Jamie Roller Green

avotica:

mr-cappadocia:

curvaliciousfashion:

“Attractive and Fat”

Many of you have probably heard of the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch’s controversial and flat out rude comments that the company doesn’t sell XL or XXL sizes for women because they want “cool” people to wear their clothes. Well, this blogger wrote an open letter to Jeffries and included these photos of herself and what is considered a “typical” male model body type.

Some quotes from her letter:

“The only thing you’ve done through your comments (about thin being beautiful and only offering XL and XXL in your stores for men) is reinforce the unoriginal concept that fat women are social failures, valueless, and undesirable.”

“This is largely attributed to companies like yours that perpetuate the thought that fat women are not beautiful. This is inaccurate, but if someone were to look through your infamous catalog, they wouldn’t believe me.”

“P.P.S. You should know your Large t-shirt comfortably fits a size 22. You might want to work on that.”

This has to do with fashion, though perhaps not in the way this blog has so far posted. But this sort of confidence is the sort of thing that we want our choices in clothes to reflect. You should be able to wear whatever you want and feel confident - no matter what other people may say or think.

Feminist definition of body positive… she’s fat as fuck, he’s carved out of wood.

Because let’s just be honest about what the “body positive” movement is. It’s a fucking tumblr fat girl self esteem support group. It’s not about seeing beauty in all bodies. It’s about fat girls telling themselves they’re beautiful and raging the fuck out on anyone who doesn’t agree with they very carefully constructed illusion.

The above is a prime example. There’s no body positive movement for fat men, or burn victims, or motherfuckers with leprosy. The *only* bodies the body positive movement ever calls “beautiful” are fat, and female.

And you know, if you want to think you’re the bees fuckin knees… have at it. But don’t try to bullshit everyone else in the process.

and here’s the girl that belong there:

Okay, there are a lot of things wrong with your argument. I will say, however, that the thing about positive body image movement is a lot more about what I’d call “fat pride” and less about acceptance of all different body types. A lot of people see it as that extreme because people are hypocrites and a lot of people who say that they’re part of the positive body image movement will thin-shame other people. The same thing happens with feminism, where it is suppose to be about equal rights and ends up being about woman rising above men in the loudest majority of cases. I will give you that; we are a people full of hypocrisy.

What I won’t give you is the idea that this whole thing is bullshit. Do not give me “This is the girl that belongs there” because you have no right to say who would belong where and where people should feel comfortable. Some girls considered “beautiful” and thin might not feel comfortable in the revealing clothing that some larger or fat woman feel confident wearing.

Sure, not all minorities that fall outside of societies “beauty” expectation are featured here. Because the point was not to show the beauty of all those who fall outside of the spectrum limitations that the majority of people have placed on them. What this was about was a contrast between who Abercrombie and Fitch want to market to (the thin, “attractive” looking male) against what they are not marketing towards (the fat, “ugly” looking female).

What is the important message to take away from that is not “Fat and Attractive” because that’s just an attention-grabber. The important message is that a persons attractiveness should come from more than just their physical appearance and also that it is possible to be attractive despite the fact that you are not how most have been programmed to define “attractive” as.

You may not agree that the medium was portrayed as effectively as it could have been but there is no denying that this holds a positive message and I wish more people could interpret it without being assholes about it and assuming it’s like an overeater-anonymous support group or become thin-shaming bigots because of their own low self-esteem. Why can’t a positive message just be a positive message without becoming something negative?