The site features 324 beautiful pictures of fat women’s bodies.

Because men aren't fat, they're portly. And they definitely don't pose for naked pictures.

The first thought that struck me was why only women's bodies? Then, why so glammed up? I'm strongly reminded of Leonard Nimoy's full body project by adipositivity, but at least in the main those were pictures of women, and not just of fat bodies/body parts. Here's a link: http://www.leonardnimoyphotography.com/7body.htm

The adipositivity website says that it's promoting acceptance of fatness, and that it's seeking to 'widen definitions of physical beauty. Literally' which it literally does by providing us with (what I would consider to be) fairly conventional portrayals of beauty, just of bigger women. Are they really widening definitions of physical beauty then? Is this an attempt to liberate women, or just another excercise in objectification, or something else entirely? All questions which occured to me, and which unfortunately I don't really have time to get into today. Will be very interested to read other people's responses though.

Does it make me a bad person to think that fat isn't beautiful? Having a much higher risk of heart disease isn't very attractive. I'm just not into the "celebrate obesity" thing, I guess.

The projects pales and fails in comparison to the Nimoy project ,for reasons already mentioned.

Is 'unconventional beauty' a contradiction in terms? All beauty is based on cultural norms and biological instincts, which feed into each other, and are both contingent. The value of such photo collections is, presumably, to make fat women feel better about themselves - there is plenty of media available for people who are attracted to it, not to mention plenty of fat people in real life.

At the end of the day, the dominance of reasonably thin people in the media - who are not actually unhealthily thin, for the most part - is because more people are attracted to them. No one is going to be fooled otherwise. So I can only imagine that the point of collections such as these is to make people feel that being extremely attractive to a lot of people shouldn't matter too much, and we should all be a bit more lighthearted about it. Which I am all for!

So, I think IF you feel bad (and presumably you won't feel bad if you have someone who loves you just the way you are) because you are 'conventionally unattractive' i.e. 'unattractive' the best thing to do is to try not to care what other people think so much, and the second best is to try and become more 'conventionally attractive' - in this case, lose some weight. Not to pretend that there is a 'true attractiveness' which has somehow eluded the blind and shallow majority, which somehow applies to almost everyone.

“The idea that fat = unhealthy is one of the biggest lies that the dieting and health food industry has perpetuated on people.”

I had a professor who smoked since she was fifteen and died at a very old age, so we could also argue that smoking is not bad for everyone.

But what do doctors know, right?

For whatever reason, I look at these photographs and I don't have a hard time imagining these women as accepting of themselves*. I don't identify with these women; they have already crossed the line in the sand that I worry about toeing every day, and in my eyes that makes them free. I'm comfortable appreciating their beauty because they are so far beyond my own concerns about fatness. It would challenge my narrow-minded view of fatness more if these photographs were of people closer to my weight range: the woman with the unsightly fatty pouch on an otherwise thin body, the stretch-marked belly that hangs over low-rise jeans, the thighs that squeeze too much against the pants. Those young women in the mall that men seem to be particularly disgusted by because they "should be" thinner, and they're ruining an "otherwise good body." I don't recall ever seeing that appreciated in photography, and I think that would speak to me more.

*I'm aware that my opinions on this matter are narrow-minded and ignorant, and even contradictory in terms of what I do know about the subject. I'm being brutally honest with myself so I can understand why I believe such stupid things.

But is this really a good way to challenge prejudices against overweight women? I'm not trying to be too confrontational, but there seems to be a theme both on this blog and in comments that the objectification of women is bad, so why is it suddenly celebrated when the women objectified are different than the women typically objectified?

I get that it challenges beauty norms to take risque pictures of women who aren't the conventional definition of beauty, but is more objectification really the answer? Just curious what people think about it...

Well, here you have a male series by photographer Sebastian Keitel, for those of you who asked.

http://www.sebastiankeitel.eu/index.php?/project/fat/

Cheers,

Ricardo g.

