Manolo for the Big Girl

Francesca notes this interesting, albeit somewhat disturbing, article about “thinspiration” videos at yesterday’s New York Times magazine:

You don’t have to search very hard to find the excruciating online videos known as thinspiration, or thinspo. Photomontages of skeletal women, including some celebrities and models, play all over the Internet, uploaded from the United States, Germany, Holland and elsewhere. These videos are designed to “inspire” viewers — to fortify their ambitions. But exactly which ambitions? To lose weight, presumably. To stop losing weight, possibly. Thinspo videos profess a range of ideologies, often pressing morbid images into double service, as both goads and deterrents to anorexia.

::snip::

Setting aside the mystifying proposition that anorexia be seen as a lifestyle choice (as some extremist pro-anorexia sites maintain), as well as the age-old riddle of whether popular culture can produce mental illness, what seems most significant about the thinspiration videos is that they’re not propaganda or even entertainment, but an effort, however misguided, at art. One thinspiration filmmaker whose YouTube screen name is “hungryhell,” and who spoke on condition of anonymity to keep her struggles with bulimia private from people who know her, emphasized to me in an e-mail message that her work “represents what I have been feeling at that time in particular.” She added, “The songs I use . . . say exactly what I need to but can’t figure out how.”

According to the article, “thinspo” videos come with little or no commentary, and therefore are hard to classify. Francesca agrees with the reporter that they seem to be less a form of “thin is in” propoganda and should be considered more as works of (not necessarily good) art — in the sense that they are a means of creative expression, the result of a (probably disturbed) person’s compulsion to produce something out of photos, video, and music which represents his or her inner turmoil. And like any art, it may be seen as ridiculous or meaningless or moving or disturbing or infuriating. And the more one feels an emotional reaction upon watching it, the more it is a powerful piece of art - as infuriating as it may be.

There is much in the article which we could explicate here, but Francesca will say just one, and leave the rest for you good folks to discuss in the comments:

There are so many, many ways in this world that a person can be in pain. So many ways to destroy oneself. And so much strangeness! What the internet has done is to give more people new ways to share their pain — or whatever it is — with the rest of the world. And it has given us a new window into other people’s mental goings-on. Sometimes what we see is perplexing, or puzzling, or ambiguous. This doesn’t make it new, and it doesn’t make it politically important. It’s just an interesting fact about humanity, that sometimes we produce strange and perplexing things. People were creating disturbing works long before the internet, and long before thinness became an ideal. Just, their works were stored in the attic and no one ever saw them, unless they were Sylvia Plath.

Yet Francesca is intrigued by this question, which the Times reporter has “set aside”: “the age-old riddle of whether popular culture can produce mental illness.”

Indeed, would the makers of thinspiration videos be as obsessed with thin bodies if popular culture did not value thinness so much? If there was no internet for them to post videos on? Are more people troubled because of our society’s mixed messages, or is it the same percentage of people, but they have newer and creative ways (such as anorexia) of manifesting their sickness? Francesca will leave it to you to discuss.

Our readers will be pleased to know that a vivid portrait of Big Girl Sue Tilley, of London, has recently broken art-world records. It sold at Christie’s for over 33 million American dollars, the most ever given at an auction for a work by a living painter. Lucian Freud created 4 portraits of Tilley in the mid-1990’s. This one, the record-breaker,  is called “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping”:

What Francesca likes best about this story is Tilley’s superfantastic fattitude:

The portrait’s sitter, Sue Tilley - now promoted from benefits supervisor to manager of a Jobcentre Plus in central London - is delighted. “My life’s changed overnight,” she says. “I’m beside myself, but then lovely things are always happening to me. Still, I’m not surprised - in a way, I always thought this might happen. I love that painting.”

