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.”

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!

An outfit photo of me, fat and pale skinned, wearing a dress with a mauve/ purple/ cream/ olive dot pattern, a lot of brown bead necklaces, and a thin belt with black sandals. I'm standing with Miffy, who wants her outfit photo taken too.

This morning we decided to go out for lunch and I had a dressing dilemma. Summer is a terrible sartorial period in my life because it’s so damn hot and for some reason I don’t have a very cohesive summer wardrobe. I have made a few patterned skirts but none of them go with the tops that I have! I pulled out the dreaded dress and decided to give it another go. Without anything to around my waist/ under boob area (the two are basically the same place when you have a short waist) it just made me feel very frumpy and un-finished. I pulled a studded belt out of the top of the wardrobe and put on as many beaded necklaces as I could find, and found it infinitely more wearable and less frumpy in my head. I hate wearing belts that just float around, and I really resent the designer for making this dress loose fitting from the bust line, but this is basically the best way I feel I can wear this dress.

My dress struggles reminded me that even though I (or you or anyone) can fully reject something (like the principle of flattering clothes) in theory, in practice it’s a far harder thing to carry out especially when we’ve had acceptable body shapes and sizes drilled into our heads. In some ways I feel like a hypocrite, but being gentler and more tender with myself is probably a more productive and workable approach. No fat or body acceptance activist is perfect, we all make mistakes, and sometimes we practice things that fall outside what we preach. How can I expect myself to be a perfectly radical activist in every way when I’ve grown up in the very culture I am questioning? I am not objective, I am subjective; we shouldn’t give the objective viewpoints more weight in most circumstances, we should be giving voice to the lived experience of hardship, struggle and oppression. I am feeling these shitty feelings we’ve been taught to feel. The most powerful thing is stopping for a second to listen to my self talk, then questioning why I feel the need to comply. Talking about it with other people helps a great deal, and it’s one of the reasons why I write about being fat and wearing clothes on this blog.

An outfit photo of me picking up my necklaces with one hand and the skirt of my dress with another, in a very carefree sort of "I'm a blogger lalalala" kind of way.

So I chose the option that made me feel less shit about myself in this case. It’s not perfect, but it’s one of the things I have to do in order to wear clothes as per my societal contract as a human being living in a city in Australia. I chose the option that made me feel like I’d be less of a target. As a fat person who is deathfat and can not hide it, my body is hyper-visible; I felt like I’d be less of a target for people to stare at and yell things at. I also chose the option that made me feel much better about a purchase I made, because I don’t have access to a diverse range of options in a size 24-26.

A photo of Miffy reaching up to give me a high five (with both paws because her front legs are adorably tiny).

A photo of my face, smiling in a kind of very forced way.

A photo of my legs and feet standing on grass sprinkled with red poinciana flowers. I'm wearing black studded sandals.

I get lots of feedback and questions about being fat and trying to be a “good activist” all the time, and honestly, I have no idea what a “good activist” is. The best human being I can be is a transparent, tender, forgiving, accountable being; and when it comes to an area of activism like body image that is so personal and emotional, the best activist thing is kind of a false aspiration. Seek to question, critique and be accountable but also be super loving and forgiving and remember that nuance is incredibly important. If you struggle with hating your body or participating in hurtful practices but love the idea of fat and body acceptance, you are not alone. There’s lots of us standing in front of mirrors every day battling this stuff, wondering if a belt will compromise everything. But it doesn’t.

Dress: Piper Woman
Shoes: Annie (via Shoebuy.com)
Belt: From a Yours Clothing dress
Necklaces: from a variety of forgotten places
Bangles: City Chic

In an effort to make it even more clear that I do not want this kind of self esteem eroding, multimillion dollar marketing scam bullshit infecting my life and this blog I’ve been working on a graphic for websites and blogs to use to proudly declare NO DIET TALK! This is a way for those of us who are made uncomfortable and triggered in conversations that centre around diet and weight loss to feel a bit safer, and I’m hoping that the graphic is spread far and wide.

