The Adipositivity Project

© The Adipositivity Project

You must must must must MUST check out the the amazing Adipositivity Project.

Adipositivity is a photography project that captures the everyday fat woman, with all her folds, bumps and dimples, and celebrates her. The photos are beautiful and each has a different tone - sexy, jubilant, tranquil - yet all the pictures feature the strength and confidence of the woman photographed.

© The Adipositivity Project

In the words of Substantia Jones, the brains and talent behind the Project:

MISSION:

The Adipositivity Project aims to promote size acceptance, not by listing the merits of big people, or detailing examples of excellence (these things are easily seen all around us), but rather, through a visual display of fat physicality. The sort that’s normally unseen.

The hope is to widen definitions of physical beauty. Literally.

The photographs here are close details of the fat female form, without the inclusion of faces. One reason for this is to coax observers into imagining they’re looking at the fat women in their own lives, ideally then accepting them as having aesthetic appeal which, for better or worse, often translates into more complete forms of acceptance.

The women you see in these images are educators, executives, mothers, musicians, professionals, performers, artists, activists, clerks, and writers. They are perhaps even the women you’ve clucked at on the subway, rolled your eyes at in the market, or joked about with your friends.

This is what they look like with their clothes off.

Some are showing you their bodies proudly. Others timidly. And some quite reluctantly. But they all share a determination in altering commonly accepted notions of a narrow and specific beauty ideal.

I love this project because they are just regular women. Not plus size models. Not in the public eye. Not perfect. And there are, unfortunately, very few opportunities where we can observe what a wonderfully imperfect body looks like.

© The Adipositivity Project

The anonymity in the photos, as Substantia said, do allow us to imagine the fat women in our lives. They also allow us to imagine ourselves. If we can look at one of Adipositivity’s rolly, dimpled bodies and see that it is beautiful, then it stands to reason that we can look at our own rolly, dimpled bodies and see ourselves as beautiful. How revolutionary is that?!

New photos are uploaded regularly, so make sure you keep the page bookmarked.

This is my favourite one so far. © The Adipositivity Project

Adipositivity also has a shop, as does Substantia, and one (or more) of you should buy me this fabulous apron and/or this water bottle.

All pictures reproduced with permission.

Full-Figured Fashion Week, or Why Frances is Bitter

The inaugural Full-Figured Fashion Week was held in New York City from 25-27 June 2009.

Hm? What’s that? Oh, no, I didn’t go. Why, you ask? BECAUSE I’M ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DAMN WORLD.

Luvin’ My Curves and The Curvy Fashionista have done a recap of Day 1, while Gabi at Young, Fat and Fabulous covered The State of the Curvy Community discussion, complete with video of Nikki Blonsky talking about her experience as a corpulent woman. I’m sure all three have much more to say on the event, so make sure you check back with them over the coming days.

But because I am bitter, I hate ‘em. I hate New York, I hate fate and I hate everyone else who conspired to put me in Sydney and FFFWeek in NYC. BOOOOO LIFE.

Beth Ditto

I have a confession to make: I never really liked Beth Ditto.

I don’t even know why. Her music was catchy enough (I like to dance around my room to ‘Standing in the Way of Control’), she was doing a great job of making fat, queer women visible and – even better – showing that fat, queer women don’t have to settle for being like everyone else and the Fatosphere is completely in love with her. But something about her just… grated. In spite of all her good parts, I still didn’t like her.

Then the bitch had to go ruin everything by being fabulous.

The tide began to turn when I saw the previews for her new line for Evans on Fat Girls Like Nice Clothes Too! and The Musings of a Fatshionista. Her line is amazing: the domino leggings, the cropped biker jackets, the adorable ballet pumps that look like feminine spats. I’m around a size 16/18, and even though I’m on the small end of plus size, clothes shopping in Australia is an absolute nightmare. Yet here is a fat icon designing the most bright, fun, eye-catching – almost garish – clothing for girls like me and girls much fatter. Utterly amazing. All of it makes me want to pack my things and move to London in time for the 9 July launch.

