body image · link round up

Fit is a Feminist Issue, Link Round Up #30

This is where we share stuff we can’t share on Facebook page for fear of being kicked out! Read why here. Usually the posts are about body image, sometimes there’s nudity but we’re all adults here. Right?

By the way, Facebook recently clarified its stance on nudity, writing, “We remove photographs of people displaying genitals or focusing in on fully exposed buttocks. We also restrict some images of female breasts if they include the nipple, but we always allow photos of women actively engaged in breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring. We also allow photographs of paintings, sculptures and other art that depicts nude figures.” For the full story see here.

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Oh, so scary. Nipples!

Why does a fitness blog even care about body image? You can read about that here.

Liis Windischmann doesn’t own a bathroom scale and she can’t remember the last time she weighed herself. The successful Toronto-based plus-size model knows that’s no way to measure self-worth.

Fact is, the scale never held much appeal for her, especially during her first foray into the unforgiving world of modelling as a “gangly teenager.” One summer back then, Windischmann was working as a receptionist for a large photography studio when she was asked to step in for a no-show model.

That shoot led to another one. And although she was instantly hooked on modelling, the allure quickly vanished after she visited two modelling agencies.

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The following definitions were originally sourced from a final project co-created and presented with my cohort Psalm Lewis (whom you may know better as vegan chef extraordinaire Collard Gal), at the California Institute of Integral Studies for our Trauma course. The goal of this final paper and project is to explore the connection between Fat Phobia and Complex Trauma through the lens of current societal norms. We found it extremely important not only to start making way for these explorations within the Psychological community, but to validate them concretely through the writing of academic literature, and through the creation of operational definitions for each of the terms utilized. This will allow a baseline of understanding in general, as well as being specifically applied to Psalm and my academic work together in the future – research and literature and workshops, oh my!

It pains me to say that although the body positive movement is increasingly expanding and growing ever so strong, there are still many people who express fat phobia or sizeism, and feel the need to continue to bully and harass plus-size people who are refusing to hide themselves away any longer. This message is for all of those people, on behalf of myself and other plus-size men and women trying to figure out how to deal with Internet trolls.

Not long ago, I wrote an article about a little social media experiment I did where I, a plus-size woman, posted a lingerie selfie every day for a week to see what the reactions would be. The article has since gone internationally viral, and to my absolute delight, it’s touched and inspired thousands of fellow plus-size humans around the world. But there are still many of you who believe that all of this strength, all of this confidence, and all of this self-love being celebrated by my fellow fatties and myself is a wrong and “down-right disgusting” revelation. And that needs to be addressed immediately.

The Fat Naked Art Project is a project which is being undertaken by Model/Photographer Heather Kolaya of Kolaya Photography. The goal is to display fatness as beautiful and one type of many bodies. Fat is neither something to hide nor be ashamed of.

6 thoughts on “Fit is a Feminist Issue, Link Round Up #30

  1. But nipples are scary, at least our female ones. I mean they shoot lasers and have mind control properties. Not to mention the risk of taking an eye out on a pointy one. Terrifying things really.

  2. Having breastfed three children for three years each, my nipples were merely a means for expressing milk from my body. Oh my children were three years apart. That’s a total of nine years. WTF is the big deal with a little nip? Don’t get me started about the nude female body. Don’t. Get. Me. Started.
    My thighs–they rub together like two fundamentalist Christians getting off on side hugs.
    My belly, she jiggles like jelly as I set her free from shapewear and don only the bottom of a bikini on the French beaches!
    My breasts, they bob up and down like two pink-tipped buoys when I swim topless in the Mediterranean Sea.
    Though not plus sized, I’m round, and fluffy. My French better half, a wise man, he is, loves me this way and compares me to a woman in a Renoir painting.
    Our bodies are ours. They belong to us and only to us. If someone else doesn’t like the way any of us look, then a big “F*ck You” to them!

  3. Woohoo for the Fat Naked Art Project…I’m one of the models and I actually just came home from another photo shoot with Heather 🙂

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