In addition to Woz's point, with which I agree, I very much doubt the efficacy of this project. There is no reason to think that a person inclined to find fat women unattractive will look at pictures of scantily clad fat women and suddenly find them attractive.

Also, the pictures tend to be of relatively attractive women. You could certainly find pictures of obese women who are much less attractive. It seems to me this undermines the project in a way.

It's possible the pictures could help some women to be more comfortable with their own bodies, which would be wonderful. On the other hand, in certain cases obesity has been shown to be a health concern and it would be wrong for people in such a situation to become complacent. I'm certainly not advocating they should be motivated out of shame.

I also agree with previous commenters who note the lack of concern for fat men. Overweight men also experience derision and shame, which I think is overlooked given the (not unjustified) concern for the objectification of women that has led to the focus on obesity among women.

Imagine these same photos and poses with thin women-- they're as OBJECTIFYING AS HELL. Why the double standard?

"On the other hand, in certain cases obesity has been shown to be a health concern and it would be wrong for people in such a situation to become complacent."

I don't understand what you mean by 'complacent' here. The vast majority of human beings *cannot* significantly and permanently decrease their body weights (for very sound reasons of metabolic adaptivity) even with extreme, continued, health-destroying restriction of food intake and/or increase of physical activity. Weight-loss attempts are, in fact, most likely to lead to a permanent increase in weight, as the body is easily trained through dieting to hold on to increased quantities of bodily fuel. If one is among the very small set of people for whom a higher body weight is a possible contributor to decreased health status, what do you expect said person to do about it? All weight-loss 'strategies' -- dieting, exercise, drugs, surgery -- are associated with higher rates of morbidity and often mortality.

The problem I have is that if this were a series of pictures of the very, very skinny, people would say it's disgusting. It's quite annoying, as someone who is technically underweight, constantly being told they look anorexic even though I eat well. If I were to say that these women looked like they had a mental disorder, binge eating disorder for example, I would get throttled. If we have to accept the very large, we should be equally accepting of the very skinny.

The fat acceptance movement seems to be taking off more in the US than in the UK (where I am), why do the commenters think this is so?

I have to admit that I tend to be fat-phobic, and I am trying to be more open-minded about the acceptability of being fat. Could anyone point me in the right direction for some websites/resources so that I can educate myself further about this issue?

There a re a lot of people that think because people of lower SES and people of color are more likely to be heavy, that fat discrimination is just a way for society to show their disdain for the same groups they always have. Since the liberals can no longer be racist and classist, they can still feel superior by showing their disgust for fat people.

Instead of trying to widen (no pun intended) the spectrum of body types that we are allowed to consider attractive, why not reject the whole concept that women must be beautiful? Instead of saying, "my body type is beautiful, too," why not assert the right to be ugly: "I'm not beautiful, nor do I want to be!"

I'd love to love this, but all the shots are straight-on and have no varied angles. (Generally, I can only 5-10 degrees difference in the ones that aren't 100% straight on, and I'm going to chalk those up to "tripod error.") Perhaps "looking straight at it" might be some sort of statement, but when repeated in every shot it makes really bland photos and a rather uninteresting set.

I must admit, I was really surprised that some of the usual SocImages buzzwords - pornification, objectification, sexualization - didn't make it into this post. Because it exemplifies all of them better than a lot of the posts in which those terms were used.

Others have already mentioned that the women in the photos are being objectified. Fair enough, but we can also call attention to HOW they're being objectified. In many cases, the women are presented merely as bodies, without heads. Their fatness is sexualized/pornified by being encased in clothing we typically associate with prostitution, thereby presenting the models as fetish objects and inviting a certain degree of ridicule for those who don't share this fetish.

Were these same images being used in a beer ad, or set up the same but with "conventional" models, I have no doubt that they would be flatly condemned on this site. And although I don't object to them myself, I don't really see how they're any different just because the subjects served up for my male gaze are fat.

