The Nu Project is a series of honest nudes of women from all over the world. The project began in 2005 and has stayed true to the original vision: no professional models, minimal makeup and no glamour. The focus of the project has been and continues to be the subjects and their personalities, spaces, insecurities and quirks.
To date, over 150 women across North and South America have participated in the project. Without their courage, confidence and trust, none of this would have been possible. We are so thankful for their willingness to open their homes to us.
Fantastic and gorgeous galleries…every single one of these women are absolutely fabulous and beautiful!
The thing is, my children are perfect. I am the grown up, so I’m supposed to show them everything about life. When they wake up in the morning, though, I stare at them and they’re new. They teach me everything. They are babies and they teach me what it means to be a person. It’s easy to see that they’re beautiful.
I am slow and I am tired. I am round and sagging. I am harried. I am sexless. I am getting older.
I am beautiful. How can this be? How can any of this be true?
I don’t want my girls to be children who are perfect and then, when they start to feel like women, they remember how I thought of myself as ugly and so they will be ugly too. They will get older and their breasts will lose their shape and they will hate their bodies, because that’s what women do. That’s what mommy did. I want them to become women who remember me modeling impossible beauty. Modeling beauty in the face of a mean world, a scary world, a world where we don’t know what to make of ourselves
(via Diversity Is More Than a Bra Size: What It’s Like to Be a Woman of Color in the Lingerie Industry)
This stunning lady wrote this amazing article.
A bad day for body positivity…
I’m so sad about this.
Christina Hendricks Offended by “Full-Figure” Comment
You can read the above article for more details and to watch the clip, but the gist of the incident is that an interviewer asked Christina Hendricks about her “full-figured” body and how she has served as an inspiration to other women. Hendricks cut that portion of the interview, they started again, and the interviewer asked the same exact question. Hendricks once again protested, responding with “I think calling me full-figured is just rude.”
Now, please don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with the sentiment that society’s preoccupation with her body is absurd and appalling, and I cannot even begin to imagine how it feels to be in her shoes. She has every right to not want to be asked that question.
However, as a feminist and as a larger woman, I can’t even articulate how hurt I am by Hendricks’ comment. The reporter has minimal tact and seems kind of oblivious, yes. But to be offended by the word “full-figured,” to me, says “excuse me, how dare you associate me with one of those people. I am not fat, how dare you call me that to my face.”
With that simple expression, Hendricks is making it known that she sees being full-figured, fat, curvy, whatever you call it, as bad and wrong and shameful. She has automatically assigned a pejorative context to the word. She does not want to be associated with that group. It is as if the reporter had said “as a woman, you have inspired a lot of people” and Hendricks replied with “I think calling me a woman to my face is kind of rude.”
Our society has taught us to think this way, and I can appreciate that. But there are only so many hundred times a day that I can stomach hearing people of all types equating “fat” or “heavy” with “ugly,” “lazy,” “worthless.” The next time you say to yourself “does this make me look fat?”, I want you to imagine saying the same thing about other oppressed and shamed populations. “Gross, does this shirt make me look Latino?” “I was going to eat that bagel but I don’t want to be a Jew.”
(Also, please know that I am in no way trying to compare or equate fat shaming with racism and anti-semitism. I merely want to draw attention to the ways in which we instinctively use theoretically neutral descriptors to convey that something is bad, wrong, or unpleasant.)
I really respect and admire Christina Hendricks, but learning about this made me feel completely dejected and deflated. A woman I look up to as a strong symbol of body acceptance just said my body offends her, and that really, really stings.
#1 Junior Tennis Player in the World Benched for Being Too Fat:
16-year-old Taylor Townsend is currently the number one junior tennis player in the world, bringing hope to the increasingly troubled state of American tennis. Considered a prodigy, Townsend is one of 25 junior players currently being trained at the brand-new full-time academy in Boca Raton, FL, which is funded by the United States Tennis Association (USTA).
Logically, this would seem to make her a major asset for the sport. However, Townsend has been benched by the USTA until further notice. The reason? Evidently, Townsend is just too darn fat.
Thursday, she won two matches at the U.S. Open’s junior tournament, the last a dominating two-set victory over Mexico’s Marcela Zacarias in which she pumped her fist after winners and jogged to her chair for every changeover.But unbeknownst to everyone outside her inner circle, the USTA wasn’t happy to see Townsend in New York. Her coaches declined to pay her travel expenses to attend the Open and told her this summer that they wouldn’t finance any tournament appearances until she makes sufficient progress in one area: slimming down and getting into better shape.
ok so here’s a thing, fat friends
If you’re a smaller fat person and you embrace the word fat and use it descriptively and lovingly, that’s awesome. I just hope that you think about your big fat friends who can’t use weight limited gym equipment, are denied visas to countries, denied life saving operations, and can’t physically fit into this every day world leading them to live isolated and distressing existences.
I would hope that you’re totally cool with your privileges and that when it comes to taking up space in fat activism, there are marginalised experiences we need to talk about OTHER than how hard it is to find clothes (although that is important too!) and our fat friends on the super awesome deathfat end of the spectrum need a place to talk about the things that make it hard for them to live and thrive every day (including other intersecting oppressions!)
people don’t believe that i weigh over 400 pounds because “wait, can’t you like, not walk at 400 pounds? i saw a show about a man who was so fat he couldn’t wear clothes and had to live in a bed. it was horrifying!” and i have found that like, size 30, 400 pounds, suddenly that’s where “fat acceptance” stops for some people. lane bryant stores only carry up to size 28, so clearly that’s the end of the human size spectrum. suddenly, when you’re Really Big, you start hearing “well, i mean, if you’re like, really severely obese you should do something about it, that’s just not right” etc etc from people that start their sentences with “now, i’m all for fat acceptance but…”
i love that fat acceptance has resonated with smaller fats and inbetweenies and thin folks, but again, there is not a cut-off point for fat acceptance and activism. there shouldn’t be some magic size where you’re just too big to include or accept or listen to. the difference between a size 0, a size 6, a size 14, a size 22, and a size 30 or higher can be hard to fathom for people who just aren’t on the larger side of the spectrum. i see lists of all these ~amazing~ stores with plus size sections that all cut off at a size 24/26, and i’m left wondering what exactly i’m supposed to do with that. yay, you carry a wider range of sizes, boo, you still expect me to go naked or…not exist.
I WAS GOING TO BOLD MY FAVORITE PARTS OF THIS POST. BUT IT WAS ALL OF IT. IT WAS ALL OF THE POST.
“…I took a picture to show the difference between a men’s XL and a woman’s. Here lies a problem I see so frequently it’s upsetting. How are both of these shirts an XL? What message are clothing companies saying to our women? Sometimes it feels like they are saying, “It’s ok for men to be a certain size but, not you.” Women are often forced to be in a certain size bracket or it’s too bad so sad.”
- Sarah Robles, USA weightlifting OlympianI talk about this all the fucking time, how come the sizing between men and womens clothes is SO DIFFERENT? My boyfriend is a tall and chunky dude and generally wears an xl, and even though I’m built smaller than him I sometimes have to wear a womens 3xl. WHAT?
Food for thought, ya’ll.
