Sunday links, 6/29/14

A tiny, sleepy husky puppy I met while waiting in line for ice cream at my friend’s birthday party. 🙂

Congratulations to my friends Liz and Ian who are getting married today! (Yes, I scheduled this post in advance.)

Fa(t)shion
-Re/Dress interviews Shawna of Chubby Cartwheels, whose designs they are now carrying.
–A new plus size fashion magazine launches in South Korea.
-It’s ModCloth’s one-year anniversary of carrying plus sizes, and they have run a survey of their plus size customers. Marie read the survey results and wondered, Why is trendy plus size fashion so rare, especially when it’s proven extremely effective? In non-fatshion-related but adorable ModCloth news, check out this golden retriever who works in their office. So jealous!
-Australian brand City Chic will be opening a few stores in the US this fall. The initial stores will be in California, but I hope they will expand to other areas soon.
–Georgette, Sandra, and Gaelle post some highlights from New York Full Figured Fashion Week 2014. I would love to go someday!
–How do I dress like a grown-up, androgynously?
–100 most stylish DapperQs of 2014.
–A roundup of queer wedding style, and even more inspiration: the amazing amazing blush pink tulle gown and pink and white suit of this couple. (Also, as a fellow Jew, I love seeing them put their own spin on Jewish wedding traditions, like the breaking of a wineglass–it’s traditionally done by the groom, but here both brides are doing it.)
-Leah rounds up gorgeous retro floral dresses from Lady V London.They come in sizes UK 14-32 (US 10-28), and I kind of want them all.
-These 1920’s style prom outfits made from duct tape are amazing.
-Oaklanders, get ready for the Cupcakes and Muffintops fatshion extravaganza!
-Portlanders, check out Summer Strut: A Fat Fashion Show.
-Sheri rounds up 18 plus size white dresses. I especially like #s 3 and 7.

Ragen’s More Cabaret being awesome:

Fat Acceptance
-Two great posts: Is staying thin easy? It doesn’t matter and Is being thin healthy? It doesn’t matter.
-Charlotte describes her experiences at the Allied Media Conference, and Amanda posts a speech she gave there.
–Scientists say they may have underestimated fat hatred. I say, “yup!”
-Why is there always so much fat-pos awesomeness on the West Coast? If you’re lucky enough to live in Portland, check out the first Chunky Dunk of 2014 and Jelly Roll: a body positive dance party!
-Musings on unruly bodies.
–Because it’s my body.
–21 body positive tattoos + inspiration.
-On fat gay pride.
-Lindy tried to eat like Gwyneth Paltrow for a week, and reflects on how it felt to do that as a fat person.
-It makes me happy that this chocolate Venus of Willendorf exists.
-Ragen takes apart what’s wrong with the saying, “It’s ok to be fat, as long as you’re healthy.”

Everything Else
-Particularly appropriate for this weekend: Why do we care about weddings? I just finished reading Jen Doll’s book, and it’s really good.
-Reflections on the future of coming out.
-”We are organically making the defiant and joyful worlds that cannot be defined and will be sustained.”
–I was a teenage Wolverwine: on superheroes and disability.
–The Jews of Williamsburg: reflections on the smallness of New York, creating your own weird and magical world, and how different worlds overlap.
-I love this art project of toys saying things to other toys.
-This is a great idea: San Francisco Mission District tenants turning Victorian home into a co-op to avoid Ellis Act eviction.
–May we all pursue happiness. #Pride
-Gorgeous images of Iceland in winter.

More awesome fat dancing!

Sick of fat-phobic culture? Fat-positive bunny to the rescue!

Even though I’m lucky in that I rarely encounter fat-shaming from people in my everyday life, I still see it in the culture all around me, and sometimes it just gets exhausting.

Here are three things I’ve seen or read lately that pissed me off, and my response: a fat-pos meme I made from a picture of an adorable chubby bunny that I saw at a town fair last fall.I have included the original picture at the end, so you can use it to make your own images and spread the cute-animal love.

1.) This “invitation to dialogue” about “obesity” in the New York Times. Warning: the letter is jam-packed with extreme fat-shaming; read at your own risk.

The Times invited its readers to respond, and said they’ll publish the responses in the Sunday Review. It’s great opportunity for educating people about fat acceptance and Health At Every Size; if I could have mustered the sanity points, I would have written my own response.

But even as I appreciate the opportunity for activism, I hate that we need it at all. I hate that the very existence of bodies like mine is up for referendum in our nation’s best-known newspaper. I hate that we keep being asked to prove that our bodies have the right to exist without shame or stigma. I wish people would just stop making assumptions about people based on how they look, and start understanding that all bodies are good bodies.

2.) This device, which the FDA is likely to approve, which curbs the appetite by sending electric shocks to the stomach.

As my friend Jessica commented when I posted the link on Facebook,”So wait…if you never feel ‘hungry,’ how are you supposed to know when to eat? Oh wait, I forgot, it’s more important to listen to society’s judgment than to listen to YOUR OWN BODY.”