::snip::

“The first painting he ever did of me [Evening in the Studio, 1993] was finished while there was a big show of his paintings on at the Whitechapel gallery,” she says. “So they put it up for the last week of the exhibition. I went in there one day and there was a man giving a talk in front of the picture, saying, look at this revolting woman, she’s so fat and disgusting, there’s obviously something wrong with her skin. I just started laughing. The man stopped and asked if there was anything wrong. I said: ‘That’s me you’re talking about,’ and he just looked like he wanted to die. After that I didn’t really mind what people said.

“I’m not the ‘ideal woman’, I know I’m not. But who is? And he never made the skinny ones look any better. He picks out every single little detail.”

Francesca also enjoys this “that will show them, those ridiculous debt-collectors!” tidbit:

Freud gave her one of the portraits, a print. When bailiffs visited Ms Tilley some years ago, demanding items to the value of £700, they were more interested in her electric kettle and household objects than her Freud. When, in desperation, she offered to part with the print, telling them that it would more than cover the money she owed, they laughed at her. In 2005 it was sold by Bloomsbury Auctions in London for more than £26,000

So, remember ladies, the fleshier you are, the more your image could be worth millions.

Once in a while an artist creates something that touches me on such a deep and profound level that my life suddenly has a great jagged rift of before and after smack dab in the spot where I saw that piece. Once in a while a book comes along that turns my world upside down, much to my eternal joy. I was introduced to just such a book of just such art this week and I want to share it with all you superfantastic ladies out there. This does include links to sites with pictures that may not be work safe, so be aware of that before checking them out.

Roseanne Olson is a photographer. She’s also an anorexia survivor. When a woman with breast cancer asked for a nude portrait of her pre-surgery body, and her photography class had an assignment of ‘Naked Truth’, Olson had an inspiration. Over the course of the next six years, she interviewed nearly sixty women about their bodies and did nude photographs of them. The women were close friends, women she met at parties, even complete strangers who heard about the project and offered themselves as subjects. None of the women were professional models. Only one had been photographed in the nude before. Sadly, many of them had little good to say about their bodies.

The result, however, is a powerful celebration of the female body in its most basic form. The quotes that are negative stand in stark contrast to the beauty we can easily see in these same women. The women who accept, love and celebrate their physical forms are inspirational.

(more…)

This poster bears an image of the 25,000-year old statue called the Venus of Willendorf.

Is she not beautiful?

Hat tip: A wonderful post at Big Fat Deal

 Francesca feels safe, this time, in assuming that the subject of this painting, “Woman with a Parasol” by Pierre Auguste Renoir is, in fact, a woman. And what a beautiful one at that!

(A poster print of this painting is available here.)

Francesca asks:

What is this woman thinking about?

And, while the woman is thinking whatever she is thinking, how long will it be before she realizes that the little child is about to run off to Cincinnati?

(A poster print of this image is available here.)

Francesca very much likes this woman’s headband, her lipstick, her dog, her taste in wall art, and the gleam in her eye. But unless she is going to garden in her backyard, sister needs a clothing makeover! What would you give her to wear?

(The watermarks do not appear on the “real” image.)

Francesca just loves this superfantastic, sexy image by the Degas, called Woman Drying Herself, perhaps because the woman is shaped like Francesca! (Only Francesca is a little bigger in the tummy and upper arms.)

(You can purchase this image to hang in your bathroom or bedroom here!)

Francesca likes to think that this woman is getting ready for a Big Event, and is about to put on her Tadashi evening gown

and Stuart Weitzman shoes she bought on sale yesterday when she saw them on Manolo for the Big girl

and will flirt all night with her boyfriend, who will be more than happy when they come home and she takes the dress and the shoes off again.

And Francesca will remember to put on some of her Euphoria!

Oh, I mean, the girl in the sketch.

The contemporary American painter, Charles Pace, has created this image which Francesca finds delightful:

It is called Fat Hula Girls, and Francesca loves it. Are they not very buxom and soft? Do they not seem to be having the time of their lives?

