Now Jane Pratt has started a website, xoJane.com, and I am really digging it. Marianne Kirby (from The Rotund) and Lesley Kinzel (from Two Whole Cakes) are both writers there, and I think at least one of their other regular writers is plus-sized. That’s not just one token size ten contributor, that’s multiple people who are straight-up fat. (Back in the magazine days, there was one vaguely curvy girl named, I think, Katy (?), and I always felt like I could relate just a little bit more to her pieces.) The best thing about this is that THEY WRITE ABOUT ALL SORTS OF THINGS THAT DO NOT INVOLVE FATNESS.

Don’t get me wrong, they write great stuff about size issues. Lesley just wrote a piece called What’s Wrong With Fat-Shaming?, addressing those horrible billboards featuring sad-looking fat kids (I saw them in Atlanta last year, too, and I always wonder how the poor “models” feel, being plastered on a billboard, children, and being held up as some sort of example of what’s wrong with the world.) I also enjoyed her recent piece about Tim Gunn:

His comments are ultimately the same old body-loathing crap we hear all the time, wrapped up in faux sympathy, and therefore I must take issue with Gunn’s self-applied title of “advocate for larger women” as I believe his words do those women more harm than good. Especially when Gunn says of one woman on the new show, “…she’d been overweight her entire life and never known a normal, slim and sexy body.” (Emphasis mine.)

Check out the body politics tab for more (not just from Lesley, but from other contributors as well). But Lesley has also written about Downton Abbey and collecting things and tampons, and Marianne has written about eloping and fan fiction and Anne of Green Gables. I have no idea how the site works, but it doesn’t seem like “you’re our Fat Contributor, so please write about fat,” more like “you’re a contributor, please write about what interests you.”

I have to say tha I would love to see some more contributors of color, but the site is really doing something right by us plus-sized readers. So thank you to xoJane for having some real size diversity among your staff.

I always cringe a little when the designers get to choose their models for these types of challenges, because often it’s the largest woman left standing. And indeed, the first designer to pick chose a woman mostly because she was skinny, and said something to that effect. And yes, the largest woman was the last one picked. (And I think the second largest was the second-to-last one picked. Sigh.)

Then this poor girl (who was super cute) ended up in a horrible, unflattering, hideous dress, with a horrid hairdo, which made me embarrassed for all fat girls everywhere. (You can’t see the full horror of the dress in this shot because off the little shrug. It actually doesn’t look so bad here. But if you saw the episode, you know: it was tragic.) The public got to vote on the designs, and this dress got one sole pity vote, from another plus-sized woman. That’s right, fat sisterhood, represent! A very interesting moment. Anyway, the whole thing was insane.

Then I got home and found an email waiting for me in my inbox from a BFD tipster who wishes to remain anonymous. Here’s what she had to say about the episode:

We all know the fashion industry is fat-phobic, but “Project Runway” was particularly vile tonight. They had a full-figured gal on one of the challenges as a model (she was like, maybe a size 16!) and the designers all behaved as though she was impossible to design for. The guy who created a dress for her…vacillated between total contempt, self-pity and then faux enthusiasm for having to make a dress for a normal-sized woman. The whole thing was vomitrocious.

Hee. “Vomitrocious.” And that’s not even getting into how needlessly nasty people are being to the very sweet Michael C. So did any of you guys see the episode? What did you think?

Why he went on the show:

[I]t was just about the life experience. When else is someone going to hand me money to and pay me to lose weight? And It’s driving a lot of people to my site who had never been to my site before and they get to see my stuff. Fuck it, I want to have life experiences. I had a paid vacation in L.A. where all I had to do was work out and get every meal delivered to my front door for 3 months. I mean, who wouldn’t want to do that?

I love when celebrities articulate the realities of their weight loss. Because for a lot of these celebs (especially ones who have babies and then are on the cover of magazines a week and a half later all, “How She Dropped The Baby Weight!”) weight loss becomes their entire job. A chef makes them food, and all they have to do all day is work out. Jay McCarroll doesn’t usually have that life, but a lot of celebrities do. So his outside-looking-in perspective is interesting to me.