As it stands, I think this is bad photography - poorly lit, awkwardly composed, deeply unflattering and exploitative presentations of models who may well be quite beautiful in their own way. I haven't felt any notions I might hold - consciously or not - about fat women. If anything, it's reminded me of nothing so much as Divine in old John Waters movies - probably not an icon most of the full-figured women here would like to be associated with.

On a side note, proudly fat women - I happily support the equal recognition of your civil rights and your entitlement to dignity and respect, and whether I find you physically attractive has no bearing on this one way or other. And I agree that the link between obesity and all-around health is very often misleading, although even if that weren't true it is no excuse to deny your human rights.

However, it would be ridiculous to deny that many non-congenital factors that cause or exacerbate obesity also happen to cause very poor health and morbidity. And to the extent that obesity restricts your ability to exercise, it can have an autocatalytic effect when combined with other factors. This does not give me the insight to diagnose your physical state with one glance at your curves, nor health providers the right to deny you coverage or services. But it does make it pretty hard to stomach people shouting down anyone who even suggests that obesity is linked to serious health problems, purely to advance an agenda of self-esteem.

Since I set my earlier post above to receive email updates when people post to this entry, my automatically-generated Yahoo-mail ads have started to include weight-loss advertisements. Hmm.

Andrew is the closest to saying this. The purpose of these pictures is to say "I'm fuckable too!" Which means these womyn are useful OBJECTS in the patriarchal structure.

It does not advance them towards person-hood. Instead of being a useless object (because people "know" that fat womyn are not fuckable and sex is the only use for womyn), they now are useful objects who can perform their role as part of the sex class.

Person-hood is never defined as how sexy you are. That is not to say that I don't ever fall into that trap. I often have the urge to prove I'm sexy when trolls tell me I'm probably ugly and never able to get laid. My gut immediately says "but I have gotten laid, and I'm damn good in bed!" But that isn't the issue.

I find this path toward fat acceptance to be understandable. But it is ultimately within the confines of an oppressive structure, and makes no real change to that structure.

Why must objectification be the antidote to being disappeared by the dominant culture? Why do so many of these women have to be nude or in obvious fetish gear to be "adipositive?"

Effing patriarchy.

I do agree, women's bodies are policed relentlessly, and being "too skinny" is sometimes punished. But skinny women, many of your contributions to this discussion have reminded me of "but what about the men?!??!?!?" trolling in feminist discussions. This bugs me.

Shapely Prose often talks about the media portraying, "headless fatties" as an illustration of the "obesity epidemic". Photos of fat people from the neck down, thus dehumanising them. And here we are on Adipositivity, with photos of fat people without heads. Where the hell are their faces in this website?

I'm sure this has been said already but I don't have time to read the 109 comments before mine. If fat is accepted why don't they show them NOT in a sexy light? Why can't they appear in ads, commercials, everything else like the average human beings they are? Why make a fetish out of it? Why not use men?

Many comments on this post are sadly predictable. "Fat is ugly because it's unhealthy!" So, what, you go around with a blood pressure cuff and glucose meter and check out the vitals of all the people you meet to assess whether they're healthy and so judge your willingness to find them attractive? Do you ask for lab test results on a first date? So you see fat people everwhere greedily stuffing their faces with junk food? Confirmation bias is well-known, and anecdotes aren't data.

You simply cannot tell someone's health by their appearance. You just can't. And this attitude that you can has actually been shown to affect the way that medical researchers and doctors treat fat people. Fat people tend to go to the doctor less because they often get a patronising lecture on weight loss instead of treatment for their actual problem, so why bother? Surveys repeatedly show that large percentages of doctors and nurses are "repulsed" by their fat patients. How can someone get good medical care from someone who feels disgusted by their appearance? Fat people are Othered as "the obese".

