Nathan shared his taste for kinky sex and prepared to take on a submissive role in a dominatrix-themed episode of “Strange Sex.” (TLC/Cara Walters)
Stephanie helps to satisfy a man’s “giant” fetish by making a video where she stomps on a city. (TLC)
On one episode of the show, Wesley had his scrotum — it weighs 200 pounds — examined by a Dr. Goldstein. (TLC/Cara Walters)
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Annie Hawkins-Turner has the largest natural breasts on the planet — size 102 ZZZ. Together, they weigh almost 85 pounds, and, as we recently learned on tonight’s third-season premiere of TLC’s “Strange Sex,” each one is “heavier than the average 4-year-old child.”
But while nature’s bounty creates awkward situations — Hawkins-Turner has to bend over almost all the way when walking down stairs to see where she’s going, and restaurant booths are not an option because “my breasts will be on the table” — none of these inconveniences detract from her satisfaction in the bedroom.
“I’m very flexible,” says Hawkins-Turner, 54, who, under the name Norma Stitz, runs — and poses for — a popular Web site of large-breasted women that, she says, gets two million hits a day. “My breasts are big. They are sensitive. There is no position I cannot do. Of course, you can’t slide me across the bed like you would with someone who weighs 115 pounds. But we get it done.”
Hers is just one tale of sexual peculiarities highlighted on “Strange Sex.” Others include a man with a 200-pound scrotum who hasn’t seen his penis in four years, and sometimes uses his covered scrotum as a table; a “macrophiliac” who gets turned on by having women pretend to be giants who stomp out a city in the manner of “Attack of the 50-foot Woman”; and a woman whose orgasms suddenly and mysteriously began triggering torturous levels of pain.
How people like Hawkins-Turner find their way to “Strange Sex” is really rather simple. “We actually have a casting notice on the show, a card that comes up at the end of the episode that asks for folks to write to us if they are interested in appearing on the show,” says Alon Orstein, vice president of production at TLC. “ It’s generated a lot of leads for us.”
While the series may sound like nothing more than a peep show, it also spotlights its subjects’ daily struggles.
Hawkins-Turner, for instance, has faced discrimination for her anatomy since age 9, when the size of her breasts (caused by the condition called gigantomastia) prevented her from sitting at conventional chairs and desks at school.
Today, she says there’s still “not a day that goes by that people don’t make fun of me.”
“When I’m out, people just stare, point, and laugh,” says the Arlington, Va., resident. “I been going to this church for years, and when I sit down, you don’t see no stomach. You see chest. So this one woman walked up to me and said, ‘Are you with child, or do you have female trouble?’ I told her no, I’m just healthy.”
Hawkins-Turner says that while she’s learned to handle rude behavior, it bothers her son and daughter — Darrius, 25, and Clara, 22.
“I go out to dinner with my family, and people start pointing at me,” she says. “I’ll go up to the table, introduce myself, and tell them to get a good look now, ’cause I’m gonna sit down with my family and enjoy my dinner. My son gets very upset, because he doesn’t understand how, when a man is walking with a woman, he can turn around and stare at me. He said that you can have a woman walking around with a huge behind and nobody says anything. But with me, they do.”
She was able to overcome shyness about her condition when she met her husband, Allen, in the early ’90s.
“He taught me how to love myself, because I used to try to hide,” says Hawkins-Turner, who lost Allen to lung cancer in 2003. “I always had bad relationships, but this man turned out to be my angel. He taught me how to embrace myself, love myself and accept myself.”
While many people have asked her about having breast reduction surgery, she insists it’s an option she will never consider.
“I could go under the knife and develop an infection, and for what — to please society? I don’t need to be validated by anybody. I validate myself,” she says. “You have ladies that pay to get what I got naturally, and people accept that. This was a blessing for me from God. And I say it’s a blessing because I am prospering from my breasts.”
Orstein takes a blithe view of some of the show’s participants. “These are people who, for one reason or another, they want the opportunity to share an aspect of their lifestyle that to them is celebratory,” he says. “Others might want to shine a light on a condition or issue they want people to be aware of.”
STRANGE SEX
Today, 10 p.m., TLC
PEOPLE ARE ‘STRANGE’
True stories from the show
1) Nathan shared his taste for kinky sex and prepared to take on a submissive role in a dominatrix-themed episode of “Strange Sex.”
2) Stephanie helps to satisfy a man’s “giant” fetish by making a video where she stomps on a city.
3) On one episode of the show, Wesley had his scrotum — it weighs 200 pounds — examined by a Dr. Goldstein.