A collage of three images: Zoe being fabulous with a pink floral headpiece and wearing a vain necklace while holding a mirror; a graphic that says "Vain. Because I'm amazing."; and the Vain necklace lying over a collection of lipsticks.
I’ve been busy busy lately working on new products for Fancy Lady Industries, including the new and fabulous Vain necklace! After feeling some feelings and thinking some thoughts on ugliness and vanity, I started doodling and developed the Vain lettering. It simply begged to be made into a necklace, and voila!
Buy a Vain necklace now!
Four postcards stuck on a wall, each with one of my ugly femme illustrations.
Also! I am proud to have postcards with my illustrations available to buy in packs of four. You can send these to people or just keep them for yourself and put them in small frames. Instant affordable art for your walls!
Buy an ugly femme pride postcard set now!
I’ve also restocked black and silver mirror fat necklaces for those of you who missed out recently, get in quick! If you’re not into necklaces and want something a little more dapper I’ve got hand made bow ties for you too. Don’t forget about No Diet Talk brooches and custom digital illustrations either. I’m slowly expanding my Fancy empire!
It’s been a bit of a bumpy start to the year so I’ve been trying to take care of myself as best I can, but the upshot has been having more time to create. Actually my frenzied swings between furious output and overwhelming fatigue and depression have caused concern for my psychiatrist, no kidding, which means I might have my diagnosis changed. Which is another bump on the dodgy bitumen of 2012.
Without delving too deeply into all that super raw stuff, here are some drawings I’ve produced. The first two are commissioned digital illustrations of Lillian and Jaimielee (the Fancy Bonanza winner); the rest are further explorations of ugly/ vain/ amazing/ perfectly cromulent embodiment.
Illustration of Lillian, who is fat and pale skinned, wearing a sheer black blouse with a red polka dot pencil skirt and red shoes. She stands on a checkerboard walkway in space!
Illustration of Jaimielee, a fat babe of colour with orange hair, helping her fluffy white dog Muscles stand up in the middle of a suburban street. Jaimielee wears a blue chevron striped top with a grey cardigan and blue jeans; Muscles wears a cute grumpy puppy face.
Illustration of myself (with longer blue hair) wearing a disdainful look upon my face and a singlet that says "Don't invalidate my ugly."
Illustration of a fat babe with brown skin and candy pink hair standing astride a yellow bike with a basket full of flowers, books, food and a white puppy.
Illustration of a babe with white skin, zits and huge honey coloured hair looking in a hand mirror. A speech bubble above says, “Look at yourself!” and text on the mirror says, “Stop looking at yourself.”
Erin and I posing with smiles and hands under our chins, maximising our cuteness.
Last week we were in Brisbane and Erin was on the Sunshine Coast visiting her family so we took advantage of this and drove up to have lunch with her. We’ve known Erin through Twitter for a year or so and normally she lives far away in the magical land of Melbourne town, but fortunately like most Melbournians she is a Queensland export and thus we got to take our e-franship IRL.
Basically Erin is awesome and cute and we had lunch and cake and iced coffee whilst enjoying Mooloolaba’s humidity and maximal tourist infestation. We then walked down to the rocks for dramatic photos because neither Nick or I thought to bring togs.
Erin and I sitting on a large rock formation at the beach looking babely.
Erin and I kicking water at the camera.
An outfit photo of me pulling an entirely facetious pouting face while wearing a black maxidress with a purple, green and pink floral pattern, a black shrug and broad brimmed hat.
An outfit photo of Erin with her arms flug out, looking serene, and she wears a black strappy dress with an orange and pink striped border hem.
Nick and I standing on a rock together with the sea and blue sky behind us.
Erin and I standing in the rock pools, I'm kicking water and Erin has her arms outstretched.
These photos make me happy, especially because I wasn’t feeling very great on the day, but horah for meeting terrific people! It would be so awesome to have a lovely beach party with all my e-frans.
Purple, pink, blue baubles on the tree (including tiny mirrored disco balls!)
I know everyone’s already posted their holiday photos but we were staying at Mum and Dad’s and I only just mustered the energy to pull all the photos off my camera. We had a quiet Christmas, a claim Nick would object to coming from a small family, and spent the day with my immediate family, our cousins, and some family friends. It was really hot and I wasn’t feeling fabulous. Yes, it’s me your resident Scrooge!
