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
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:ALU.w.uleth.ca/dspace#10133/2510 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Terry, Lesley L., University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science |
| Contributors | Vasey, Paul |
| Publisher | Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Dept. of Psychology, c2010, Arts and Science, Department of Psychology |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Relation | Thesis (University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Arts and Science) |
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