#luly rants in read more

[starberry-cupcake]

I’m gonna be honest for 2.5 seconds and delete this post when I feel ranting to the internet void has satisfied me. 

There’s been for years, in the body positive community, this idea of fatness in “comfortable” levels. There are these archetypes of “comfortable fatness” that are seen under a mostly positive light, if they fall under certain socially constructed categories which make them more “palatable” to the mainstream. They aren’t accepted, but they’re more comfortable for this mainstream to see. 

For example, back when this conversation started gaining traction, there was this trend of fatshionistas. Those among them who were rising to fame were always cis white able bodied women with a specific brand of feminine presentation, which included retro sundresses, corsets and other alternative-rockabilly fashions. Most often than not, these same models did a lot of lingerie photoshoots, burlesque photoshoots and nudes with that sort of alternative-retro flair, with a sensual/erotic charge. 

This doesn’t mean those bodies aren’t valid, this is not to undermine anyone who’s been in this category, it means that the idea of “acceptable fatness”, or of acceptable “attractive” fatness, started to be circumscribed to ideas of presentation and exposure that not all fat bodies were willing to fit into. Circa 2011 you could be closer to being accepted, beside all the thin girls in galaxy tanks and jean shorts on tumblr, if you fit this criteria, is what I mean.

Back in the day, when Meghan Trainor released All About That Bass, there was an uproar. Tumblr mostly argued the song under the idea that it was sexist, which it is, but they never mentioned that there have been, and continue to be, sexist songs by thin singers who never had as much backlash, even contemporary to Trainor’s. 

But behind most arguments, the same thing came popping back up: the song said “skinny bitches”. 

There was this massive backlash because of that single thing, more so than of the subject of internalized sexism and the male gaze as validation, to the point that a thin girl got viral making a cover where she replaced the song with an “all bodies” message. 

Because the body positive movement, which at its start had mostly talks about fatness and about differently abled bodies, needs to accommodate thin able bodied people in order to even speak. 

[I once got an anon, by the way, pitching Trainor and Mary Lambert against each other, because I made gifsets of Mary’s songs, while Meghan and Mary had been performing together, and whether or not you like Meghan Trainor, there’s room in the music industry for more than one singer who sings about not being thin, among other stuff. Just saying.] 

Now fast forward to Lizzo. 

I got to know about Lizzo a while back and I’ve been loving her ever since. Lizzo has spoken up about her music not being fat positive specifically, it’s positive to her and she’s a fat black woman, so whoever feels empowered, great, but it’s her identity the one portrayed in her music, as it should be, especially when it’s an identity that gets underrepresented. 

And Lizzo has a song with Missy Elliott where she says “skinny hoes”, and this time around, the reaction was different. 

Instead of demanding Lizzo to speak for “all bodies”, thin people, even fatphobic people, are using Lizzo as their “comfortable fatness” level. Lizzo is empowering and positive, Lizzo is powerful and beautiful. Lizzo is talented and valid. But it’s just her. And not even her as a person, her as an idea, as an icon for what’s useful for them. 

What Lizzo says about empowerment, they appropriate as long as it’s convenient to them, but they don’t translate it to the way they treat fat people irl, or the way they perceive fatness, even less the intersectional categorization of fatness and race. 

Lizzo’s words are empowering on a vacuum to them, not in application. Lizzo is safe to watch from afar and see her as valid and pretty and worthy of admiration because she’s “brave”, and she’s brave because she dares to be fat and proud. 

I see on the daily people in my life, people on twitter, people on here, waxing poetic about Lizzo while not acknowledging their fatphobic views or questioning themselves at all. Lizzo is out there making what she needs to feel good while thin cis girls on twitter demand her to lift their spirits and make them feel beautiful too, asking her to give them confidence.  

They are comfortable with Lizzo’s fatness because they only see the result of her body positive journey so far, but they are unwilling to acknowledge that, to get there, she and bodies and like hers had to fight against views propelled by people like them. 

