Standing on a street corner in Brooklyn, Sabrina Servance became alarmed when it looked as though a man next to her was about to get hit by an oncoming bus.
She quickly stepped back to make room for the guy on the curb.
The man caught her eye and offered a friendly “How are you?”
“I’m OK,” the 31-year-old Bushwick resident replied before shuffling to a roomier spot. Interpreting this as a signal of Servance’s disinterest, the man grew enraged.
“Obviously, you’re not that good; look how fat and disgusting you are,” he spat back at her.
“That, for me, is the worst part of being a plus-size girl in New York,” Servance says, referring to the offensive comments she’s had to field from total strangers.
But instead of shrinking away from public attention after suffering such embarrassment, she’s making herself more visible by landing a spot on Lifetime’s new reality-TV show “Big Women: Big Love.”
The series, which premiered Thursday, follows five single plus-size women from across the country as they attempt to find love in the vast — and oftentimes harsh — dating world.
The program aims to show that plus-size women experience the same difficulties as their svelte counterparts when it comes to dating. But being single and overweight comes with a whole different set of rules.
Mar Ortiz, a 32-year-old aspiring singer from Clifton, NJ, had just struck up a conversation with a good-looking guy at a bar when he turned to her and said, “I’m just not into bigger girls.”
“It was shocking,” Ortiz recalls of that humiliating moment. “A lot of times the guy at the bar that I typically go for — the skinny bad boy — he’s not looking at me.”
Instead, Ortiz is resigned to settle for the men left lingering after bartenders announce, “last call.”
“When I go out with my sister, who’s thinner than me, she gets the guys first. I’m stuck with the leftovers, but at this point, I’m used to it.”
Servance has had similar troubles while out with her skinny girlfriends. “When we would hang out, you could tell the guys who came up to us were thinking, ‘What do we do about the big one?’”
While she still goes to bars, the fashion merchandiser also meets many potential suitors via dating Web sites. “I’m very upfront about my weight, because I think there’s nothing worse than being misled by a photo,” she explains. “If you’re a plus-size woman, you should have a full-body picture.”
But even the guys she does connect with online come with a caveat — some, known as “chubby chasers,” are interested only in larger women.
“There’s a difference between liking someone for who they are and turning it into a fetish thing,” says Servance, who once had a man ask to squeeze her butt-cheeks on a date.
Despite these problems, the women agree they’re most hurt by the assumption that they don’t get asked out because of their larger physiques.
Jessica Ammons, a 29-year-old curvy girl, insists she collects just as many digits as her thin friends near her Atlanta, Ga., home, while Servance estimates she’s been on about 70 first dates since she finished school six years ago. She also says that when it comes to physical intimacy, there are fewer complications than people presume.
“I never think, ‘Oh, he’s going to see my back boob,’ ” says Servance. “This is what I look like, love it or hate it. I love it, and if I’m getting naked with you, you obviously like it, too.”
But not everyone’s as confident: Some bigger girls employ a number of tricks between the sheets. For Ammons, that meant keeping the lights off, wearing a T-shirt, and staying underneath the covers during the act, before becoming more comfortable with her body.
“Who wants that to be a part of their relationship?” asks the makeup artist, who recently dropped 100 pounds and now clocks in at a manageable 242. “That’s not fun for you, and it wouldn’t be fun for your partner, either.”
Despite their successes, none of these women has been in a serious relationship. They hope to change that by appearing on the show, which will eventually bring them together for a dating seminar called “Supersize Your Life” that aims to teach the women how to make better decisions when it comes to their love lives.
“Skinny women think that it’s not hard being a bigger woman in the dating world, but if me and J.Lo were on the beach and we had on the same bathing suit, who’s going to want to talk to me?” says Ammons. “The thin, not-so-cute-in-the-face girls always get preference over the cute-but-heavyset girls.”
NYC can be a particularly harsh place to look for love. “The guys in the city are a bit more blunt, more aggressive and sarcastic; they think they can say, ‘You’re a little bit thick, girl!’ and it’s OK,” laments Ortiz.
And Servance is tired of men making assumptions about her interests and tastes. “I went out with a guy, once, who said, ‘Are you eating [a salad] just to be cute, or do you really eat that? You don’t have to put on a show for me. If you want to eat something greasy, knock yourself out,’ ” she recalls, before adding, “I’m eating a salad because I want to.”
And though these women have all experienced setbacks, they are in no rush to settle for the first decent guy that comes around.
“It took me a long time to become this confident,” stresses Servance. “Anyone who compromises my ability to feel great about myself isn’t worth my time.
“Loving yourself is something every woman can relate to, fat or skinny,” she continues. “And to me, that’s what it’s all about. It has nothing to do with size, it’s about being a woman.”
Ain’t love grand?
The second episode of “Big Women: Big Love” airs Wednesday at 10 p.m. on Lifetime. Get to know the five women who are stepping onto the dating scene in a big way.
Sabrina Servance
Age: 31
Lives in: Bushwick, Brooklyn
Occupation: Fashion merchandiser
Dress size: 16/18
Looking for: While her friends say that she prefers “skinny, dorky white guys,”
video-game fanatic Servance insists she just wants a guy who’s comfortable in his own skin. “I would love to meet someone who is just themselves, weird quirks and all,” she tells The Post.
Jennifer Dowding
Age: 26
Lives in: Los Angeles
Occupation: Casting assistant
Dress size: Refuses to say
Looking for: Raised by strict Midwestern parents, Dowding got her first kiss and lost her virginity in the past year. “Once I finally lost my virginity, I went a little crazy having sex,” she says in the show’s premiere.
Kristi Wiley
Age: 34
Lives in: Forth Worth, Texas
Occupation: Nonprofit manager
Dress size: 20
Looking for: Wiley isn’t just looking for a new mate, but a potential father figure for her young daughter. Currently living at home with her mother, she says the guys she likes are more attracted to thin blond types.
Mar Ortiz
Age: 32
Lives in: Clifton, NJ
Occupation: Aspiring singer
Dress size: 16
Looking for: Ortiz is hoping to find someone who will appreciate her at any size. But don’t expect the same consideration from her. “I’m just not attracted to guys who are chubby,” she says. “I like an average-looking man, and I like them tall.”
Jessica Ammons
Age: 29
Lives in: Atlanta, Ga.
Occupation: Makeup artist
Dress size: 16/18
Looking for: Ammons’ perfect man is masculine, muscular, tattooed but clean-cut and spiritual. She knows that not all men are attracted to plus-size women, so don’t lead her on.
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