On being back in the real world:

Now it’s just a matter of finding a balance. Because I’m back in a world that has bread.I know I’m never going to be 150 pounds and I’m never going to have a six-pack and I needed to get over that.

On making his weight a public issue:

Oh, yeah. People have been very positive about it. That’s the only thing that worries me. You’re a public figure and you lose weight on television and everyone’s happy for you and then you gain the weight back and it’s a whole other story.I don’t want that to happen. I also know reality, like today I had a six-hour meeting about my new fabric line and I didn’t have time to like, sit down and have grilled salmon and then head off to the gym. I was occupied with other things. Now it’s a matter of working it deeply into my schedule. I have to.

I think celebrities who lose weight on TV kind of make the proverbial deal with the devil. Because you have an audience, and people rooting you on, and then suddenly that audience feels ownership in your results. And so then you’re like Carnie Wilson or Kirstie Alley, constantly having to publicly humble yourself and beg forgiveness for gaining the weight back.

And finally, on the fashion world:

You don’t feel beautiful, but you feel drawn to beautiful things and you want to make beautiful things and have beautiful things all around you so people won’t notice that you’re not beautiful. That’s where I ended up. I wanted to be in a place where I felt like I could add beauty to the world because I felt like I had no beauty to offer the world myself. But then getting to that track in fashion and getting to that place where what is considered beautiful is completely repulsive to me, i.e., Kelly Cutrone and her world, there’s nothing beautiful about that. It isn’t real. Fashion week and all that stuff, when you’re a fat teenager, that’s what you aspire toward.

But when you’re an adjusted 30 year old, that stuff doesn’t look beautiful anymore. And that’s just how I feel about it. It’s just a circus of dysfunctional fucking people who have low self esteem and body image issues. Fashion is full of people who drink coffee and smoke cigarettes for a meal.

My dream is still for Jay to go out and do a plus-sized line. Because come on, how fabulous would that be?

Christina Hendricks has the kind of fabulous bod that most designers wouldn’t know how to handle. Any time Project Runway throws the contestants a challenge to make clothes for mothers, or divorcees, or generally people who aren’t 5’10″and 100 lbs, they all start wailing and moaning that it’s not what their designs are about and it’s so haaaard, and blah blah blah. I always want Tim Gunn to come in and yell at them that if they can’t handle actual people’s bodies, then they have no business making clothes at all, because guess what? Sometimes people who eat carbs also want to shop and wear things on their bodies.

The New York Times, however, didn’t like the dress.

Cathy Horyn, a style blogger at the Times… quote[d] a stylist who said, “You don’t put a big girl in a big dress. That’s rule number one.” And seemingly to drive home the point of just how terribly big Hendricks really is, the Times ran an altered photo of her (left image) making her appear broader than normal.

After complaints from readers, as well as some bad press, the original photo was replaced (right photo) along with an update explaining that it “was slightly distorted inadvertently due to an error during routine processing.” Sure. Forget the distorted photo; I’d like an explanation for Ms. Horyn’s distorted view of the female body.

I think it’s clear that the photo was distorted and it was probably inadvertent. But would we call her a “big girl”? And if we did, is that so bad? And do you hate the dress on her? (I love the dress, but not so much the color on her.) And is she the hottest woman alive, or what? Discuss!

I knew about Madison magazine from Project Runway Australia, as it is the Elle/Marie Claire of that show (“The winner of Project Runway will receive a spread in Madison magazine…”). Now Beautiful You has a post about the plus-sized celebrities who posed nude for their October issue. More pictures at the link; mildly NSFW.

The woman pictured here, Fiona, apparently lost a lot of weight on The Biggest Loser, regained it, and then settled at this current weight. The photos are lovely, but I particularly enjoyed Beautiful You’s articulate critique of this Daily Telegraph article, which chose to report on the Madison spread in a divisive way.

