Curvy Girls by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Curvy Girls Reviews

• 
  Jo (The Book Geek)

  I can't quite believe that I'm giving an erotic- themed book a five star rating. This book has given me quite a pleasant surprise, and has honestly blew me off course. I've took more that I expected to from this book. What attracted me first and foremost to it was the title. "Curvy girls" in my opinion just oozes sexiness. I am a fan of the curvier woman, and it was a pleasure to see one of these women on the front cover of the book, too.
  
  What was amazing in this book of short stories was the fact that the males/females truly worshipped their fuller figured lover like they were a goddess. These curvy ladies are proud of their voluptuous and ample assets and they are certainly not afraid to show that to the reader. Some of my favourite stories were "Before the Autumn Queen", "First come, first served" and "Decadence" There were only one or two I didn't care for much. This book is a reminder that curvy women ARE beautiful and they ARE sexy, no matter what size the label on the jeans state. I think despite the book stating that this is erotica for women, I think men that appreciate women with curves would enjoy this just as much. I'd definitely recommend not to bring it with you to work, though.
• 
  Jean Roberta

  Who is “overweight?” Who is “plus-sized?” These loaded terms are more culturally-specific than many people seem to realize. This anthology contains no precise definition of “curvy,” but the fact that women’s clothing in Size 14 and up is usually only available in “plus-size” stores (at least in North America) neatly serves to divide women on the basis of size in much the same way that apartheid once divided people on the basis of skin colour. Despite famous paintings of full-figured women and even famous centrefolds of the likes of Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s, the current belief that gorgeous equals painfully thin seems to permeate Western culture.
  
  This anthology not only aims to restore the self-esteem of “plus-sized” women, it aims to show why they are and always have been sexy. In these stories, fat-phobia is unpacked as a form of prejudice that is no more rational than racism or sexism. In fact, the equation of “overweight” with poor health is deliberately overturned on the first page of “Champagne and Cheesecake” by A.M. Hartnett:
  
  “She called them her ‘victory tits.’
  A whole year without smoking, and Sylvia had packed on thirty pounds, but she was no longer sorry for a single ounce of the blubber. In fact, now that she was staring at her reflection in the full-length mirror of the luxurious hotel room, she was feeling pretty good about the added girth.”
  
  Of course the hotel room where Sylvia has planned a tryst with two of her men friends is luxurious. Effective descriptions of sex, including scenes of mutual attraction and sexual tension, have always included delicious excess: extravagant settings, luxury items, feasts, multiple partners, extreme sensations (including pain so intense that it transmutes into pleasure and vice versa), explosive orgasms. The message of this anthology that fat can be beautiful is consistent with the traditional exaggerations in much erotic fiction.
  
  Several of these stories combine esthetic excess with references to past periods when the ideal woman was imagined as plumper than the models of today. In “Wenching” by Justine Elyot, Ginny is dressed as a peasant wench of the 13th century to serve at a medieval feast, where she meets her modern-day prince, and he explains to her why she should never feel ashamed of her body:
  
  “’Think of all the words associated with a bit of extra flesh. Generous. Ample. Voluptuous. Bountiful. Beautiful, sensual words. Contrast them with their opposites. Mean. Insufficient. Meager. Miserly.’”
  
  Ginny and her admirer sneak off to a hideaway where he shows her in the most convincing ways that he adores her generous flesh.
  
  “Before the Autumn Queen” by Angela Caperton focuses on a nineteenth-century painting of “Autumn” as a majestic woman who seems to be offering herself to a lover. A modern-day male art-lover notices the resemblance of a woman who works in the art gallery to the painting that graces one of its walls. The resulting seduction seems like a threesome which involves the man, the woman, and the eerily life-like image.
  
  Most of the couplings in these stories are heterosexual, and the man’s admiration for a woman with ample curves enables her to see herself through his eyes instead of through the self-punishing lens of the fat-phobic media. Two of these stories (“Cheesecake and Champagne” and “Appetite” by Elizabeth Coldwell) involve threesome scenes in which the woman shows her generosity and her appetite for pleasure by taking on two men. In at least one story (“Excuses”), the man-woman relationship is interracial, and the white man shows that he admires the beauty of a woman who is neither blonde nor skinny.
  
  Three of these stories feature f/f sex between women who have defined themselves as lesbian for some time, and therefore their relationship with mainstream culture is different from that of women who have never lived anywhere else. In “Recognition” by Salome Wilde and Talon Rihai, two women exchange glances in an airport and recognize each other as having something important in common despite their differences in race, culture, occupation, relationship status and home city (one lives in Atlanta, one New York). Their brief hookup in the cramped space of a lavatory is not meant to be repeated, but it seems likely to affect them both for a long time. In “At Last” by Jessica Lennox, a pair of long-term friends finally act on the attraction which has been simmering for years. “What Girls Are Made Of” by Evan Mora is more of a prose-poem than a narrative, and it sings the praises of a “dapper butch woman with a little substance to her.” These stories encourage me to hope that lesbian culture will never adopt the degree of fat-phobia which causes too many heterosexual women to see their bodies as asexual and repulsive.
  
