Some people love a beefy guy, but for feeders and gainers, it’s about getting beyond beefy. Gainerism is almost like a version of a fat fetish—but with some particular tweaks—while Feederism, as you can likely guess, is helping a gainer put on as much weight as possible. But a feeding or gaining kink isn’t exactly akin to, say, gooning. It’s a long term project that’s one of the most dangerous sexual practices out there.
As their names suggest, a feeder is someone who gets off on feeding someone else in order to force them to gain weight—a gainer is the person that they’re feeding. Unlike most kinks you’ll encounter, feeding and gaining often happen as part of a couple or some other long term arrangement.
Whereas one night you might be pissing on someone and the next you’re getting tied up with someone else, feeders and gainers will likely be in contact with each other for an extended period of weeks, months, or years so that they can track the gainer’s weight gain.
At the base of a feeder or gainer kink is finding bigger bodies desirable. A lot of gainers set goals for weight gain, and some feeders won’t get into a relationship with someone under a specific weight. Interestingly, feeder/gainer porn and influencers tend to show gainer guys with a very specific body type: guys with a round—almost spherical—belly, who otherwise have a fairly proportionate body. Some gainers even bloat themselves on purpose to emphasize a round gut. This might be the gainer body type that is most widely appealing, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect how and where most bodies hold weight.
Some feeders report that the pleasure they get out of feeding comes from feeling like they’re taking care of their gainers—almost like a pleasure dom. For others, the appeal of the kink is about dominance and control—a dynamic that’s foundational to most kink relationships.
Gainers, on the other hand experience the opposite: a profound lack of control. Gainers don’t only lose autonomy over their diets (to whatever extent the feeder determines what they eat), but in a sense they also lose autonomy over their body; though, as in every kink-based relationship, a healthy feeder/gainer dynamic should be a fully consenting one in which both parties are aware of the risks involved.
The feeder/gainer kink often gets a lot of criticism for being unsafe, and, realistically, it is one of the most dangerous kinks. Critics’ reasoning is that the gainer is seriously endangering their health by gaining weight, and that they’ll have to contend with all the health risks associated with being overweight—or in more extreme cases morbidly obese.
Feeders and gainers themselves respond by saying that if the relationship is entered into by two consenting adults who have both agreed to the terms, there’s nothing to criticize. Logically, both sides have pretty sturdy arguments, and just like, say, flogging or fisting, staying safe means using common sense about when things are going too far.
