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This story took place half a lifetime ago, when I was just 18 years old and a senior in high school. I won't generalize about adolescents and their susceptibility to peer pressure; I'm sure there are some strong independent thinkers in the high school age bracket--but I sure wasn't one of them. I never had the courage to admit to my tastes and preferences whenever there was a strong consensus among my friends that I did not share.

This applied to music, movies, television--you name it. It was okay to differ about who was a better rapper or rock musician, but don't let anyone catch you enjoying a country song, not even a little. If you did you had to keep it to yourself, a private *quot;guilty pleasure,*quot; lest you risk enduring the ridicule of the crowd. It wasn't until I was well into my adult years that I gained the courage to own up to my unpopular tastes.

As a teenager, one of my guiltiest pleasures of all was fat girls. It may be that I've simply m.atured, or it may be that the cultural zeitgeist has shifted toward greater acceptance of different body types since I was a kid, but all I know for sure is that not a single one of my male friends in school ever admitted to finding bigger girls attractive in general. I am sure some of them were sincere about their tastes, though probably conditioned by the self-appointed aesthetes of our society who choose the (in my opinion, disgustingly emaciated) cover models for fashion magazines. But I suspect others were like me--secretly admiring the big girls but cowed into silence by the fear of ridicule.

Being a secret fat admirer as a teenager had its pros and cons. The disadvantages are probably pretty obvious. The popular culture seemed almost never to cater to my tastes. Not being much for skinny chicks there was precious little wankable material out there in general circulation: from Playboy to the Victoria's Secret catalogue to the Sears catalogue, there seemed to be an anti-fat conspiracy; I was forced to use my imagination more than most.

On the other hand, there were some plusses to digging the plus-sized. Because it was rather unexpected at the time, a person could actually more easily *quot;get away with*quot; checking out a big girl. It was as if all the skinny chicks were constantly policing the available views of their T