No Fats, No Femmes Documentary Wants to Explore Queer Desire

If you're one of the many queer millenials who uses popular hookup apps (like Grindr) to meet and date others, then you've probably seen the phrase 'no fats, no femmes' used in many people's profiles. What does it mean exactly? It means that the person using it is not interested in anyone who isn't skinny, muscular, and masculine.

The often marginalzing and extremely offensive term is being dissected by filmmaker Jamal Lewis, who hopes to create a documentary (aptly entitled No Fats, No Femmes) that profiles queer people of color who don't fit into the mold of what makes someone conventionally attractive online. 

"No Fats, No Femmes interrogates and explores desire and the ways in which it is deeply informed by media, pop culture, and capitalism through interviews, archival research, and performance," Lewis said on his Indiegogo page for the project. "The film critically engages the phrase 'no fats, no femmes,' which is popularly used on queer social networking/dating sites to describe one’s dating preferences, through the personal narrative(s) of 5 black and brown gender-non-conforming, queer, trans, fat, femme, and disabled people."

He continued:

"No Fats, No Femmes is critically important because it offers a profound perspective regarding issues of race, fatness, and desirability that has been deliberately silenced."

With the help of crowdfunding, Lewis hopes to see the documentary to completion. Over $12,000 of the needed $20,000 has been raised to help Lewis gets the project into development, and there is still time to donate. 

To help fund the cost of production for No Fats, No Femmes, visit the Indiegogo page and contribute here. You can also watch a shoprt snippet of what the doc will look like in the video below.