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Food, feeding and female sexual arousal

Feederism is a fat fetish subculture that eroticizes eating, feeding, and gaining weight.



This thesis attempts to explain the practice of Feederism using an evolutionary approach.



Chapter one examines the historical and cross-cultural meaning of fat and its association



with fertility, health, and beauty. Chapter one also reviews the current literature on fat



admiration and Feederism, and introduces some possible explanations for what



Feederism is, and how it can be conceptualized. Chapter two describes a case study that



was conducted on a female member of the Feederism community. The results of this case



study add support to the hypothesis that Feederism is paraphilic. Chapter three describes



a psychophysiological study that tested how members of the general population respond



to and rate feeding stimuli. This study was conducted to determine whether Feederism is



an exaggeration of a more normative and functional mate selection strategy. The results



of this study demonstrate that males and females both respond to and rate feeding stimuli



similarly. No definitive conclusions were drawn with respect to the exaggeration



hypothesis, because, although participants did subjectively rate the feeding stimuli as



more sexually arousing than neutral stimuli, they did not genitally respond to the feeding



stimuli significantly more than to the neutral stimuli. Chapter four summarizes the results



of the two studies and discusses how these finding might inform future research on



paraphilias, courtship, and intimacy. / viii, 128 leaves : ill. ; 29 cm

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:ALU.w.uleth.ca/dspace#10133/2510
Date January 2010
CreatorsTerry, Lesley L., University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science
ContributorsVasey, Paul
PublisherLethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Psychology, c2010, Arts and Science, Department of Psychology
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RelationThesis (University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science)

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