Francesca does not know whether Pace meant for his painting of the Fat Hula Girls to be delightful or ironic, but she doesn’t care.  It is a fun painting which, in the eyes of the Francesca, celebrates the Appley goodness of the round, fleshy belly and the fun that can be had with the smooth and squishy upper arms. Francesca wants to dance with these ladies!

(A poster of this image is available from the superfantastic folk at barewalls.com here.)

(Decorating tip: Pair “Fat Hula Girls” on the wall with one of these other images by the same artist; the colors of the paintings recall each other, but the “stone faces” paintings temper the kitch factor of the Hula girls. Of course, the posters would be big attention-grabbers, so best to use them in rooms that are either very minimalist or which have colors that blend well with the art)

Francesca’s last couple of posts, and the comments to them, leave her with an important question: For purposes of this blog, just how big constitutes big?

In recommending plus-size fashions, Francesca’s rule of thumb is that an item of clothing is fair game if it is available in a Size 16 and/or higher. Size 14 is often available in “regular” stores, albeit not as often as size 12, while Size 16 is usually the smallest size available in the plus-size stores. Francesca knows that one could write an entire blog on the travails of the girls who wear size 14, which is often considered too big for the regular stores and too small for the plus-size stores. But she has to make a mental border for herself somewhere. So, for this blog, size 16 is usually it. That is why she sometimes recommends clothing by J. Crew, who are not exactly known for catering to fat girls, because they do have an entire Size 16 section on their site (as well as fashions for the Tall girls, to whom Francesca sometimes wishes to nod and wink), though their failure to offer sizes 18 and up makes Francesca feel a bit squeamish about referring to them too often.

Then we come to the selections for the posts on “Big Girls in Art.” Several readers said that they do not believe that the woman (apparently Salome) in this painting is actually big:

Oh, oh, oh, now we have come straight into the hornet’s nest! For, though this woman  probably does wear a Size 16 or 18 on the bottom (she is a beautiful and voluptuous Pear, and very aesthetically pleasing, and probably has a hard time finding skirts and pants which fit her hips but are not too wide at the waist) Francesca fears, some readers may have looked at this image and thought “if that girl is big, what am I?” They may also have thought “Why is Francesca buying into the Big Bad Media idea that a woman with any fat on her is Big?”

Francesca will answer the second question first. In an ideal world, the Big Bad Media would not categorize people by their size at all. But the whole point of this blog is that our world is not ideal, and women’s whose hips or tummies or breasts are more than an arbitrary size are considered “Big” either in terms of where they can find clothes, or whether they are considered “too big” or “too fat” by others, or both.

The point of Big Girls in Art is to show that indeed that mysterious fault line (and Francesca chooses that term on purpose) is indeed arbitrary. There was a time when the woman with very generous hips was considered the ideal, and was celebrated in what was then The Media. There was a time when having a large butt was so attractive that women wore bustles to make theirs reach out to Indiana. In other words, Francesca wants to demonstrate that the problem is not us, it is this strange, arbitrary idea that thinner is better - an idea started, Francesca thinks, partly because thin women serve as better hangers on which to model the fashions on runways, and partly because having the time and money to maintain a perfectly flat belly indicates wealth in our age. The problem is not us or our genes or our class, it is the time.  Not so long ago, the woman whose genes made her predisposed to the waif-like frame was the one with the problem.

And in answer to the first question . . . if the woman in this painting is big, do you know what you are?

Beautiful.

Francesca thinks the woman in this painting is absolutely stunning and sensuous, and if Francesca were a man she’d totally be [***doing an action the name for which Francesca is censoring upon further reflection, until she figures out how to say it without offending any readers- but she thinks you know what she means****] to images of this very Big Girl . . . except that she does not know what to make of this scene. Is this image sensuous or creepy? Is the woman dreaming? Fantasizing? Grave robbing?

What in the world . . . ?

And yet, it is powerful and beautiful . . .

(A poster print of this painting is available from the fine folks at Barewalls here.)