There has been some discussion (and much pearl-clutching) around the internet about the possibility of Disney releasing a movie with a fat Princess. I think that would be cool and all (although I worry about the Disney Princess takeover of American girlhood), but I would argue that Disney has already released some pretty awesome fat lady characters...they're just evil witches
Of course the baddest and best dressed is Ursula. In my mind the best thing about Ursula is that she claimed that men would like Ariel better if she couldn't speak, a statement meant to prove how evil and man-hating she was (except it turned out to be true, whoops). What can I say, I like a good cynical bitch.
Now let's talk about Madam Mim (from The Sword in the Stone). Certainly she is less glamorous, but she has a balls-out confidence (not to mention a wide streak of only the most whimsical evil) that can not be beat. She can shape shift to look however she wants and goes through life in her own 3-ft-in-every-direction body
Also, she is sometimes a dragon so just don't mess with her okay.
I've been a little preoccupied with a term paper, and I thought about how much I like paintings of women reading, so that's as good a theme as I am capable of. Some of the searching for this was frankly depressing, and maybe one day when I have more time I will talk about how results for image searches using various terms and euphemisms for fat reveals deeply embedded prejudices in society, but today I need to write more about intangible heritage digitization projects, think hateful things about people who don't believe in global warming, and hope the power grid doesn't blow leaving me without air conditioning. I live an exciting life.
Yeah, it's pretty much like this, or, exactly
Mary Cassatt -- Woman Reading in a Garden
Kuniyoshi -- Woman Reading
Finally, the video that inspired the title, probably the best example of library marketing I have ever seen:
Does anyone else desperately want to know if the BYU library cafe* actually serves something called a celestial sandwich?
Update:After probably too much research I determined BYU library does not have a snack bar, but rather a "snack zone" where folks can bring their own. So: a) if you want a celestial sandwich you have to make it yourself and b) BYU gets all the potential damage to books and none of the over-priced, I don't know, hot chocolate revenue from a cafe. Also no bad library puns. At Pitt's main library we have the Cup and Chaucer, which is just ...terrible.
*Not that I approve of cafes in libraries. Won't someone please think of the books!?
Big Ballet is a Russian* ballet company composed entirely of dancers weighing no less than 100 kilos. The company's choreographer, Yevgeni Panfilov formed Big Ballet to prove that dancers can be excellent at any size, and challenging the increasingly more slender aesthetic in professional ballet. Sadly, I find the taste of Big Ballet's costumer quite questionable, but what can you do.
As a bonus: Dawn French as the Vicar of Dibley dances badly
*I have seen a few blog posts and articles implying this company should not be taken seriously since it is obviously just some weird Russian thing. Apparently the writers were unaware that ballet is, to put it very mildly, kind of a big deal in Russia.
I was reading on one of my blogs (but now, of course, I can't find it) about all the rules we fat ladies are supposed to studiously observe while getting dressed in the morning. You know: don't wear horizontal stripes, don't wear prints that are "too large" or "too small" (by occult definitions of these terms understood only by lady mags), don't wear bright colors, and for god sakes put on some Spanx! The horrifying punishment for violation of these rules is that someone might notice you are fat! ZOMG! because otherwise they totally wouldn't! As a fat lady it is (supposedly) your duty to work hard to take as little visual real estate as humanly possible least you offend the innocent passerby with your fatitude. Don't get me wrong, if you like dressing according to any or all of these rules, have fun (but are you really super sure about the Spanx, because come on how much do you need to feel like a sausage?). Just so long as we are all clear that these are not really rules, no one is going to shoot you for breaking them, and you can absolutely be fabulous and beautiful without them, and in any case you are under no obligation to please anyone, ever, by how you look. The great grand-daddy rule (as the mythical blog post which I can not find points out), and one that leaves you most out of current trends, is no oversize or loose clothing ever, so I today is dedicated to fat ladies in loose clothes.
Lady with a Lute, Bartomelo Veneto, 1500s
La Liseuse, Jean-Francois de Troy 1700s
Merchant's Wife, Boris Kustodiev, 1918
Liselotte, Pierre Mignard, 1675
The Merchant's wife is my favorite because I can't look at it without thinking "now there's someone who knows how to live". She has her cat, a fabulous breakfast spread, tea, and a silk dressing gown. That's winning at life.
As a special bonus this week (sorry again non-US readers): we have my favorite female character on Television, identifying everything wrong in the world:
And Xelle (pronounced X-L, which I love way too much) brings us a party in a subway car:
PS: If anyone can tell me where the phrase "Rock! Party!" shouted by an androgynously voiced Japanese singer before the opening strains of a J-Rock song come from they will be my hero, because I have it stuck in my head, and until I can hear the rest of the song it will likely stay here.
PPS: I'll be doing the 30-day Lolita challenge on my tumblr, and may post a summary or two here, if anyone is interested in following along (be warned: I am kind of addicted to tumblr and post alor).
Hopefully this will be another regular feature. I got the idea from the late lamented "Huge", a surprisingly nuanced, thoughtful, and feeling show about kids at fat camp:
Summary for Non-US readers: In a crappy summer camp cabin Niki Blonsky is cutting up teen magazines: "It is my duty as an angry feminist to destroy it."
Catty girl: "So I guess you can't afford your own magazines"
Angelic Blonde: "Don't even talk to her"
Niki Blonsky "Yeah, don't even talk to me." *defiant shirt removal*
Angelic Blonde (looking at pictures of classical art fat ladies stuck all over Niki Blonsky's bed post and officially rationed wall space): What's that?
Niki Blonsky: "It's fatspiration"
Angelic Blonde scoffs in disgust at Blonsky's failure to understand that fat ladies are ugly and she really ought to hate herself.
In the show this was a response to Angelic Blonde posting a whole lot of "thinspiration", or pictures of skinny women meant to "inspire" the viewer to become thin and beautiful instead of being fat and disgusting. Thinspiration was originally a practice encouraged on pro-ana sites but has migrated to mainstream dieting practice (because what's a better idea than taking cues from people devoted to promoting their own and others' mental disorders? amiright). Oh course unlike its thinner, disturbed sister fatspiration is not about promoting the idea that only fat is beautiful or that you should be trying to make yourself fatter. That's just silly. It's about showing that all bodies can have beauty (and not in some crappy inner beauty kind of way) including, most importantly, your own. This of course includes thin people, but yours truly is fairly convinced the documentation of beautiful thin people has been well-covered,oh, pretty much everywhere.
Since most of the "fat ladies in art" you find is classical; I decided to start with one of my favorite contemporary artists: Ursula Vernon.
All Images are exclusive copyright of Ursula Vernon re-posted with permission.
Special bonus not-really-fat-not-not-model-waifish picture just cause awesome