Lizzo learned how to be confident despite bodies like theirs being upheld and worshiped and now they’re asking Lizzo for confidence tips, without understanding that the bodies they treat like crap on the daily are the ones Lizzo’s speaking about. 

Basically what I mean is miss me with your Lizzo appreciation if you’re unable to also appreciate the bodies of those around you which Lizzo’s art speaks for. 

[starberry-cupcake]

I have a bone to pick with Project Runway season 16’s finale. And it has nothing to do with who won or who lost or which collection was best. It has to do with Project Runway’s treatment of plus size models and their policies concerning plus sizes in general, from seasons past till now, culminating with this season finale. Get ready for a rant. 

I’ve watched Project Runway for as long as it’s been around. I was a teenager when it began airing and I’ve been plus size my entire life, so I’ve noticed how things were for plus sizes there. Every time there was a, what they very awfully called, “real women challenge”, I struggled with how the contestants treated their plus size models, how whenever it came to picking clients, they always avoided women that weren’t thin, to the point of outright fatshaming and humiliating people in the process (remember this case, for example?). 

After years of this bullcrap and the overall erasure of plus sizes in the show, Ashley Nell Tipton came along and won season 14. Not only that, she presented the first plus size collection by a Project Runway contestant in NY Fashion Week. It took 8 years for that. But all accomplishments were undermined by how Tim Gunn made very strong allegations not only on the season being a disappointment but also bashing Ashley’s collection and her merit to win in every way he could. But that’s not even my issue. 

Tim Gunn has been somewhat vocal in the past about the lack of plus size options in the fashion industry, making himself a sort of “advocate for size inclusion”. His post last year however showed not only a lack of understanding of the plus size audience but an awful entitlement of what we should or shouldn’t wear, based on what would make us look “slimmer and taller”.

At the time the article was out, I posted my lengthy opinion on the matter as did others but the gist of the situation is that he bashed Ashley for making a collection which featured elements that “plus sizes shouldn’t wear”. He criticized her use of patterns, transparencies, volume, light colors and crop tops out of this idea that, for a plus size person to be well dressed, they need to look as little as themselves as possible and disguise their figure (he said, and I quote: “Done right, our clothing can create an optical illusion that helps us look taller and slimmer. Done wrong, and we look worse than if we were naked”, “Larger women look great in clothes skimming the body, rather than hugging or cascading”). To add insult to injury, he criticized Ashley’s choice on head pieces, which were a representation of her culture and, as a plus size Latina myself, I felt that as insulting as Ashley did. I’m not going to go over this as much because I already did in the other post, but this is a very important part of the whole context. 

Now, in this season, for the first time in 13 years, Project Runway used plus size models among those working with the contestants. They spent the entire season patting themselves on the back for it, but that didn’t mean contestants wouldn’t complain about the “difficulties” of working with plus size models often enough. Many episodes featured at least one contestant “struggling” with working with a plus size model, in events that included calling the forms “too fat” or calling a model out on the runway for being “curvy” after continuously complaining on how difficult to work with her body was (points 9, 26, 61 & 62). Which made things uncomfortable for plus size designers who not only made plus size wear but were plus size themselves (not on the level of the fatshaming in season 14 though). 

After all this, we had a finale which, as a complement to the season, featured models from different sizes. And the show constantly reminded us how revolutionary that was. Heidi went ahead and said it once more while presenting the runway show.

My first moment of true discomfort was Margarita’s “runway moment”. She said she needed one and her idea of it was to have model Jazzmine Carthon taking off a skirt on the runway and revealing the one piece swimsuit underneath. You’re probably wondering how that’s a “runway moment”, it’s not something models haven’t done before countless times. Well, that’s because Jazzmine is plus size.

As a plus size girl, I felt uncomfortable of how insistently the judges pointed that out, how they treated that as a huge effect, as the stellar surprise of the day. Because Margarita’s “runway moment” wasn’t provided by her clothes (which were nice, I liked them, that’s not the problem), it was provided by her model’s body. People’s reaction and the judges’ reactions were not towards Margarita’s clothes per se, but towards her choosing Jazzmine for them. 

