One of the most powerful things that I do to reinforce my personal body love journey is to seek out positive representations of fat bodies. I live in a culture that barrages me with negative images of, and messages about, fat bodies. It’s important to me that I counteract that.
I was thinking about it today because the Adipositivity Project Annual Calendar is out [link NSFW unless your work is really cool), and, as always, it is awesome! I was lucky enough to be an Adiposer for the awesome Substantia Jones’ fabulous fat positive project [NSFW] and it was an amazing experience..
It inspired me to take pictures of some of the positive representations of fat bodies that we keep around the house…
I was also reminded of these soft sculptures by Yulia Ustinova on Facebook today (and thus reminded that I desperately want one!)
What are some of your favorite representations of fat bodies? Please feel free to leave links to them in the the comments!
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Book and Dance Class Sale! I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!
Book Me! I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!
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Dances With Fat 
All of Murder of Goths’ work is awesome!
http://murderofgoths.co.uk/
I am still in awe of your ability to do a split. I haven’t been able to for years due to my hip giving me problems. Oh and you and Substantia look totally FIERCE in your red tops. Absolutely freaking fierce and lovely and awesome.
I have long been a fan of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Zaftig-Curves-Edward-St-Paige/dp/1883211174/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446228888&sr=8-1&keywords=zaftig (Amazon tells me I purchased the book on October 5, 1999.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryl_Cook
This is one of my favorite sculptures from a park near my home, and the photos don’t do it justice. She is such a gorgeous, fat, happy, dancing woman!
http://barbarachen.com/Nocturne.htm
(This is a link to some photos of the sculpture. It’s not my sculpture or my website.)
My own artwork for my husbands novel. FATIZEN 24602
My favorite piece of fat woman art is the Venus of Willendorf. I have a beeswax sculpture of her and a cloth doll I made of her
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf
HAHA! I posted before I read the replies. High five!
My dad bought an orange and green drinking mug with this figurine repeated all around the outside.
My all-time favorite is the Venus of Willendorf. Not just for the visual appeal, but at that time, the craft of sculpting was still being invented, and people had to make their own tools, and it was just so much harder to do that than it is for modern sculptors, who can just order supplies and tools on the internet.
Someone went to ALL THAT WORK, to create a sculpture of a fat woman. True, there’s no head, but that means, it could be any one of us. I can totally relate to it, and I love it.
Moreover, it’s about the beauty of the body, without any sexuality. I’m all for sexuality, but we have a pervasive idea in our society that unless someone desires you, sexually, you are pretty much worthless, and certainly not beautiful. The Venus of Willendorf expresses beauty and worth quite apart from sexuality.
Whoops. I meant, no FACE. Not, no head.
I’m kinda out of it today. Sorry.
My own favorite is the Sleeping Lady of Malta:
She’s a tiny figurine–my memory from my visit to Malta in 1994 is that she would fit on the palm of my hand– and just incredibly beautiful.
Look at this adorable costume! http://feetlips.tumblr.com/post/132171034939
Oh, my gosh! That’s adorable! The only problem is, how does she actually access anything in that purse? I guess she could keep change in it, and rattle it out, when she needs to buy something. I think it’s more of a visual accessory than an actual purse, though.
I love the nutrition information on the back!
I think the Venus of Willendorf is a beautiful sculpture of a fat woman.Since the culture from which it came and the sculptor are unknown it’s guesswork to say she represents a fertility goddess. If so it is in marked contrast to the negative stereotyping and outright bashing that most fat and super fat women are subjected to in our society.If anything this society does everything possible to discourage fat women and fat men from having children.
The one other artist who specializes in painting fat people is Ferdinand Botero. I never liked his work because virtually all his figures while big and obviously heavy do not have many rolls and no cellulite at all. This is unreal and unrepresentative of what fat people look like and so is a quiet put down of fat people. He projects an “ideal” which rarely if ever exists in the real world.
I believe that fat people and fat women in particular are beautiful as they are now without embellishment. The trick is to reach young fat people
before or as society begins to brain wash them to believe their is something wrong with them when nothing is wrong except society. This is very difficult because of the focus of the upper class with its enormous financial power especially over the mass media.
Saw this, and just had to share it here.
There are lots of wonderful dolls celebrating all kinds of bodies there!