Enjoy my Giftmas spam, or How To Celebrate Christmas When You’re Atheist And Vegetarian. I’ve put the photos behind a link because there are a lot! Continue reading »
A collage of 12 drawings I did this year.
Last year sucked for a lot of reasons.
Anxiety and depression threatened to take everything I knew away from me. I was admitted to a psych ward. Diagnosed with Graves Disease and PTSD. Lost friends. Moved cities. Lost autonomy. Spent a lot of money trying to get better. Had to give up my art practice for long stretches of time. Endured physical and mental pain.
A collage of an outfit from every month in 2011.
I did figure out a few things though.
Friends who piss off at the first instance of anything that looks like it’s going to be something other than a fun time are not friends. People who criticise me without actually giving a shit about me are just trolls. My mental health is infinitely more important than basically everything else. People who think me selfish for looking after myself, my mind, my body and my life as a priority can disappear. Releasing secrets is sometimes the best thing. I am valid. It wasn’t my fault.
A collage of 16 Instagram photos of various things from this year.
I don’t know what this next selection of 12 months will hold, and I dare not try to predict the future or set ridiculously high expectations of myself. I will do what is best for me and my kin. I will keep breathing. It might be awkward and uncomfortable but I hope there’ll be some peace and laughter too.
My ugly exploration seems to be dividing people fairly sharply down the centre; some find they can not get across reclamation because of their relationship with the word, or how it seems to reinforce beauty ideals/ a binary between ugliness and beauty, while others find it resonates strongly with their experiences. I am listening to a lot of feedback on the topic and it’s been terribly complex to navigate through it all, because I am not objective and am swayed by my own experience and embodiment.
One thing is patently clear: I can never seek to speak on behalf of any other person when it comes down to identity. I can reflect on what it’s like to be fat, disabled, acned, cisgendered and white and how my body has been viewed as ugly. I can not ever know what it is like to be a person of colour or trans, and I can not ever understand how the word “ugly” can hurt someone who isn’t me.
I am now very concerned about my use of people of colour in this series of drawings because it’s pretty messed up of me, a white person, to reinforce that dominant and damaging idea that people of colour are ugly because they aren’t white. Unless I am drawing a person of colour who identifies as ugly, I will not put that identity on them in the future. It’s not down to me to reclaim anything on behalf of any marginalised person who isn’t me, and I apologise for not checking my white privilege.
My thoughts on the ugly concept are still muddled and having the opportunity to read and listen to discussion prompted by my drawings is of such great value, whether people are vehemently opposed to OR empowered by the concept of ugly reclamation. I know that when I reclaim ugly for me, I don’t want to stop using the word “beautiful” and other synonyms for beauty, like lovely and gorgeous and hot and cute. It’s not a case of one or the other, it’s knowing I can be ugly cute and rock the shit out of it. I want to cease fretting about being acceptably palatable to the world and be more concerned with maximising my already present awesomeness.
Here are some links to good stuff on the issue of ugly:
You sho is ugly on Nudemuse
Conversation on tumblr, which thanks to tumblr’s functionality must be explored through the notes because there is a LOT of commentary that has been added.
Moving Toward The Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability on Leaving Evidence (h/t to Tiara for reminding me of this amazing keynote speech)
Finally I’ll just add this video clip for Ugly by 2NE1. Zoe showed it to me the other night and I wanted to make sure I included it in my information gathering so I would be reminded to look for commentary on the song, video, and band.
At the risk of more people misunderstanding this UGLY PRIDE concept, I present two more illustrations. I’m still working on a “manifugsto” of UGLY, so please bare with me as I wrestle with this through illustration. It should be emphasised that this is a reclamation of UGLY and not self pity or fishing for compliments. Pls and thankyouverymuch. :)
Illustration of a fat babe in undies with rollers in their hair and a cigarette hanging out of their mouth which is streaming smoke that says “Ugly + don’t care”.
Illustration of a beehived babe letting out a burp with the text “Belching bitch” written in a burp cloud.
Available on t shirts, stickers, mugs, posters, bags, etc on Red Bubble and Cafe Press. (Cafe Press has plus sized t shirts!)
Nick and I posing with Miffy, who looks incredibly displeased, with hand lettering saying "Happy Holidays! ♥ The Perkinseses" while Miffy is thinking "Ugh! Humans!"
But we hope you have the opportunity to enjoy yours, and if you aren’t able to have a holiday I hope you can glean a few moments to look after yourself.
