Image 1
 

Image description: Heads of golden wheat, shown close up, bow under their own weight under a blue sky.

Hi friend, 

 

This week I'm answering a reader question, and the answer is a little long to include here.

 

Reader E. asks, "Dear Lindley, I'm working on accepting my body, but it's so hard to sit at work and have to listen to diet talk all the time. I can tell that I'm being treated differently because my body doesn't fit in with everyone else's. And when we're required to wear shirts with the company logo, there's never one in my size and I either have to squeeze into one that's way too small or be the odd one out. How can I deal with this?"

 

You can read my answer over at Body Liberation Photos.

Warmly,
Lindley

 

P.S. If you'd like to share this week's thought, it exists in blog form here.

My favorite photo this week:

Image 1

Image description: A fat white woman with purple hair, red lipstick and a gray short-sleeved dress is shown from the bust up. She is sitting in the lobby of a large corporate office building. An empty hallway with marble floors and large plants in planters stretches out behind her. 

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Image description: A fat woman with long pink hair is shown in silhouette with her arms raised and head thrown back. The sun peeks out from behind one of her hands above a lake and silhouetted mountains in the background that glow in the sunset. Text overlaid on the image reads, Body Liberation Stock from Body Liberation Photos.

THE NEW BODY LIBERATION STOCK IS HERE

The new Body Liberation Stock is live! This is the culmination of years of work and I'm so delighted to present it to you. Please share it with your friends and colleagues – the more popular the site grows, the more resources will be available to create and add images from every walk of life for a more thorough and useful resource for fat-positive stock imagery.

 

The new site has a REAL, credits-based purchase system, just like iStockPhoto and other major stock photo sites, with real subscription options that will neatly deliver credits to you every month to spend. (And you can, of course, buy images at any time with regular currency as well.)

 

Here are some other great things about the new site:

 

> It’s integrated with the main Body Liberation Photos site, so it’s easier to find

 

> You can access a real My Account dashboard to view remaining credits and re-download images

 

> You can buy credit bundles at a discount and they’ll be automatically added to your account — no more waiting for credit codes to arrive in your email

 

> Contributors will be more easily able to add their own work, which means an increasing variety of fantastic diverse and body-friendly images for you to use

 

> Having a stable, high-quality site will free up my time to caption, tag and post my large backlog of fat-positive stock photos and recruit more contributors

The Conversation

 

A note on image descriptions

One of my areas for improvement this year has been trying to ensure that as many images I use as possible have full image descriptions, so that people who use screen readers or find descriptions otherwise useful have them as needed. 

 

From now on, you'll find that each image featured in the Body Liberation Guide will be paired with an image description. Here's more on image descriptions and how to do them properly across platforms.

Quick Resources: On dealing with fatphobia and other marginalizations at work

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Image description: A fat white woman is shown from the calves down, wearing blue jeans with wide cuffs and red toenail polish. Her feet are bare, with a toe ring tattoo and visible spider veins. She is standing in a puddle on concrete with raindrop circles and orange oak leaves floating around her.

5 Items for a Cold November

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Image description: A screenshot from Superfit Hero's Facebook page with a long section of text above an image of eight fat and superfat people in sports bras and shorts or leggings. Click here to read the original text.

Congratulations on inclusivity, Superfit Hero!

This is how you do it, folks. I'm so proud to add Superfit Hero to the companies I promote as fully inclusive! 

 

I promoted their post, shown above, earlier this week and the responses were really interesting (if occasionally dismaying). There was a surprising amount of pushback (both on my page and on Superfit's) from thin folks who were offended and appalled that a company would dare to serve the largest sizes and not choose to serve people in thin bodies.

 

Given that Superfit is currently the only company serving high-quality, ethically-produced apparel up to 7X (yes, you read that right. Before now, there were zero.), we could spend a few hours on all the ways these outbursts are fatphobic, oppressive and just mean. Instead, here's the world's quickest Q&A:

 

“But if they don't serve allllll sizes, including down to 00, they're not truly inclusive.”

 

Yes, you are technically correct. Congrats! Is that worth ruining the joy for the people who finally, finally have ONE option? Maybe rethink your priorities.

“But my cousin wears a very small size and has trouble finding clothing. This is discrimination.”

 

Refer to my answer above about superfat folks now having ONE option on the planet.

 

“But these are really expensive! That's classist! I'm mad about it!"

 

Yep. You have two choices in apparel: sweatshop-made clothing that's cheap and easy to access, or ethically-made clothing that's…not cheap. Paying people a living wage is expensive. Producing goods ethically is expensive. Producing anything as a small business is expensive, since you lack economies of scale. 

 

If you don't like their pricing and they are the only business that carries your sizing, that sucks and I feel you. (If you don't like their pricing and other businesses serve you, then why are you griping?) I hope that someday very soon superfat folks have just as full a range of apparel in size, pricing, level of quality and style that thin folks have. But in the meantime, the lack of options is the fault of capitalism, racism and fatphobia, not Superfit Hero. Leave them alone.

 

Has talking about this cost you something personally?”

 

Why yes, actually, it has. I do place boundaries around what gets discussed in comments on my social media pages, to protect myself as a human being but also to protect my community from further marginalization.

 

When I posted about Superfit's business change, a number of people wanted to turn it into a gripefest about their pricing. When I asked them to stop and explained that I don't want my Facebook page to turn into a place where companies working toward inclusivity get endlessly bashed, someone was so incensed that they left my business a fake negative “review."

 

If you have worked with me and would like to share your experience, please consider leaving a review on my Facebook page (positive or negative, as long as it's real) to help balance out the revenge review. (I'd ask that you not attack the fake reviewer, since they've already been banned from the page.)

Hi! I'm Lindley.

- she/her

- photographer

- author

 

Image description: Lindley, a fat white woman, is shown sitting in a cafe with salmon-pink walls. She has shoulder-length blonde hair and glasses, and is wearing a black top with a translucent blue-and-white patterned jacket. Her hands are on the tabletop in front of her.

Hi! I'm Lindley.

 

I'm a professional photographer (she/her, pronounced LIN-lee) who celebrates the unique beauty of bodies that fall outside conventional "beauty" standards. I live outside Seattle, WA. 

 

I talk about and photograph fat folks because representation of large bodies in the world is vital to our body liberation.

 

 

People come to me for:

  • Body-safe portrait, boudoir and small business photography sessions
  • Diverse, body-positive stock photos
  • Fat fine art photographic prints
  • Health at Every Size (HAES)-aligned consulting, writing and editing
  • The Body Love Shop, a curated resource for body-positive and fat-positive art and products

Pssst! Did a friend forward you this email? If you'd like to get your own body liberation guide every week, just drop your email address here.

 

You're on this list because you signed up at bodyliberationphotos.com, representationmatters.me, sweetamaranth.com or thebodylovebox.com.

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