Right click and save to your computer friends, then upload to your website!
These are all transparent png files for optimal stencilesque radness and to fit in with a wide variety of site designs. The white graphic has a black background added in with CSS, it will look great on most dark backgrounds.

I’m releasing this graphic in a few different colour variations under a Creative Commons Non Commercial No Derivatives license which means you can share the image and post it where ever you want on the internet, but you can’t modify or use it for commercial means.

I’m going to be making up brooches with this design too, so stay tuned!

Here’s some further reading on diet talk and why it sucks:
The anti diet-talk mantra by Sonya at Lip Mag
FAT: The Dirty Word by Mary at A Merry Life
Trimming the fat from “fat talk” on The-F-Word
Dear Dieters; A Letter to People at Work by Marianne at The Rotund

In recent years social media websites have emerged that enable users to curate huge collections of images, and it’s been through sites like Tumblr and Pinterest that I’ve noticed this lack of marginalised embodiment. The optimist in me who thought that social media and the internet would allow for better access and representation has been proven incorrect, it’s never been more obvious that our western media’s normalised body (remember: thin, white, slim, young, cisgendered and able bodied) is so imprinted on our brains that we only see subjects in art and images with that body as beautiful or aspirational. So the art and illustration on Tumblr that is most reblogged and liked is basically the same kind of image seen in the mainstream media.

My POC, disabled, queer, and fat friends say, “but where am I?” Is the problem that image makers aren’t producing images with a diverse range of people as subjects? Does that mean that I as an image maker am part of the problem? I think I might be, for all the image of fat people that I create, I definitely know that I do not make many images of POC; this is my white privilege in action. I could be trying harder. So in order to improve my creative practice I asked my Tumblr friends to submit outfit photos of themselves for me to draw.

This project is probably going to be a very long-term one, because my objective is to improve my technical skills and portray a huge diversity of embodiment.

Image - illustration of afrotitty, a fat brown skinned babe, wearing an animal print sweater and a short black skirt with black fishnet tights and flat shoes, carrying a bright red bag.

Image - a digital illustration of ashrussell, a fat pale skinned babe making a joyful face, bunching up the skirt of a black dress with a blue cardigan and green tights.

Image - a digital illustration of Tiffany, a fat brown skinned tattooed babe, wearing a pink t-shirt, black pleated skirt with floral tights and black sandals, holding a large brown envelope bag.

Image - a digital illustration of nudiemuse, who is fat and dark skinned, wearing a black jacket and dress which she holds up to show off purple and black striped tights and the most badass lace up boots.

Image - a digital illustration of Heidi, who is fat, tattooed and pale skinned with pink and purple hair, wearing a khaki sleeveless dress and navy slip on sandshoes.

At the moment I have quite a huge collection of self-submitted images that I am working from, and I’m also going to offer custom illustrations for people to commission in my shop. Submissions for my Fat Babes Illustrated project are welcome, primarily if you are fat, a person of colour, disabled or queer. The difference between the two is that if you submit your photo to my reference collection it may or may not be used in my project; and if you purchase a commissioned illustration I will definitely complete your portrait, and you will get a high resolution file to print for yourself.

A photo of me (left) and Zoe (right), two fat pale skinned ladies with blonde hair, standing in a garden at night with sassy faces. I'm wearing a black dress with floral tights and black high heels and Zoe wears a black tunic with purple draped sleeves, black tights and flats while carrying a clear umbrella.

What are friends for if they won’t pose in silly photos with you? Zoe and I decided to do an impromptu photo shoot showing off our incredible modeling skills. I suggested to Nick that he mimic skeezebag Terry Richardson’s style of photo taking but he was very uncomfortable with that considering that Richardson is awful and abusive towards women.

Our expert hair and make up is self applied while Nick took the photos. This is our ~lookbook~ for chronic bitchface, inspired by Kris Atomic, a name I might steal for any future band or fashion label of mine. You might recognise Zoe’s tunic as the one I wore in my last ootd, she bought one as well. ~birds of a feather and all that~

A photo of Zoe gesturing wildly while holding a clear umbrella. Her sheer purple sleeve is outstretched and spectacular.

