for weight gain stories online in the first place. Led me to the yahoo group, dimensions and more!

[CBMH]

I too had that one book that helped inspire me in my formative years. It was called Such a Pretty Face: On Being Fat in America. It was a documentary-style sociological study of what "the fat experience" was like and how our society treated fat people (TL;DR: not great).

There were quite a few examples of people-- mostly women-- telling the story of how they had gotten so fat to begin with: either they had always been big and childhood chubbiness had blossomed into adult obesity, or some event in their life had triggered the change. Some of them had never even experienced what it was like to not be gaining, to be able to wear clothes you wore last year.

There were also some photos of fat women in flowing garments, trying their best to be beautiful, and of groups of teenage girls (or as I knew them at the time, girls my age) at weight loss camp in their swimsuits, posing for their 'before" pictures. For some of them, "after" never really materialized.

If any of you can find it, I definitely recommend it. I've checked various libraries since then but never found another copy. Some of it can be pretty sobering regarding what fat people go through (though this IS 2016 and I'd like to hope we've made progress) but there are some real gems in there.

[Batman76]

Comics count as literature right?

 

Anyway, during Convergence, one of DCs many poorly thought events, the Convergence Action Comics #1 featured a Power Girl who'd been depowered over a year and in the process had gained fifteen pounds due to her boyfriends Italian cooking. She complained that now she was getting fat and having to exercise for the first time due to no longer having a super metabolism. It actually made a lot of in character sense as the same writer had shown her be rather gluttonous. Unfortunately the art didn't show any difference and she was still superhero fit.

[dragonfive]

I'm surprised no one mentioned The Cook yet.

The story takes place in a village in which there's 2 big families, the Vales and the Hills. The Hills are a 4 person family -father, mother, son and daughter- and are described as tall and wealthy, but not really fat. The Vales, on the other hand, is a 3-persons family -father, mother, daughter- and are rather poor and in poor health, but the daughter happens to big extremely fat.

Obviously, the main character -Conrad- is a cook, and at the beginning of the book, he just starts working for the Hills. But Conrad happens to be a genius mastermind in addition to his incredible cooking skills (this guy is seriously overpowered), and manages to transform the whole village to his liking. And he fattens the Hills daughter up to incredible proportion through the course of the story, and manages to marry her.

At the end of the book, the girl is so huge she has troubles walking on her own. In addition to being a nice FA oriented story, it's a really fine piece of literature. Even though I found the end a little bit disturbing...

[SuperGlue]

If anybody is into sci-fi check out Jack Chalker. Most of his books have fat girls in them. Don't remember the series but one heroine got kinda possessed and her brain went on autopilot for a while. She got really fat and stayed that way to the end of the story. 

[nebutori]

The moon maze book by Larry Niven? In the future, fat/fit women are considered beautiful and sexy. 

[FitGuy123]

Kate Chopin's The Awakening, a woman gets chubby sitting around eating bon bons all day.

 

 

[nebutori]

So does anybody know any jack chalker books with the plot of a woman who eats and becomes fat and stays that way throughout the rest of the story?