  The two male-Dominant BDSM stories, “Big Girls Do Cry” by Rachel Kramer Bussel and “Marked” by Isabelle Gray, make a necessary distinction between desire and contempt. In these stories, a man goes to extreme measures to take ownership of a curvy woman while assuring her that he is not punishing her for any “flaws” of body or character.
  
  The story which moved me the most, “In the Early Morning Light” by Kristina Wright, is told from the viewpoint of an exhausted mother of a newborn baby, not her first. The narrator dreads the thought of having to satisfy her husband’s sexual needs while she feels that her body is bloated and hideous. His gentle touch is miraculously effective at reawakening her old desire for him. By the end of the story, their relationship has shifted profoundly for the better.
  
  While some of these stories are predictable, some challenge conventional assumptions with confidence and wit. In general, this is a collection of well-told tales that would especially appeal to women who have been bullied because of their size, and the ones who love them.
  ---------------------
  2 thumbs up.
  
  
• 
  Emerald Emerald

  Curvy Girls exceeded even my high expectations to a striking degree. Since I thought the theme was marvelous, I expected to enjoy the book, but as far as I'm concerned, Curvy Girls is truly an exceptional anthology.
  
  There is no question that the lovers in this book find the protagonists sexy—breathtakingly so in many cases. The overt and often verbal appreciation the protagonists' admirers have for their beauty mesmerized me in story after story. As I saw it, these stories tended to come either from the angle of a larger woman who experiences comfort and contentment about that or from one who struggles with the standards postulated by an abstract society, bringing us as readers face to face with those unconscious judgments and compelling us to confront them from the inside out—all of which I see as of great value.
  
  While this book may be fiction, it seems to me that as with much fiction, it is reflective of some part of reality. Despite various media's constant bombardment to the contrary, there are obviously individuals who perceive this way, who see non-supermodel-shaped bodies as individually beautiful and unique, and to whom it would make no more sense to fetishize such than it would captivating eyes or luxurious hair (not that those things can't be experienced as fetishes, but fetishization has not commonly been perceived as their only potential attractiveness, which has sometimes seemed the nonsensical case with larger-sized women).
  
  I highly recommend this book for all who are at all interested in the theme or simply in discerning, thoughtful (and very hot!) erotica.
• 
  Alisha

  Rating: 3.5 Stars overall.
  
  I skipped over some stories (mostly the lesbian couplings) if they didn't interest me. However, all of the stories were well written, and most of the stories were sexy and arousing. This is a great collection that actually pulls together stories for many different sexual appetites. There's a little vanilla, some public sex, a bit of BDSM, and more. It's totally worth checking out.
• 
  LibraryKath

  Not my cup of tea. Very much Wham-Bam-thank-you-Ma'am porn. Just doesn't do it for me.
• 
  Erzabet Bishop

  This book was super hot! I love anthologies and this one has earned a place on my forbidden and favorite bookshelf.
• 
  SHIP (formerly The CSPH)

  Edited by prolific erotica writer/editor Rachel Kramer Bussel, Curvy Girls is a collection of short and sexy stories celebrating lust at larger sizes, and serves as a delightful introduction to feminist erotica as well as an addition to an already-established library.
  
  Plus-size, curvy, generous, fat; women in these stories describe their bodies in different ways, and they have very realistic and at times very nuanced self-perceptions. It’s a fallacy too often seen in popular culture and pornography that plus-size women have only a few personality types. The women in this collection are neither sexless jester nor hopeless sidekick—they’re runners and exhibitionists, kinky and bewitching, confident and shy. Their body shapes vary as well: there are women with big and small breasts, pear-shapes, post-pregnancy bodies, and women who are just simply “large”, and their lovers desire their bodies for what they are, free of the shame that we’re often taught that people who have sex with larger women are supposed to feel.
  
  Just like in erotic writing where body size is not mentioned or is assumed to be small, Curvy Girls’ readers are treated to a wide range of sexual encounters and possibilities in the collection’s 20-odd stories. In some of the stories, women are convinced by a partner that they are indeed desirable, while in others they know they’re hot and are ready to prove it. Though most of the stories deal with slightly naughty but basically vanilla sex, there are a couple kinkier reads: for instance, “Big Girls Do Cry” is an excellent little tale of a girl craving a spanking who finds her perfect dom in an unexpected location. It’s great that there are race, class, and culture dynamics at play in some of the stories, and it’s clear that they were carefully chosen to reflect this type of diversity in addition to body-type diversity.
  
