Jun
3
I made silkscreened patches of this today.
hey, fat chick!
On 'chick' and its gender implications
This is my fat blog: Corpulent
This is my facebook: www.facebook.com/corpulent.blog
This is my twitter: @awesomefrances
This is how you reach me: corpulent.blog@gmail.com
Posts tagged activism
May
20
Degrees of Fatness
I absolutely love you all and have no problem with you identifying as fat (as you are fat and it’s hella awesome) but please, for the love of all that is holy, stop acting as if your size 12/14/16 body has the same mental, physical, spatial, and societal issues as my size 32 does. You don’t understand. And it’s fine that you don’t understand! It doesn’t make you a bad person! As long as you treat me with respect and dignity and get that this world is fucked up in varying ways, I still think you’re awesome!
You not being able to understand or feel what it’s like to live in a 300/400/500 pound body doesn’t reflect on you as a person. But you not taking into consideration that someone in a 300/400/500 pound body has different issues and difficulties than you…well that kinda does make you a bad person. Because you’re not stepping outside of yourself long enough to examine how different degrees of otherness exist and work.
We’re all fighting our own battles. And while our battles are both on the field of Living as Fat…you have more ammunition than I do. In this society, in this world, you have advantages that I don’t. Your degree of fatness is more accepted by society than mine is. And, again, I stress that it doesn’t make you a bad person or a fatphobic person or a bad fatty. It just means you have privileges that I don’t.
You’re more likely to receive a job and make more money. You’re more likely to be treated well by doctors. You’re more likely to fit into desks and be able to squeeze through tight spaces. It’s easier for you to find clothes that you can fit into, like, and afford. You’re more likely to be able to adopt children and less likely to have your food choices watched and judged. You’re less likely to be insulted, mocked, harassed, or attacked. Hell, you’re even more likely to be taken seriously when you talk about fat/body acceptance!
I love you. And the privileges you have are based on nothing that you’ve done or gained intentionally. It’s just the way the cards were dealt. Again, your privilege doesn’t make you a bad person. But if you read these words and your response is to tell me how NONONOIHAVEITBADTOOLETMETELLYOUHOW… Well. Then you might consider rereading this and thinking about what you need to do differently in order to further the cause of acceptance and the ending of oppression.
Your privilege doesn’t make you a bad person. Refusing to acknowledge it does.
ETA: I’m sorry but I have to add this.
A 200 pound person is treated differently than a 500 pound person. It honestly never occurred to me that that would be argued. If a 300 pound weight difference didn’t impact how someone was treated? Fatphobia wouldn’t even exist, now would it?
The way society treats and judges and shits on 200 pound people is bullshit. If you’re towards the smaller side of fat, your struggles are real and they suck and they need to stop! And I will yell and scream for your right to own and control your body and to be treated with dignity and respect with my dying breath. But our struggles in this world are different. And acknowledging that doesn’t diminish your pain or your feelings. It just fucking validates mine.
May
13
My contribution to an identity-related project for the Diversity and Equity Center on my campus.
I’m FAT and that’s okay.
FAT is Fabulous
FAT, Femme, and Fabulous.
I also want to say that I was the only one who was cut off on the sides. I’m barely cut off, but no one was near being cut off like this. I’m pissed the camera was set up to fit people into a small space, one that my body can’t fit into.
May
10
Well…Lane Bryant lovingly featured me on their website (http://insidecurve.lanebryant.com/?p=3765) and the girls were ripping me a part yet again. Some of them called me a fat ghastly tree trunk with clown make-up, a whore/street walker, and one girl called me a fat 90’s Jem and the Holograms. I know she was trying to insult me, but I loved it! So my lovely friend Joy Nash made me this awesome graphic. Thanks for the moniker bitch.
May
9
There is a word in every fat fashion fan’s vocabulary that upon its utterance, whether by a TV style pundit, a designer or a well-meaning relative, never fails to strike a killing blow to any confidence we may have. The word is “flattering”.