Studies on hypertension diagnostic methods show that up to 35% of hypertension in fat people is because the Dr or nurse doesn't use the correct size cuff and/or takes the measurement incorrectly! Other studies show that fat women receive fewer checkups for breast and gynecological cancers because of the previously mentioned problems with doctor visits. And when fat people do get cancer, they often don't get enough chemotherapy drugs because doctors dose on "ideal" weight instead of calculating actual lean weight. The American Diabetes Association recently issued a statement correcting the myth that all fat people will eventually get type 2 diabetes; the vast majority do not, as it is a highly genetic disease, and around 25-35% of people with t2D are not fat (it depends on the demographic) -- yet many doctors only bother following up symptoms or testing for diabetes in fat people. Thus fat bias also harms those who are not fat, as also pointed out by commenters above who can't get medical help for their fatigue because they are slim.

Studies on discrimination and stigma also show that the stress of being thought of by society as ugly, unworthy, lazy, and so on significantly contributes to heart disease and other physical manifestations of constant stress. Constant weight loss attempts and the inevitable regain for most also contributes significantly to decreased physical health.

So it's actually quite hard to prove that large amounts of adipose tissue, in and of itself, directly causes ill-health. There are multiple contributing factors, and most of those are quite hard to control for in studies. Just try to get an adequate number of fat people for your study who have never dieted and who have not experienced maltreatment due to their size. Every medical study on obesity has these confounders, and yet it is almost never mentioned in studies except for those which examine anti-fat bias. The Health at Every Size studies are particularly interesting because they show that health improves for fat people regardless of weight lost if self-esteem is increased through non-dieting healthy behaviour and support.

The value of peer-reviewed medical journals, which publish these studies, is also coming under question. The influence of pharmaceutical companies and interest groups is quite alarming, not to mention good old personal confirmation bias from researchers and the peer reviewers. This affects everyone, not just fat people.

"After 30 years of practicing peer review and 15 years of studying it experimentally, I’m unconvinced of its value." - Dr Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal - http://jopm.org/index.php/jpm/article/view/12/25

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine." - Marcia Angell

(And I do realize the irony of quoting studies in my comment to make a point and yet questioning the whole system of peer-reviewed studies.)

I think that the title of this article should have been 'The Role of Objectification in Fat Acceptance.' To me, all this says is 'Look! We can be sex objects too!' That's not progress.

My response to Adipositivity is colored by (a) gathering that the photographer is a fat woman, and (b) being a queer woman who tends to find fat people attractive.

So I think many of the photos are hella hot, and I'm glad they exist for that reason alone.

If you read the photographer's mission statement you will learn that the "faceless" aspect is deliberate:

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.

I think the faceless aspect is interesting in terms of the more common "headless fatty" phenomenon. The "headless fatty" always appears in articles that are critical of fat, and one is invited to find the image ugly or to judge the image negatively. Here one is invited to find the image beautiful or to judge it positively. In either case one might or might not take up the invitation (I find the "headless fatty" images attractive, which creates cognitive dissonance, and I find the adipositivity images attractive, so in this one space I feel my attractions are "normal," and since I'm not used to that, it also creates cognitive dissonance, but of a different kind.

The photos invite an erotic response, but as faceless photos that means they're somewhat objectifying. Also, these body shapes are usually not objectified as beauty/erotic objects in modern society (they are if you look at enough old paintings, though), which makes them different from conventional objectification of women's bodies. If you judge the art or beauty standards of oppressed groups the exact same way you judge mainstream art or beauty standards, you are missing something. (That doesn't make the photos "right" or the people who think they are too objectifying "wrong." It's just that I think it's best to keep the nuances in mind.)

Now, speaking as a non-femme fat woman rather than as someone who thinks fat people are attractive -- it does bother me that so many of the sexual/erotic images of fat women, including Substantia Jones's, use conventionally feminine erotic props such as high heels, frilly lingerie, corsets, and so on. I'm fine with people who want to use those props, but sometimes I start to feel like it's a requirement to be seen as a sexual being, especially if one is a fat woman.