  Much of the pleasure of erotic writing and sexual fantasy in general comes from being introduced to new possibilities, something that Curvy Girls delivers in terms of sexual positions, locations, and diverse female characters. However, although all of the women in the stories have personalities and bodies that are described differently, the male partners in the stories—when men are involved—most often fall into a “smaller than the woman” category. This might not appeal to readers who aren’t themselves attracted to smaller people, but then again there is a lot of erotic tension in any scenario where one person believes the other to be somehow “out of their league,” and many of the women in the stories initially believe this about these smaller men. A second theme that appears often in the book is in sexual encounters with relative strangers, a common fantasy that will appeal to many people.
  
  Curvy Girls could be sexy for many people to read, however it is written specifically for women. I believe it will appeal to many women, even if they don’t consider themselves “plus-size” or “curvy.” There is not nearly enough body affirmation in popular culture to make up for the body-negativity that women encounter every day, and a collection of stories that treats “imperfections” such as bellies, thighs, and largeness in general as sexy, desirable, and beautiful without fetishization can only do good for the collective cultural psyche.
• 
  Ariyana Spencer

  Curvy Girls is a steamy set of stories every voluptuous girl with curves will adore. (And I have no doubt that guys who like curves on their ladies will probably enjoy this anthology just as much.) Some of the tales burn fast and quick and other simmer at a deeper level. For me, personally, I could relate to several of the female main characters' "issues" and fantasies. It may seem that curves are not appreciated as much these days, but the authors of these stories prove a lack of love from the fashionably thin doesn't make the voluptuous any less sexy.
  
  The anthology kicks off with a tale called "Runner's Calves" which brings up a problem I have *every* Fall season when I go to try on knee-high boots--they're just not built for tight, muscular calves. Darn you, shoe makers! But, never fear, our heroine finds a hunny who has the perfect pair for her, and can appreciate her strong legs in other ways as well. Nice. The tales don't lose any of their heat or curves past this, and the stories vary as much as the women themselves. A few of my other favorites in the collection included "First Date" and "Big Girls Do Cry," both of which took their main characters to a deeper level.
  
  I'm glad I requested an advanced copy of this book. The editor did a wonderful job of pacing this collection, and authors did an equally wonderful job of giving her material to work with. I'd definitely recommend this one to both those looking for hot tales and those simply looking for great stories where a little weight in all the right places is much appreciated.
• 
  Phoenixfalls

  This is a surprisingly diverse collection. It features women with the large breasts, butt and hips that I expected going in, but it also features women whose largeness manifests in less expected ways, like strongly muscled legs; there are stories of trysts between near-strangers, between people in heterosexual or homosexual monogamous relationships, and one featuring a polyamorous triad; the characters are mostly white but there are few interracial couples and couples where both partners are non-white; and while most of the sex is vanilla there are a few kinky stories involving BDSM and voyeurism. All that variety is in some ways a mixed blessing: on the one hand, at least one story is sure to please any reader; on the other hand, I'm pretty sure every reader will encounter some stories that are complete misses. Unfortunately for me, Bussel placed most of my favorites toward the beginning of the anthology and all of the ones I disliked at the end, causing me to end up liking the anthology as a whole less than I think I would have had it been organized differently. Still, the quality of the prose was consistently good, resulting in an eminently readable, decidedly sexy anthology that I'd certainly recommend.
• 
  Jade

  This was a goodreads book that I won. I loved the idea of the book. There are not many stores out there that involves curvy girls. I give this book 3.5 stars. For me the stores were way too short. And yes, I know they're sort stories. But most of them were too sort, some only a few pages. It was hard to get into the lives of some of the people in that short of a time. A lot of them were really good. And I relate to some of the girls in the book.
  I think this book is for anyone though, because it doesn't matter if you are 10 ponds over weight, or 100. Most women have some sort of a body issue. These stories shows those struggles, and the fact that there are guys out there that like all kinds of body types.
  Over all it was sexy, fun and entertaining.
  
• 
  Melissa

  The stories themselves weren't bad but I chose to listen to the audiobook instead of reading the book, which made me give 3 stars instead of 5. For some reason, I didn't care for the book and I think it had to do with the narrators. I haven't actually listened to a collections of stories like this in audio form where each story is back to back. I'm probably going to purchase the book because I want to give it another shot.
• 
  Ali

  A set of short stories to remind curvy women that yes, they are sexy, no matter what size they are or how insecure they are about their bodies. This book was recommended as reading for the class by a women's lit professor. Little racy for my taste, but the theme that all sizes are sexy is very clear.