What Is a PAWG(Blog)?
A brief examination of what this newsletter might be.
When I first became aware of the term “PAWG,” it was in the context of me being one. I was in the midst of being photographed nude almost four years ago, discussing how I might have a niche market out there of people who would particularly be interested in me because I am a white girl with a fat/phat ass. Obviously, said the photographer, I was a PAWG.
All of those descriptors are sticky. The easiest to address are that I am a girl, and like most, I am in possession of an ass. Those don’t seem negotiable. Whether my ass if fat is probably more debatable. I think it’s fat. Do you want to know my measurements? I’m actually dying to tell you.
The white part is clearly true, too, but like describing my own ass as fat, brazenly marketing my whiteness still feels taboo, up for ethical debate. Yet, only God himself could stop me from calling my ass fat. “PAWG” is a term that relies upon a pornographic audaciousness. It’s an exaggeration. It’s camp. I don’t intend to treat the term much differently.
But what then will this newsletter even be about? I’m still narrowing that down. Most broadly, it will be about interpreting culture through that lens of pornographic audaciousness. It will be about PAWGs besides myself — Anna Nicole Smith, Coco Austin, Mrs. Incredible. It will also definitely be about myself, too. Occasionally, it might be about none of these things.
One of my earliest pieces for MEL Magazine was about PAWG-centric Instagram accounts that aggregated different PAWGS, some of whom actually paid the male-run accounts to repost their photos. For that piece, I actually appeared on one of the accounts myself. These Instagrams no longer exist, booted out by the increasingly puritanical Community Guidelines. However, as I later wrote for MEL, the PAWG market has since turned to Reddit, with PAWG-related subreddits among some of the largest NSFW groups on the site. And does that say anything about us? About what’s culturally relevant?
While it seems naive to think there’s anything truly radical about clinging to a label that is clearly the erotic ideal for millions with increasing popularity, I can at least have some fun with it. Identifying as a PAWG can function both as a reclamation of a porn term and an embrace of one’s own body. Whether that reclamation offers much more than a reinforcement of the sexual politics of the term in the broader culture does not seem promising. I’m comfortable with that reality. If anything, when I make a “joke” about being a PAWG on Twitter, I’m saying that maybe you should look at my Instagram to confirm, and that maybe there you will find a link in my bio that maybe leads to an OnlyFans that maybe I have. I’m complicit.
I’m saying the exact same things, maybe, when I refer to my “big naturals,” too, of course. But my hope is then that, like having big naturals, being a PAWG could be a state of mind. You don’t need large, natural breasts to have big naturals energy. Perhaps you don’t need a fat, white, womanly ass to be a PAWG, either. Most importantly, like big naturals, there is something inherently jubilant about admiring PAWGs. It’s pure jouissance. It does not actually require my painful intellectualization.
Unfortunately for all parties involved, I will continue to pursue it, anyway.
Do carry on, Magdalene. I enjoy your complicity.