The New Curvy Wife Guy Song "Chubby Sexy" is A Dystopian Realisation of The Future of Identity Based Liberal Feminism
By Madeline Ward
Those of you familiar with collective internet outrage would remember Robbie Tripp, better known as “curvy wife guy”, for his saccharine ode to his Curvy Wife from 2017.
“For me, there is nothing sexier than this woman right here. Thick thighs, big booty, cute little side roll, etc” wrote Tripp, after bravely sharing his experiences of being shamed in high-school by fellow “bros” for the revolutionary act of finding women above a size 12 attractive. The post was almost universally derided, even within the usually small l-liberal body positive community, and the Tripps were cancelled soon after, when a number of racist and transphobic tweets by both Robbie and his Curvy Wife were unearthed.
Well, now the Curvy Wife Guy and his Curvy Wife are back. Tripp subjected the internet to further torment when he posted a pregnancy announcement referring to their unborn child as his “seed” that his Curvy Wife (her name is Sarah) is carrying in her “five star womb”. Sarah, a “sacred vessel” for the “heir to the Tripp name” is further described as “a pure fertile goddess” in the post from April. The post, and the ensuing disgusted moaning from everyone on the internet it induced, has essentially served to build further publicity for the release of Tripp’s body-positive new single, Chubby Sexy.
Pedestrian has named him “the wholesome Post Malone of body positivity” to which I take specific offence and outrage. Chubby Sexy, a 4:14 minute long exploration of how horny Tripp is for his Curvy Wife, is no I Fall Apart. No, Chubby Sexy is something much more sinister: the manifestation of several years of liberal, body positive feminism, more focused with its uniquely toxic iteration of identity politics than actual liberation.
That the lyrics and music video of Chubby Sexy objectify women is not my principle issue. Nor is my issue with nauseating lyrics like “her inner thighs chafe, she knows how they taste.” My fault with Chubby Sexy is that it represents the end point of a movement that has become so sanitised that its core values are able to be distilled into a neatly packaged marketing tool, something that influencers may use to advance their own brand, as well as that of the many companies lining up to cash in on the commodification of body positivity.
Though the values of body positivity are ostensibly feminist, the most common iteration of the movement, namely that championed by models like Tess Holliday and Ashley Graham, seems to be more concerned with expanding the scope of what women can be considered desirable by society than improving the material conditions of women as a class. The issues that body positivity champion as feminist causes: the lack of plus-sized clothes available for fat women, the lack of representation of fat women in fashion and the media, whilst undeniably problematic, should not be our main concern. That Gorman sells coats for dogs but not for women over a size 14 should not be more of a feminist priority than the fact that oral contraceptives are often less effective for fat people, or that fat people are routinely discriminated against by medical professionals. Liberal concerns around representation distract us from real issues, such as ever increasing rates of police violence against Indigenous people, and the fact that the rates of violence against Trans people are rising worldwide.
And so we return to the Curvy Wife Guy and his Body Positive Anthem. As women, is this really all we can hope for? A gangly white tech nerd rapping about how we’re built like Big Ben? In fairness, this isn’t wholly the fault of the Curvy Wife Guy. The Body Positivity movement has been hurtling toward this moment since Dove’s Real Beauty campaign. Chubby Sexy merely offers us a deeply disturbing insight into the future of small l-liberal body positive feminism.