Flattering. The word haunts us wherever we go. Shouting at us from our screens, omnipresent in the stares from 17 year old shop assistants, left in the comments of every article that dares to mention fatness and fashion in the same paragraph. This word, these three little syllables, have locked fat people - feminine fatties, dapper fatties, butch fatties - into a parallel universe of shame and despair, a world populated by an endless parade of diarrhoea brown calf length skirts, waterfall cardigans and hanky hems. To flatter is to hide, to minimise, to render obsolete. A way for fatties to move through the world, without actually being seen.
Flattering, a code word for elasticated necklines and empire waists. The idea that a belly and a bum means you’re not worthy of colour or fanciness. Of happiness.
I want you to join me, my friends. Join me in rejecting the idea of only wearing clothes that others deem flattering. let us adorn ourselves in sequins, in feathers, in tight Lycra. Let us frolic in skirts and jeans that trace the outline of our bellies without fear or shame. Let us wear our VBOs as a delicious fashion statement, instead of a curse.
Together we can walk the streets, take to the beaches a riot of colourful chubbiness. Together we will rise to the hates and shout…
FUCK FLATTERING
It is time for us to take back our agency, it’s time for us to reclaim this word which is still used against us. And once we have it, we will destroy it.
Society may want us to hide, but we will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! But we WILL pour our bums into a pair of American Apparel disco pants. We WILL wear ruffles, peplums and skinny jeans and fitted 3 piece suits. We WILL dress exactly how we want because we deserve to feel good about ourselves.
Celebrate your body. Wrap it in silks, paint it in millions of colours. Wear hot pants or even baggy t-shirts if that’s what makes you happy. But don’t ever feel you need to wear something “flattering”.
The next time you hear that word, those horrible three syllables, say it with me: fuck flattering! Fuck flattering! FUCK FLATTERING!
So, this was my Burger Queen final speech. I ended up deviating it and cutting it short, but this was my full written speech. Oh, and please feel free to listen to this song as that’s what was playing. haha.
QUEEEEEEN
May
8
“Never underestimate the huge middle finger you are giving to the world when you make peace with your body.”
frances for prez
(via mmmajestic)
Damn right. DOWN WITH THE MONARCHY!
(via mmmajestic)
May
3
THUNDERTHIGHS
Now that we’ve demonstrated that I am wildly liberal and politically angry, back to our regularly scheduled artwork. Thank you for bearing the brunt of my art block.
This is an amalgamation of two things: my need to see body diversity in art, and my recently discovered love for poster making. I never understood why ‘thunder thighs’ was an insult. It sounds powerful to me. Reminiscent of an almighty, unstoppable ruckus in the clouds, a veritable fucking rock show of giants, Bikini Kill on amps the size of mountains.
Thunder thighs, huh? I can dig it.
print available here: society6
Apr
30
We’re hosting a fundraiser for Va Va Boombah Fat Burlesque at Bar Nothing in North Carlton on Wednesday 9th May. $10 on the door, cheap drinks all night, amazing door prizes and performances from some of our amazing burly babes! Please spread the word. There’s a Facebook event you can RSVP to if that’s your bag:
(via fatuosity)
Make It Work: Call for Contributions
Hi all!
So now that Make It Work #1 (copies are still available) has been out for a while, I’m all full of ideas again and I think I’m ready to start compiling the second one. I’d like to aim to have #2 printed in time for my stall at the Fattylypmics in London (7th July!) so I am going to set an initial deadline for contributions by the end of May. As with last time, the deadline will probably slide at least several weeks, so if you don’t think you can meet that then please do email me to see if you can still submit.
Ideas for subjects:
- Self care.
- Body acceptance stories.- - DIY tutorials (resizing smaller items, designing patterns from scratch, adjusting clothes, costume making, accessories.)- Craft - radical crafts, projects, activism. Please try and make any tutorials sizeless.
- Art - good/bad/otherwise!
- Fat relationships, sex, dating, friendships.
- Mental health.
- Fatshion - blogging, shopping guides, recommendations, resources for queer and differently gendered people.
- Queer politics - how does being fat impact your choices? How do dominant aesthetics limit your choices, how do you resist them, and how does your sense of dress interact with these dominant aesthetics?
- Letters to high street retailers, methods of resistance against outsizing, commentary on the closing of physical fat sized stores.
- Critiques and criticisms of fatshion - how can we make it a more inclusive space? Who do you want to see blogging?