I understand more than anyone what it means for a plus size gal to be baring her legs on NY Fashion Week. To be strutting down the runway on a swim suit. I know more than anyone that it isn’t the same for a plus size model than it is for a thin model because of the amount of cultural and social backlash, because of the systemic oppression behind fat bodies. I understand that, for a plus size model to do something like that, it’s not the same as it is for a thin model, and I celebrate the inclusion of it, I celebrate Jazzmine and her beauty representing and embodying so much.

What I don’t like is the spectacle made out of it. Because, at the end of the day, the way in which it was treated made it seem like the action was “brave” because what Jazzmine did, she did despite the fact that she is a plus size model. Using Jazzmine’s body as a “runway moment” is like saying she triumphed despite her body. It’s like all those movies that pretend to be inclusive by having a fat girl as prom queen but that keep hammering home that it’s a dramatic story because she’s prom queen despite the fact that she’s fat, as if her body was an issue. It’s like all those shows that treat fatness like something we have to be “brave enough” to showcase. They were saying that she was brave for showing herself. They were saying that the “wow moment” of the entire day was a girl wearing a one piece swimsuit down the runway, and what makes it a “wow moment” isn’t the swimsuit, it’s the fact that she’s a plus size model. Even more so, it was Margarita’s triumph, for choosing her. 

But it didn’t stop there, because then we had the moment on the studio runway, in which the judges asked model Liris Crosse how she felt walking on NY Fashion Week, prompting tears and a very emotional speech that I’ll get to in a minute.

Let me point out something first, Liris Crosse has already walked NY Fashion Week for a Project Runway contestant, she was in Ashley’s runway for season 14, the one Tim read for filth. I don’t remember them asking, back then, neither Liris nor any other plus size model on the runway (including Lornalitz Baez, who was the main model of that collection) what it felt for them to walk on Fashion Week, or at least not with this much importance put upon it. But anyway, let’s continue.

Liris gave a speech about how thankful she was to Project Runway for providing a platform for the plus size community to be represented. Which, of course, prompted the show to keep patting themselves on the back for this revolutionary thing they did. And that I can’t take.  

The fact that, after 13 years of not only neglect but also downright insults, of season upon season of using plus size bodies as the “challenge”, as something worthy of humiliating, of degrading, of never being considered and then, when they were featured, they were instantly insulted by taking away the merit of the win with an article that speaks for the plus size community while taking away any sort of autonomy on how they want to dress, after a season in which yes, plus size models are included but again still propose not only a “challenge” at times but “runway moments” because of their bodies being “different”; after all that, I’m supposed to be thankful? I’m supposed to thank Project Runway for the kindness of giving a minimum of space, while they congratulate themselves on their revolutionary ways of accepting people is valid whatever body they inhabit?

No. No, I’m not thankful. This was not a favor they did, this is what is right. Plus size bodies deserve to be represented in fashion, as do all bodies that are neglected and overlooked by mainstream fashion. We shouldn’t be thankful, it was about goddamn time. They don’t deserve tears on the stage, they don’t deserve to be called themselves a “platform”. 

These models deserved better than this, we deserve better than this, and I’m done seeing plus size bodies used as sob stories in reality tv. 

[starberry-cupcake]

This website claims to be respectful and inclusive towards ace and aro people (and those in the spectrums) yet they use virginity and sex and being “single” as a weapon to wield against others and shame and humiliate. I also can’t stand dudebros and comments shredding their actions and attitudes to pieces give me life because sexist pigs are sexist pigs, but using concepts of sex and virginity or lack of romantic relationships as a weapon towards them is like calling them with homophobic slurs on purpose, it’s pulling us all down. There’s enough to say about them, enough material to read their petty discourse for filth, enough wrong with what they say to dismantle them with just a few words, without having to retort to keep prompting a discourse in which sexuality, romantic relationships and the “loss of virginity” (already a very questionable concept but ok) are things to humiliate people with. The double discourse in this webiste frustrates me a lot sometimes.