While I do like the magazine spread and what it’s trying to achieve, I must admit to loathing the way the Daily Telegraph has reported on it. Why is it necessary to proclaim that this story means “the size zero backlash has arrived.” How gross and banal. Such reporting only serves to say that if we embrace people other than a size zero, this then means that body shape is not ok. That’s not what this is about at all. Many people are naturally thin, just as many people are not. This should be about encouraging people to have an appreciation for their own particular size and beauty and recognise that it is possible for everyone to feel great about themselves not matter what dress, jean or bra size they may wear. It should not involve beating up on any particular ‘size’ and therefore person.

The article also mentions this ridiculous Marie Claire competition that asked readers to ‘vote’ on their favourite body type from a range of women ranging from thin to what would be considered a plus model size. Once again, this serves no purpose except to get women to compare body types (a known killer of positive body image development) and ‘pick’ what is best. Don’t you get it media? The best body shape for anyone is the one they feel happy with and can only be chosen by them, not you. No-one else gets to judge or vote on what that body shape is and we don’t need you to tell us people supposedly ‘prefer’ women to not be too thin. That’s not newsworthy at all so why the nasty competition?

Maybe we can start the size-zero-backlash backlash.

Via Feed Me!

First, we have Yopie (yes, that’s like Mopie-with-a-Y, only pronounced Yo-pee) Stafurik, who is permanently on crutches due to having childhood polio. She says of her design skills, “I’m fucking good.” See her at 3:10. And then fat chick Kellyanne Russell shows up at 3:53 or so, and wins my heart completely with this:

“My name is Kellyanne Russell, I am 31 years of age. Being a bigger girl has really shaped the way I look at the world. I mean, I don’t believe you need to be a certain size or a certain shape to feel sexy. My butt is just the price I have to pay for having such great tits. Really. Sorry… am I allowed to say that?”

I love my small-breasted sisters too, of course, but as a well-endowed fat chick, I could relate, and it made me laugh. Kudos to Project Runway Australia for their casting diversity. Go fight win, Yopie and Kellyanne!

(P.S. Their challenges are waaaaaay better than the boring ones on this season of Project Runway America, yawn.)

I absolutely love this show, it is definitely among my top five on my can’t miss TV list. I love the creativity and vision that each designer brings to the show. Watching them create always ignites my passion for fashion on a whole new level. I always wished I possessed the skill to create fashion masterpieces of my own. But since I do not, I always watch in envy of the designs the contestants conceptualize and create. This season I feel I have a whole new reason to watch. I am a champion of designers who don’t shun the idea of creating art for a larger canvas, so to speak. I hope her presence in some small way will bring some inspiration to plus size fashion.

In the first episode, Qristyl said, “I don’t call it plus-sized, I call it plus-sexy!” Although I can’t help but love the sentiment, as the Project Rungay boys pointed out:

Can we just say, that from a former copy editor’s perspective that drives Tom completely nuts? It makes no sense. If she had said “I don’t call it plus-sized, I call it SEXY-sized,” THAT makes perfect sense. And a cute little tagline. “Plus-sexy?” That doesn’t mean anything.

You can see Qristyl’s second design here. I liked the second a lot better than the first, although I still don’t think she’s as talented as my girl Jessica Biffi. Have you guys been watching the show? What do you think of the designers so far?

For six years it’s been skinny-minis and good-looking bachelors, and that’s not what the dating world looks like,” Fox president of alternative Mike Darnell said. “Why don’t real women — the women who watch these shows, for the most part — have a chance to find love too?”

The project has a similar format to “The Bachelor,” where a group of woman compete for one man (producers describe him as a “Kevin James-type”)

There’s that “real women” label that we all are kind of starting to hate. Skinny women are “real women” too, no matter how much Boxox and silicone they have going on. Anyway.

“More to Love” was inspired by the recent ratings success of “Bachelor” and the popularity of NBC’s “The Biggest Loser,” which Darnell credits with shattering an industry assumption that TV viewers only wanted to watch highly attractive people.

“This show is going to get a lot of people talking,” Darnell said. “It may be a little controversial, but I think it will mostly be positive. This is so simple and so obvious, yet it has never been done.” Broadcast reality-dating shows such as the CW’s “Beauty and the Geek” and NBC’s “Average Joe” have featured less-than-handsome men but paired them with model-esque women.