A photo of me standing in front of a hollow brick wall holding a cigarette.

A photo of Zoe and my fat legs. On the left, Zoe's leggings are sheer black in front and solid at the back and she wears slip on shoes with cross over elastic. I wear floral tights with black platform heels.

A photo of me side on, looking down and smiling.

A photo of Zoe with her head turned to the right, holding a clear umbrella behind her head.

A photo of me holding my hands up in front of my face showing off my zombie apocalypse nails, bracelets and big square amber ring.

A full length photo of Zoe, a fat pale skinned lady with shoulder length blonde hair and thick rimmed glasses, posing all mystical like in front of a tree wearing a black tunic with draping purple batwing sleeves and black sheer leggings.

A photo of Zoe and I sitting on stairs posing with our bitchfaces.

Nick wants to start taking more photos of fat people and I really want to encourage him! This was silly and fun but also represents our bodies as curated by us, bodies that aren’t represented as neutral or fun or bitchy or fashionable in our culture.

A collage of all the outfit photos from Fa(t)shion February. Down the bottom is the definatalie.com logo and 'Fa(t)shion February 2011'.

Documenting my outfits regularly for Fa(t)shion February was interesting. I encountered resistance in my head on a few levels, mostly when it came to taking photos of every day, around the house outfits and on other days when I just didn’t feel like getting dressed at all. When you blog about fashion, or fatshion in my case, there’s this implicit pressure to wear something new, something fancy, something that pushes boundaries or rises above the “bad, slobby fatty” stereotype. Participating in this project made me realise just how I still play along with this expectation even if I’ve questioned it before.

I blog about my outfits for representation not because I’m deeply interested in Fashion as Artform but because I’m invested in Fashion as Obligation and the utter lack of body diversity in the media. I wrote a guest post about precisely this for the International Women’s Day celebration on Equality Rights Alliance’s web site (and it’ll be published tomorrow!) Marianne of The Rotund and Lesley of Two Whole Cakes have written posts along these lines in the last few days and I want to direct you to them because they usually say what I am thinking (or have written) with a lot more eloquence!

Documenting what I look like on a daily basis not only normalizes fat bodies for other viewers, it does the same for me regarding my own body. This is what my body looks like. That’s a good thing to know. This is what my body looks like in certain clothes. Clothes that look way different in the mirror at home. Clothes that look different when my husband takes a photo from his eye level versus my eye level versus crouching below. In this way, I learn my body from an outside perspective.

Fa(t)shion February; Conflicting Urges Around Documentation, The Rotund.

We do not see our bodies (our fat bodies, our otherwise-marginalized bodies) reflected in culture, in culture and media, or if we do we are without heads or identities, without agency, without ownership—a strangely shaped approximation of a person, a pile of vaguely anthropomorphic flesh. People who weigh what I weigh are supposed to be bedridden, or if not bedridden then unable to walk more than fifteen feet without needing to stop and gasp for air, or if not unable to walk more than fifteen feet then only able to do so while suffering pain in the knees that will surely blow out from under me at any moment, or if not with destroyed knees then only with vague discomfort even if it stems not from physical circumstances but from feeling the penetrating gaze of nearly everyone who sees me. The gaze is there because I am fat and I fail to follow the rules, fail to avoid attention, fail to be uncomfortable, fail to be silent and invisible.

and

It is okay if you are silent and would rather be invisible; it is okay if your knees hurt or if you other mobility issues; it is okay if you are different that I am. Because you deserve to be allowed to see and recognize bodies both familiar to you and strange, and to be seen and recognized first and foremost as a human being worthy of respect, no matter what you look like or how you feel or whether you’re sick or well. Maybe having seen my picture some folks won’t be so quick to condemn or assume when they see other bodies like mine; I can hope.

Why the pictures matter, Two Whole Cakes

So yeah. That’s why I post photos of me and my outfits, and these are the sort of things I think about on a daily basis. I’m glad to add my visibility to a growing hoard of bloggers demanding representation.