Fat Kiwi women don’t get less sex, contrary to new research

WELLINGTON - A new international study that suggests obese women get less sex than their skinner counterparts has come under fire from big Kiwi women.

Appearing last month in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the research - covering nearly 12,000 French people - claimed fat women were 30 per cent less likely than “normal”-weight women to report having a sexual partner in the past year.

However, Paula (name changed), a 31-year-old Wellington IT worker who underwent a gastric bypass operation in April 2009 after a lifetime of obesity, says the research is at odds with her experience and with that of her bigger friends.

Paula, who once weighted 169kg, is now 65kg. Even as she admits there were many unpleasant aspects to being obese, she says lack of sex wasn’t one of them. In fact, being big had the opposite effect.

“Particularly in my early 20s, I’d say I slept with more people, just to feel good about myself,” Stuff.co.nz quoted her, as saying.

She adds: “A lot of people say it’s great having sex with a big girl, because she’ll try harder and do more. It’s a bit of a clichi - but there is an element of truth there.”

Auckland woman Poppy Johnson, 42, agrees with Paula.

She says her weight - which peaked at 120kg - had little on her ability to find sexual partners. Johnson too has now lost extra kilos and weighs 66kg after weight-loss surgery. Although she is glad of the change she has not welcomed it for what it has done to her romantic life.

She says: “The issues were health-related or the cost of clothes or the difficulty of tying your shoes.”

Johnson adds: “The large women I know have large personalities - and men find that attractive.”

“Lots of men say ‘I wouldn’t go out with a fat chick’. But they will.” (ANI)