This year has been really tough for me. I’m not the kind of person to tell a whole year to sod off because on reflection there have been some really nice moments that I would like to remember, but all the bad stuff I most definitely would like to banish to obscurity.
I’ve learnt a lot this year about myself, community, family and friends. I’ve been diagnosed with brand new disabilities and started to identify as disabled. I’ve taken time off to heal. I adopted a funny little dog. I moved to a new city. I became more me.
Me taking a photo of my reflection in a mirror.
There are so many things I want to write about that I didn’t get the chance to properly think through, my last post in particular comes to mind, and I want to continue to work this stuff out. Lots of people think I’m rather weird for this over-sharing tendency but honestly, it helps me a great deal to know I have a community of people to bounce ideas around with. Thank you for that!
Next year I want to do awesome things. While I’m not so naive as to think nothing bad will happen, I’m going to treat myself better when and if they do happen. That’s my resolution.
Like many people, I’ve spent a long time fretting over being ugly. Beauty, or being pale and smooth skinned, able bodied, straight haired, thin, with symmetrical features amongst many others of varying arbitrariness, seems to be rewarded with good times, pay rises, attention, excused speeding tickets, prolific representation in the mass media, romantic partners and popularity. So every time I’ve been rejected or passed over I’ve simply put it down to being ugly. I used to get incredibly upset when I perceived my blemished skin and fat belly to be holding me back from success, popularity, romance and otherwise.
As I got more into fat activism I started to realise that the problem wasn’t me, it was this construct of beauty, and while it was nice to know it might not all be my fault… it still didn’t feel good to embody ugliness and to be treated poorly because of that. Not everyone has thought me ugly, but those that haven’t (and do not) surprise me!
As a blogger posting photos of their outfits it feels like ugliness still holds me back – because when I look at the most popular bloggers, they all embody and uphold traditional beauty standards and practices. I do not. The other day I was thinking about this, and trying not to blame myself for not being a beautiful and successful blogger, and I realised that maybe embracing ugliness was an answer. I will never have smooth skin. I doubt I’ll ever shave regularly again. I have visible tattoos, piercings, stretch marks, and scars. I am fat. I am not particularly graceful. I laugh loudly. I don’t cross my legs. Yet I still identify as femme, because it’s important to me to embrace a femmeness that challenges my culture’s screwed up notions of femininity and beauty.
Illustration of a fat person in a pink polka dot bra and undies with stretchmarks and hairy legs sitting above a banner that says "Ugly femme pride".
I don’t have to be beautiful, and I don’t owe it to anyone either. It took me two years to fully understand this after first reading Lesley Kinzel’s Uninvested in Being Beautiful. I was so struck by this epiphany today that I decided to draw it. UGLY FEMME PRIDE!
This illustration is available on t shirts, stickers, mugs, posters, bags, etc on Red Bubble, Spreadshirt and Cafe Press. (Cafe Press has plus sized t shirts!)
Today is my for-realsies birthday! Getting older is such an odd thing, I said that I still feel like an awkward 16 year old and my mother-in-law replied that she feels the same way too. It seems that many people feel scared and uncomfortable about getting older and treat birthdays with apprehension but I’ve never felt that way.
When I was younger I couldn’t wait to be in my thirties. I guess I figured that I’d have everything sorted out and would be able to live my life the way I wanted to. Now I’m here in my thirties and I’m optimistic. I’ve been through lots of struggles, and I’m sure I’ll encounter more, but I’m happy to have made it this far and I look forward to my life (most days) as an adult type person who is able to do exactly what she wants to do (again, most days… circumstances permitting!)
In the next year I look forward to slowly but consistently expanding my Fancy Lady Industries shop, working towards a life where I can be my own boss and earn a solid living wage while being true to my politics and passions; I hope to learn more every day about life, about me and you, about how to treat us tenderly and respectfully. My biggest goal is not to be afraid or ashamed of these things, because so often in the past I’ve felt like a weirdo for not wanting a big house or a stock portfolio or pursuing material or financial things. I just want to be me, to make things, and to think, love and be content.
Just for fun, here are some photos of me as a baby, and me as a newly minted 31 year old!
A photo of my mother and father holding me as a newborn in hospital, and a clipping of my birth notice from the newspaper.
My mother holding a 1 year old me up to blow out my birthday candle. I look rather disgruntled with the paltry offering of only one birthday cake.
Me as a blue haired 31 year old trying to copy the disgruntled face I made on my first birthday.
My grandmother and I smiling at lunch today. (We share the same birthday.)
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