Maybe it's just me, but none of this feels liberating.

The real issue is that women's worth is ALWAYS judged on how they look; whether the standards of what is "beautiful" change or not is immaterial.

As previous posters have pointed out, the imagery represents a really quite conventional idea of "beauty" and "sexuality".... just upsized.

For me beauty is not about props or lenses or judgement but is really about inner qualities, substance and meaning. I would have liked to see imagery that shows these women in an active pursuit of what makes real beauty; the beauty of doing and being.

The headless/faceless fat-body reinforces the fetish aspect to the representation of a woman's body, particularly a fat woman's body. Personally I find it quite degrading to be judged beautiful or not because of a body type (mine is a fat one) and prefer attentions that are based on my mind and personality.

Fat acceptance as a movement has its positives and negatives which we could debate endlessly, but for me the real issue is self-acceptance; do women (and men for that matter) accept themselves? And how do we represent THAT?

Re people talking about obesity and being "naturally thin"- some people can also be naturally fat.

What about those of us who are neither slim, nor 'morbidly obese'?
Those of us who are only a few kilos overweight, but therefore don't look like the pictures in the magazines.
Or those of us whose proportions are different to the 'norm' - wider hips or bigger breasts. I sew my own clothes so that I can remind myself that I'm not a freak just because I don't fit the clothes at the shops.
Or those of us whose bellies are still large as a legacy of childbirth. Or indeed, whose breasts are saggy as a legacy of breastfeeding.
I appreciate that part of the aim is to help the general population to accept people of all sizes, it irks me at times that in campaigns about fat people being beautiful so often you have to be a certain size before you are allowed to have body image issues that need to be rectified.
Apparently, obese people need help to love their bodies, but people who are only a bit larger than the models in the magazines don't have a problem.

just another thought (as I, a fat person return from a 10km walk with my dog!) who on earth decided that beauty, acceptance, sexuality, eroticism etc has ANYTHING to do with your health.

Where does it stop when beauty = health, are people with a disability un-beautiful because they do not conform to a perfect and arbitrarily defined "health"? How about people with a terminal illness? Beautiful? Ugly? People living with asthma? a sore finger? an undiagnosed skin cancer? a misplaced toenail?

It is so ridiculous that worth and beauty is socially calibrated by the commercial interests of companies that wish to sell us big piles of insecurity wrapped up in pills and potions... and the worst thing is that our health gets touted as a justification for making us spend and consume more, further jeopardising our health with our collective stresses! (Did you know that stress is s pretty good predictor of later heart problems and diabetes and all of the other FAT diseases you so called normal people blame us for having!)

My issue with the whole health thing is that it gets used as a means to discriminate against all sorts of people.

BTW a correlation does not causation make.... the latest work on diabetes shows that the insulin resistance associated with diabetes, which is largely a GENETIC predisposition is the CAUSE of weight gain in diabetics, which THEN increases blood sugar and not the other way around!

Stick that in your judgemental pipe and smoke it normal people. Guess you don't smoke either huh?

I am sick of all sorts of other successes in people's lives being negated by the fact that they don't look like or behave like a select few people. Get over yourselves, you are not the majority anymore!

Judge beauty by action not passive "acceptance". And if you don't accept me, I don't really care!

I had the good fortune to live for 6 months in iceland, where swimming is the national sport (hot spring pools open all year) and everyone starts swimming as a school sport. No "dressing rooms" as Americans think of them, just a big open room with lockers and naked women. What a treat to see the variety and richness of the female form. We are gorgeous! And there were no comments on one another's bodies. An enlightening, eye-opening experience that changed forever how I feel about my body. When it functions well, it's a delight, when it doesn't I need to take care of it. It's where I live.

It is so unfortunate that we have such a narrow view of what people should look like and what it means to be healthy.