Make It Work is predominantly a fatshion/craft zine, but it’s political focus means there is tons more scope to include pieces outside of that specific area. For me ‘making it work’ is a central part of my engagement with my body both in my fashion choices and in my lifestyle choices - I consider it part of the survival tactics that help me cope in environments which are body oppressive. These are just starting points for brainstorming, and things I’d love to feature in the zine - if you want to feature anything else then feel free to suggest something.
Anything you send should be easily photocopiable. If you want to discuss ideas with me or submit a piece then contact me at fattyunbound[at]gmail[dot]com.
Apr
27
CALL FOR FATTIES IN BIKINIS SUBMISSIONS
I want to put together a gallery of fat people in bikinis for xojane to encourage body acceptance! please submit your photos to gabi@gabifresh.com with ‘fatkini’ in the subject line!!!! all races, ages, genders and plus size body shapes welcome/encouraged to submit.
GET ON BOARD, FATTIES!
I’ve submitted mine :D
Apr
8
Okay, I’ve had a massive come down from the Burger Queen final and also I’ve really struggled with seeing the photos taken by other people. My confidence, believe it or not, hangs by a thread and seeing how I really look kinda destroys me. But anyway, having calmed down these two pictures make me laugh so I’m posting them!
Basically there was a “talent” round. After a lot of panic and faffing, I wrote a speech about fatshion and “fuck flattering” and delivered it dramatically/comedically to the tune of the president’s speech in Independence Day (my fave film LOLOL). These photos are me having ripped off my mum’s old dowdy clothes to my sequinned Forever 21 dress, and screaming FUUUUUCCCK FLATTERRINNNNGGGG!!!
I was absolutely shitting myself, because I genuinely believed it wouldn’t get much of a response but everyone loved it and cheered, which was nice. I was going to post what I’d written but I ended up ad-libbing and finishing at a different point, so now I can’t even remember what I said. Apparently it was filmed, so if/when it goes up I shall show it to you all.
I’m glad I did it, although it seems a bit ironic how after doing something so ridiculous and positive I’ve ended up feeling awful about myself. I dunno. I’m a div.
Apr
7
Fuck chub rub.
Fuck wearing shorts under dresses.
Fuck worrying about whether someone can see that I’m wearing shorts under my dress.
Fuck bike shorts that are too short or too big.
Fuck trying to think about how to discreetly adjust ill fitting bike shorts while walking down the street.
Fuck failed DIY concoctions slathered between my legs.
Fuck buying expensive products just to see if they’ll work.
Fuck stained dresses with anti-chub rub goo applied too liberally.
Fuck not talking about chub rub because it’s shameful or impolite or inappropriate.
Fuck femininity that puts women’s bodies on display while erasing the actual experiences of those bodies.
SO RELEVANT TO MY LIFE. I’m looking forward to the cooler months because tights require so much less effort.
(via verybusyandimportant)
Mar
24
Cat Pausé, from Friend of Marilyn, talks about fat activism in New Zealand
(via sleepydumpling)
Mar
23
“
Intersectionality is not optional. It is not something you can take off and put back on again at will, when you feel like it. An intersectional lens should inform any critical evaluation of a subject, because these connections are key to understanding the web of oppression that weighs down on us all. These interconnections, too, are very weblike in their nature, because when you tweak one string, all the rest vibrate with it. There is no way to separate these things out from each other.
People complain that people keep dragging ‘side issues’ into ‘their movement’ and they don’t understand that these issues are the movement. Because a movement that commits oppression in the name of liberation is not a good movement, to put it bluntly. We are more vocal about these issues because we have learned the cost of shutting up, because we constantly have to remind people, because the minute we stop, everything returns to the way it was, the status quo is reestablished, and the real structural and institutional problems that create inequality go, once again, uninterrogated.
This is all connected. To misquote Patrick Henry for a moment, give me intersectionality, or give me death. This is not hyperbole: The current system, as it stands, is killing me. It is killing my people. It is killing the people I work in solidarity with. It is killing you. If you do not give me intersectionality, if you will not commit to being intersectional in your deeds, your thinking, your doing, all the time, no matter how you identify your politics, you are killing me.
” Intersectionality Is Not Optional by s.e. smith(via therotund)
Mar
20
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