Fit is a Feminist Issue, Link Round Up #43

This is where we share stuff we can’t share on our Facebook page for fear of being kicked out!

Usually the posts are about body image, sometimes there’s nudity but we’re all adults here.

Artist Busts Gender Genres with Stunning New Photo Series

In most mass media, the female form comes in about three different colors and contours, and one all-purpose gender presentation. The standards are exhausting for the large groups of women who don’t fit the conventional sizing, which is why artist Jessica Yatrofsky stepped in. Her latest photo series, I Heart Girl, explores women with a wide range of masculine and feminine attributes, helping to break big bad gender boundaries.

Yatrofsky’s subjects come dressed and undressed, but each portrait feels equally intimate. According to the artist, helping her subjects embrace their own vulnerability is a key part of her technique: “Intimacy is an essential part of the images I create so it’s important for me to start a dialogue first outside of shooting … When you invite someone to sit for a portrait or in my case, lay down for a portrait, it requires trust and I like to think I create a space where a subject feels comfortable being vulnerable.”

While many of Yatrofsky’s portraits are nude, her goal isn’t to hypersexualize her female subjects, but rather, let them define their own limits and range. To see more of Yatrofky’s work and I Heart Girl, check out her awesome site here.

Why dieting can be dangerous if you’re over 60

Ngaire Hobbins is a dietician specialising in nutrition for those of us 60 and above. And she’s concerned that older Australians are eating like body-conscious 20 years olds, and it’s putting them into aged care unnecessarily.

She says that she’s seen hundreds of people like this—eating to lose or keep-off weight—and it’s ruining their bodies and ability to live independent, full, fun lives.

But there’s a simple answer, she says. And you just might like the way it tastes.

NICOLE ARBOUR’S VIDEO DIDN’T MOTIVATE ME TO BE HEALTHY – BUT BODY POSITIVITY DID

When I watched Nicole Arbour’s video to fat people, I couldn’t help but be struck by her complete conviction that shaming fat folks would motivate them to be healthy.

The research does not back this claim – in fact, it consistently refutes it – and fat folks have asserted time and time again that shaming them does real psychological harm.

So I’m confused on how making people feel like shit is supposed to be encouraging, but okay.

Throughout the video, Arbour takes jabs at the body positivity movement, stating, like many trolls have before, that it promotes unhealthiness (while her very original insults and hatred of fat folks, comments that they certainly haven’t heard before, will definitely promote health).

Yes, against my better judgment, I watched the video. And Nicole Arbour’s fat-shaming did nothing to motivate me as a person who is “overweight.” Body positivity, on the other hand, has motivated me – it has made me a healthier, happier, and stronger person.

I spent most of my life as a very thin person. But secretly, I was also terrified of being fat. Most of my family was, which made me feel like I was constantly trying to outrun my so-called genetic fate, and being constantly praised for being thin made me feel like I had to work hard to maintain it, to make sure I didn’t lose it.

100 Years of Lingerie in 3 Minutes

Radical Self-Acceptance: An Experiment/Performance by Amy Pence-Brown

Fatphobia: A Guide for the Disbeliever

When I talk about fatphobia, I’m often viewed with confusion and disbelief. I mean, we laugh at fat jokes, discuss at length banning fat marriage, make comments about how fat people should exercise or kill themselves. We may be threatened with murder for making a documentary on fatness.

But fatphobia isn’t real, right?

First, a little bit about me. I’m an American who has lived on one coast or the other, who has spent extended time in Poland and in London. I’ve been familiar with fatphobia my whole life, as my mother is fat, my grandmother is fat, and I became fat during my teenage years due to a combination of medication and genetics. I’m larger than the “average” size, which as of 2013 was about a size 14. I’m a size 24 US, size 22 UK. I eat about 1800 calories a day, snack on nuts and rice cakes, have a green smoothie a day, work out twice a week, and am reasonably active. I have mostly cut dairy out of my diet, never eat beef, and am about 50 percent gluten free.

8 Times Tess Holliday Challenged Oppressive Beauty Standards

This model is killing it. She’s absolutely the dream feminist BFF we all need in our lives. I mean, just the fact that Tess Holliday is challenging oppressive beauty standards and turning the modeling industry on it’s head is enough. But on top of that, she’s also gone to the mat for victims of bullying, victims of racially influenced violence, and members of the LGBTQ community who just wanted to look half as fabulous as Holliday at their weddings. And she openly and proudly identifies as a feminist, to which I say: yassss.

As a proudly plus-sized woman myself, it’s so refreshing to have a role model who is just as much substance as style (and I’m not just saying that because she tweeted me back this Saturday). The Strong Women Strong Girls Foundation points out that having positive role models increases self-confidence in young girls — and they need all the help they can get. According to a study in the Journal of Research on Adolescence, young girls lose self-esteem as they navigate puberty. This is, in part, due to a society that changes the focus from their abilities to their appearances.

Fat People Flipping You Off

What is FatPeopleFlippingYouOff.com? It’s fat people. Flipping you off.

Fat people who’re angry about sizeism, both institutional and individual. Cheesed off about revisionist science, body policing, and implicit weight bias. Pissed about the $66 billion/year US weight loss industry blanketing media with dangerous messages meant to convince people they’re inadequate and unworthy simply because their bodies occupy the larger end of natural human variation.

The middle finger. The Bird. Digitus Impudicus. The caustic claw. The prong of protest. The digit of displeasure. (Yes, I’m now just making these up.)

When words fail, aim it at those who’re immune to logic, reject social justice, or care not about the bigotry of their words and actions. Whether yours is the classic (middle finger stiff, unused fingers held down by thumb), the double (two-fisted), or the wildly satisfying Johnny Cash Style (middle finger slightly bent, mid-knuckles of dormant fingers forward, thumb does whatever the hell it wants), the middle finger is the most useful of the fingers. And most of us have a spare!

Astounding Self-Portraits Paint A Complex Picture Of Body Image And Weight Loss (NSFW)

When the photographer Julia Kozerski lost literally half her body weight, dropping from 338 to under 178 lbs, she cataloged her complex emotional reaction to her physical transformation in a series titled Half. Unlike most most weight loss media aimed at shaming women for our bodies, the artist avoids the display of any cheerful post-weight-loss confidence, forcing viewers to consider the murky and provocative intersections of body image and identity.