Pictures of fat and fit:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/215135

It is interesting that most of the 'fat defence' people here are invoking lack of fault to prove their case - interesting because US culture places such a high premium on self control and individual achievement, and in fact I read an ethnography or two describing in detail the specifically north american association of fatness with weak will. These fat defenders have injested that entire narrative in their attempts to defend it - 'not a result of choice, but of glands etc etc', as if this is the only possible defence.

Is it not defensible, therefore, to choose to be enourmous?

The arbitrarily defined health vs non-health binary (whichever form it might take) is one of those super-pervasive social constructions that keeps excluding one group after another.

It makes me angry because it never stops... Now it is fat=sick, not that long ago it was gay=sick, before that (and still in some parts) black=sick and of course disabled has always equalled sick. Health is held up to be more valuable than action/thoughts/contributions.

In Australia especially our sportsmen and women are accorded huge celebrity status, while our minds and artists are left behind. This is reflected in media, in government policy and even in the way we treat each other.

While this post is about how body imagery is meant to empower what it has really brought forth is how far we need to go... in both our relationships with ourselves and with others.

When I hear people bang on about how fat people are unattractive because they are soooo unhealthy, I try to remind myself (being fat and all) that I look after myself despite the outside appearances. I also try to remind myself that the years of depression and sadness I have experienced due to buying into these negative social constructions was a complete waste of my time and how much better off I am now that I'm concentrating on being clever and funny and successful in my career instead of obsessing over how other people see me...

If exercise and vegetables result in weight loss, so be it. If they don't well they don't.... In the end some people can't see past appearances. Boo hoo, they lose out on meeting many many fantastic people who don't conform to the current image of "health".

And a quick word to all the non-fat-loving "health" advocates....It must be pretty boring to live in a world where everyone is like you, good luck with that.

I don't see the point in this campaign at all- with some exceptions fat equals ugly to me (exception: Some plus-size models; and I mean really plus-size not the weird fake "plus-size" which outside of the model industry is simply 'normal'). You can find that offensive. So now I have some fat women who I don't even deem pretty facially in non-clothes that are taken from the hooker/tranny/trashy end of fashion... And this is supposed to make me respect fat people how? To they want the same type of respect that prostitutes and transvestites are (unfortunately) generally given in our society? What? Is this a campaign addressed only to the already converted? This makes no sense as a campaign trying to get more positive responses to obese people.

Having read all the above comments, it seems to me there are still several things to be said.

The first notable absence concerns BMI. "Obese", "normal", "overweight" and "underweight" are all terms which stem directly from BMI. But BMI is a grossly simplistic model, which can only distinguish height, weight and gender. It can't tell your proportion of body fat, your muscle mass, your build or even race. Yes, it's a better indicator than weight alone, but it's still a very broad brush. As has been said already, just assuming that heavy-for-one's-height means unhealthy is foolish.

I'll need to give a bit of back story to illustrate my second point. As a teenager, I was very fit - a gymnast and very strong and supple. I built up a fair amount of muscle mass, and had hardly any body fat. I was about 2 dress sizes larger than models are now (British size 12), which is pretty healthy, but I was borderline overweight on the BMI scale. Skip forward about 4 years, I move to a foreign country, eat more, exercise less, and gain 2 stone (um, 28lbs, I think). Then I come home and, because I'm getting married, I consciously change my lifestyle and lose the weight again - and I keep the weight off for four years. As I'm still slightly overweight by BMI, I tried a 6-month exercise routine to lose more weight. I got fitter, but my weight didn't change.

Granted, this is anecdotal, but my intention is to make a point missing in the above debate about "naturally skinny" vs "naturally fat": most bodies probably have some sort of design weight, partially genetic, with other factors contributing (as in my case extreme exercising in adolescence). There are evolutionary benefits to having a species in which individual members hold different fat proportions, allowing the species as a whole to survive times of famine as well as times of plenty. It is obviously possible for overeating and lack of exercise to pull you away from that, as in my stint abroad, in which case dieting and exercise, maintained over time, would become an effective treatment.