Then there was this radio interview on Triple J. Ditto is polite, outgoing and has the sweetest Southern accent of all time. And she’s really quite funny. No wonder everyone is in love with her; she’s so disarmingly friendly. I found myself wanting to be best friends with her. Damn it.

And finally I saw this picture of her on Fatshionista:

Beth Ditto by Steven Klein in Pop Magazine, 2007

Looking like a million bucks in bespoke Gareth Pugh.

So I’m done. YOU WIN, BETH. I finally see that you are amazing and I am now, officially and on the record, a big fat fan.

“Obese could be paid to lose weight under Rudd proposal”

I want to address the articles that were published yesterday by News Limited: one in The Daily Telegraph/AdelaideNow and one in Herald Sun.

Some clarification for international readers: News Limited is the media company owned by Rupert Murdoch. In Australia it operates, among many others, the Daily Tele, AdelaideNow and the Herald Sun – all tabloid newspapers. Their equivalent in tone and style would be UK’s The Sun (but with fewer boobs), which is also owned by Murdoch. ‘Rudd’ refers to the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

The articles had two different tones. Daily Tele/AdelaideNow ran the headline “Subsidies for people to lose weight and get fit: Overweight people could be paid to lose weight under a radical plan to combat the nation’s obesity crisis” while Herald Sun ran the much more alarmist “Obese could be paid to lose weight under Rudd proposal: Fat people could be paid to lose weight under a radical plan to combat the nation’s obesity crisis commissioned by the Rudd Government”.

The articles led to predictable responses from both sides. The anti-fat brigade exclaimed that Kevin Rudd was rewarding obesity (obesity = evil, natch), discriminating against healthy people, that they should not expected to pay for the problems fat people bring on themselves. On the other side, fatties were blasting Rudd for failing to recognise health at every size.

When I saw the headlines, I expected to jump on the side of the latter. Until I actually read the article. Now I am convinced that the ‘FATTIES = BAD’ tone is more due to dodgy reporting rather than a fault with Rudd or within the actual report.

Not one of the expected recommendations is explicitly targeted at the obese and backs up these ridiculous headlines. The articles outline:

• Tax breaks or subsidies for gym membership, fitness equipment and/or sports club membership
• A ban on junk food advertising during children’s programs
• Nutritional information displays for fast food outlets
• Increasing the cost of cigarettes
• Restrictions on opening times for venues serving alcohol

Leaving aside whether these measures will even be effective, all the recommendations listed in the articles stand to affect everyone.

The most disappointing thing about the Taskforce is that one of the goals they have set is to ”curb the nation’s growing waistline.”

Though the attitude that obesity automatically equates to unhealthiness is frustrating, I don’t blame Kevin Rudd and I am not worried that this will be entered into policy. Rudd commissioned a report from an independent taskforce who will make a series of recommendations that the government is under no obligation to implement. I think that, for now, the fatties are safe from the Australian Government.

Edit: The ABC also covered this story. Apparently one of the recommendations could be that “overweight people would be given subsidies for gym membership or fitness equipment”, which was not explicitly outlined in the News Limited articles. Sigh. The National Preventative Health Taskforce was due to report on their recommendations this week but so far nothing has been released. Watch this space.

Opening Act

Hello and welcome to Corpulent! *insert fanfare*

If you’ve followed me over here from my tumblr, thank you. I hope you like my words as much as you like my pictures.

I started this blog because my entry-level job is quickly turning my brain into mush and, being an Arts grad, I desperately miss writing.

So the First Rule of writing to to write what you know. My name is Frances. I am 23 years old, I am in love with food, my clothes are plus size, I am 1.72m tall and I weigh 95kg (approx. 5’8″ and 210 pounds, for those not down with the metric system) which classifies me as obese according to BMI. I eat, I jiggle and I break pants. In line with the First Rule, I’ve created a fat blog.

I’m not quite sure what form this blog will take as yet and it’s probable it will end up being a mix of everything: some fat ranting, love letters to food, a dash of plus size fashion,  some politics and loads of photos of the plus sized women I love. Basically, whatever captures my flittish attention.

You stay classy, Fatosphere.