“Most of the country isn’t a Size 2,” Fleiss said. “It’s the dating show for the rest of us.”

Contestants will do the sort of activities seen on “Bachelor,” but producers suspect Jacuzzi or massage dates will take on a different perspective. “More to Love” will have makeover aspects — when contestants wear ballroom gowns, for instance — but Fleiss said the focus will not be on physical improvement. “We want to send the message that you can be the size you are and still be lovable,” he said. “We aren’t going to thin these girls down so they can find love — that’s a backwards message.”

But Fleiss has left open the possibility of twists. “

I don’t know about you, but given the “twists” and the “makeover aspects” and the “new perspective” of scenes in the Jacuzzi, I’m scared. I’d rather watch Jessica Biffi on Project Runway Canada. Let me tell you how refreshing it is to see a genuinely plus-sized girl on reality television. It is SO GREAT. (Here is the first episode, and you can see Jessica at 2:17.)

Via Defamer.

Spurred on by a spike in reality TV shows promoting extreme dieting, women are once again being encouraged to jettison the pounds and emulate the waif-like proportions of Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham.

An American size zero is … the average measurement of an eight-year-old girl. But a renowned eating disorders expert says that the media’s fascination with stick-thin celebrities and the promotion of extreme dieting can lead to dangerous eating habits and potentially fatal illnesses such as anorexia nervosa…

“As people look at thin models they want to take on that body [image]. But the bottom line is that the models, in risking their own lives by doing this, are through identification encouraging the young girls and other young women to want to do the same.”

And while we’re on the subject, remember Model Maker? The show that seems to encourage eating disorders, whose auditions were sponsored by, of all things, Torrid? It keeps getting worse, as MTV says in defense of its show:

“Women come in all shapes and sizes, but models don’t,” says the MTV statement. “Skinny, no body fat and size zero are the words and phrases associated with models. Chubby, well-fed and big-boned are not.”

As if I wasn’t angry enough already at MTV and at Torrid, it just keeps getting more gross. And if you follow the link to the original article, you’ll see the title of this post is a paraphrase of Janet Dickinson, who on her show wanted her models to “come down with anorexia.” Please, do not let this show anywhere near your television sets, or your daughters. This is so gross.

The premise of the show is that a dozen or so contestants are competing in complicated challenges and puzzles, trying to put money into the pot. In the meantime, one of them is secretly the Mole, whose job is to conduct subtle sabotage. So players are all trying to earn money for the pot, draw suspicion to themselves as being the Mole so people are misled, and trying to figure out the identity of the actual Mole. Sounds simple, right? Sure. Sounds totally irrelevant to this blog? Well, not quite. Spoilers for the final episode of The Mole after the jump.

So the Mole turned out to be Craig Silke, the season’s “bumbling fat guy” (his photo can be seen here). From the TWoP recap:

So how did Craig do it? And what did he sabotage? His strategy was to be the fun, lovable guy, and it worked. He wanted people to think he was trying but incompetent. In the waterfall mission, Craig dropped the bag as he was told, and people cheered for him anyway… Craig admits that he played into the stereotype of the jolly, dumb, fat guy.

I was struck by the same thing when I watched the finale. Craig said that people might not expect a “large guy” to be especially athletic or smart. So he befriended everyone and played into the stereotypes, in the end, fooling almost everybody, turning out to have been a lot more intelligent and competent than he let on, and turning the fat stereotype on its head a little bit. It was a very satisfying ending to a satisfying season of a good show.

It also made me think about fat people on reality television, and how they’re portrayed in general. Apart from those on shows like The Biggest Loser, where their fat is the point, not a lot of fat contestants come to mind. Richard Hatch, who won the first season of Survivor, had lost a lot of weight before going on the show, if I recall correctly. And on American Idol, we’ve had Mandisa and LaKisha and Jennifer Hudson. On Project Runway this season, we have Korto, who is not all that large, but who designs for plus-sized women. And that’s all that comes to mind. I’m guessing you all watch different reality shows than the ones I do: is there anything or anyone that I’m overlooking? Or is Craig in a league of his own?