I present the further hypothesis that if you're predisposed not to store fat (that is, naturally slim) then regardless of what you eat your body won't store the fat, it'll just pass through.

Personally, I wonder if the contradictory evidence found in the studies is partially due to the gross over-generalisation of BMI. However I haven't read them so can't comment further. Oh, according to BMI, my ideal weight is 10 stone (140lbs if there's 14lbs to a stone. I struggle to remember the conversion!). I probably hit that before puberty, but even at my skinniest I've never been near it since. Frankly I wouldn't consider it healthy if I dis...

It seems a lot of comments are taking the current public health campaign against obesity personally, when epidemics aren't a personal issue. Sure, everyone's body is different, we've seen many anecdotes here about obese people who are still healthy and who are pissed at their doctor for still labeling them obese. But that isn't the case for most Americans; the truth is our average weight is rising and with it rates of Diabetes and Heart Disease. It's not really debatable.

But it is true that obese people often get blamed for their obesity as a life choice, as a result of poor decisions and I don't believe that is the right approach. There are environmental factors beyond our control: we are being sold food that is not really food, was are required to drive everywhere, children don't get as much play time in schools. All of these are societal problems that are leading to a less healthy population.

Public health doesn't really care that much about how you feel about their campaigns as an individual. We have a right not to be lied to, and if that affects our self-confidence well, that's what this website is for. I certainly don't believe in fat-shaming or that obese people should be made to feel ugly or unworthy. But I also don't believe doctors should pretend their patients don't need to lose weight when they are at risk for, if not a shorter life span, a lower quality of life.

As other countries are becoming more affluent, like China, obesity rates soar. This is about the American lifestyle being an unhealthy one, and it is now being exported around the world. Obesity certainly has a genetic component, but having the potential to be obese doesn't mean anything in an environment with a healthier lifestyle.

How can that message be told without making obese people feel bad about themselves?

I love big ladies. I'm a big lady myself. If I meet my cousins and if I see my daughter walking around (who, genetically is also a big girl) I love love love hugging them. And people love love love hugging me. Sure I get negative unwarranted comments all the time, people I do not know would automatically say things to me that I'm huge! (I'm five feet with 78kg) There are also other women who are as fat as me who think by putting me down would make themselves feel better about themselves. Although I love the recent ideas of big women in beautiful pictures and yes, there are no fat-positiveness for men. I'm not sure if this is a patriarchal thing but I had a guy friend who was quite obese but he gets even more negative comments that I think to some extent does hurt his feelings quite a bit.

Interesting how you've taken the effort to restate things that have all been explained to be untrue, often with citations, in the rest of the comment thread; in fact, a number of the people commenting here research fatness professionally. Does falsely labeling fat people lazy make you feel better about the fact that you're obviously too lazy to research the subject and think critically about it? It's a pretty obvious act of psychic disavowal and projection when someone keeps claiming that others are "bad, greedy, and lazy."

I posed for The Adipositivity Project last summer and wrote about it on my blog, which also includes my thoughts on headless fatties.

http://obesitytimebomb.blogspot.com/2009/08/thats-me-in-adipositivity-picture.html

Hmm. I can say I find overweight people attractive for sure, but I can also say that a) "overweight" as defined by BMI is ridiculous and b) there's a limit. I don't find multiple rolls of fat on a stomach attractive, for example, and I do think that there's evidence to support that it's unhealthy.

I'm "overweight," btw, but I don't self-identify as "fat." I wonder how many of the people here who self-identify as "fat" are actually fat by, say, a more global (sane) standard?

My god there are a lot of comments on this!

I don't have the attention span to read all these comments right now, but I just wanted to chime in to say that I really like chunky dudes.

Hi

I agree with the people who posted support for the issues of Fat Men. I think historically that most Fat Acceptance researchers/Writers did not find many Fat Male issues simply because they were never looking for Fat Male issues in the first place.

Here is a interesting paper on the subject

http://bod.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/1/107

Feminism and the Invisible Fat Man by Kirsten Bell & Darlene McNaughton

William

Ugh, I'm not going to the site for more. Its soft-porn. Cheese cake for those who are into that stuff. I love how... a photograph of a thin woman is "offensive" but anything of a fat woman is labeled "beautiful" right? For some people... I just notice more hatred to thin women and more acceptance towards fat women.

I haven't read through all the dense comments here, but what strikes me is that attractiveness aside, being heavy is undeniably being unhealthy. At least that's what my doctor told me. I lost 50 pounds not because I wanted to "look hot", although getting more positive response to me "looks" has been a side effect, I just didn't want to get my feet cut off due to type 2 diabetes, which my Doctor assured me was a path I was heading down.

The fetishization of women (or men) who are heavy makes me a little uncomfortable because I feel that it isn't really that healthy a choice and I'd hope that they'd want to lose a little weight for their own health.

Don't know if I'm buying into some sort of sociological conditioning of medical doctors or something, but that's what occurred to me when looking at these pictures.

Let's be real here - while fat men do receive some criticism for size, it is not nearly to the extent that fat women are looked down upon. Many fat/big and tall men are upheld in society and seen as strong, brave, fearless protectors. To touch on what someone else above wrote, even on television, it is portrayed that a fat man can date and marry a thin woman (King of Queens, All About Jim, etc.,) but if a fat woman is seen trying to get with a slender/average build man, she may be shown to be desperate or the man may reject her (The Parkers) or the guy has to be because of a fetish. The only series I have not seen this displayed was Roseanne - both she and Dan were fat and happy in the beginning (which I believe was the appeal of the show), until Roseanne decided she needed to lose weight and get plastic surgery, while Dan stayed fat.

Diet ads are about 99% targeted to women, and only recently, was there a slight upswing in ads targeted toward men. Most fat women in this and other societies are seen as unattractive, unfit, and all the other "uns," and Adipositivity is SO.MUCH.NEEDED. I, as a fat woman, need to see photographs of other fat women in a positive setting. Thanks, Substantia Jones!

No offense, but Ryan, you're just another infection deepening making worse the wound (of people) against fat acceptance. You talk a great deal about how losing weight is "SOOOOOOOOOOOO AWEEEEESUMMMMM" and how "I LOST 50 POUNDS - YOU CAN DO IT, TOO!" but don't seem to really grasp that not everybody wants to be like you. There are plenty of other sites with plenty of other discussions that will cheerlead you on - OBVIOUSLY, this is not one of them. Push.on.out!

I find them to leave a lot to be desired. Yes! Let's be positive about our bodies, but not anyone that's smaller than a 14/16!

Because they're not "real" bodies, right?

Thank you William!

I don't care what size someone is, when I was a size 20, I was proud of my body for what it could accomplish. Worrying about my health pushed me to change my eating and exercise habits and now my body is an 8/10. Does that mean I should feel any less accepting of people smaller or larger than me? NO. I think EVERY SIZE should be accepted.

There is too much of a "Thin is Great" and "Fat is Great" when it should just be "Bodies are Great!"

More than everything else thanks to Substantia Jones! Her work allows us not to feel ugly for once and stimulates each one of us to enjoy life and ourselves.

I feel sorry, instead, for those who can not understand what it means, today, at every latitude, to be obese and how much of a burden their hatred puts on us. Fortunately I read here many more with great ideas and values!

Thanks again for posting.

Paolo
(Italy)

Hey, I just found an interesting article which seems to address the "Why do they always have to be naked?" question. A "plus-size" model recreates a fashion spread (in which no one got naked) and pretty much proves the clothes and the model look just as good in the "plus-size" version.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1237677/Plus-size-Crystal-Renn-takes-traditional-model-prove-fashion-flatter-figure.html

The comments here are amazing. I never realized there were so many different views on "Fat Acceptance". Thank you all for enlightening me.

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