3.) This sign, which I saw at a mini-golf/bumper boats/petting zoo place where I went for a friend’s birthday:

*sigh*

Wednesday Fa(t)shion Inspirations, 6/25/14

Girl on the Go with a Fro

Musings of a fat girl…

Sunday links, 6/22/14

Fa(t)shion
-My new favorite Tumblr: Fat Babes in Crop Tops.
–A fat-booty butch buys a suit on a budget.
-Huzzah! Gisela Ramirez’s shop–home of the infamous “F*ck Flattering” crop top–is finally open again.
-Beck Poppins has put together a guide to dressing like her–that is, with lots of platform shoes, ethereal nightgowns, feminine dresses, and fun accessories.
–School dress codes are vehicles for body-shaming, and it’s time to do something about it.
–For women’s office wear, who’s making the rules?

Fat Acceptance
–I’m fat, and I’ll eat whatever I damn well please.
-A distressing story of a woman who left science due to fat stigma. It always makes me sad to read stuff like this, but I’m glad she’s speaking up.
-Peggy Elam writes about Pearlsong Press, the fat-positive publishing company she founded.
–Dr. Oz was censured for pushing diet products. It’s about time!
-Leah writes about why she’s ok with calling herself fat. I agree 100%!
-Can we get even a moment of peace from concern-trolling about our bodies?

Jobs and the Economy
-A recap of CommonBound, a new economy conference that took place here in Boston. It sounds amazing, and I wish I could have been there–I definitely want to go next year.
–How to write a new organizing playbook.
–I was a digital best-seller–and I barely made any money.
–How inequality shapes the American family.
–The teaching class: teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone paying tuition should care.
–Our deadly culture of overwork.
Friends without benefits: how companies are asking potential hires to spend months interacting on social media in hope of a job offer.
–How the other half dies.
–Don’t drink Starbucks’ “free college” PR stunt. Tressie McMillan Cottom has more analysis of the plan.
–Why can’t college be free?
–#YesAllWomen deserve economic opportunity.
–The true cost of money hidden in tax havens.

OOTD: A spring wedding

This is what I wore to my cousin’s wedding over Memorial Day weekend. I spent a lot of time trying to find something more spring-y/floral/frothy/floaty, but was ultimately unsuccessful. I even bought a custom-made mauve tutu that I was hoping to wear over a black dress, but it ended up being so poofy that there was no way I could wear it without knocking over everything around me. (It’s still awesome, though–I will definitely wear it sometime when I go to an event with more space to move around.) So I went with this, which was my backup dress, and it ended up working out really well.

Dress: Macy’s, shoes: Clarks, clutch: eBay, rose bangle: H&M, rhinestone wristband: So Good, silver rose ring: ancient, pink rose statement ring: The Tiny Teapot, necklace, earrings, and hair bow: Forever 21

I got this dress a few years ago and weirdly, it’s a size 14. I’m not sure why I even tried it on, but I’m glad I did. 

Tutus and Tiny Hats turns two (say that three times fast!)

A little over two years ago, I was thinking of starting a blog. I had a bunch of things I wanted to write about, but no idea for a cohesive theme–until I settled on fatshion. Over time, my blog has come full circle: starting with fatshion gave me the structure and pressure-free space I needed to start writing about all sorts of other things, from post-growth economics to climate change to sustainable travel.

Just having a place to write opened up a world of thing I needed to say. And it has also made me a more engaged blog reader. I’d been reading blogs since college, when I got deep into the feminist blogosphere (which eventually led me to Shapely Prose and fat acceptance), but rarely commented until I started blogging myself. And after years of haphazard blog-reading, I finally got organized, collecting the blogs I wanted to follow first in Google Reader and then Feedly.

Through blogging, if somewhat indirectly, I’ve gotten involved with my local fat community, and started the Boston Fatties Meetup Facebook group. Having a real-life fat-positive community is awesome, something I could only have imagined back in my Shapely Prose-reading days.

Strangely enough, back when I was so into SP and other fat-o-sphere blogs, I never got into the fatshion side of things. I’m still kicking myself for not joining the Fatshionista LiveJournal back in the day–I’m pretty sure I was at least vaguely aware of it, and I’m not sure why I didn’t think to join. But whether or not I was consciously thinking about fatshion, I always enjoyed dressing up and adorning myself. I can trace my love of clothes back to the (floral skirt show and tell, ll bean catalogs – poring over the rainbows of color options)

I see my blog as a culmination of so many things: my lifetime love of color and adornment, the writing skills I learned in high school and a variety of creative arts camps, the feminist blogs I read endlessly in college, the ways I learned to think about social structures through my sociology classes (especially Wealth and Poverty with Robert Reich).

Sometimes blogging feels almost like writing poetry. Sometimes I recognize that cycle of frustrations and highs from the days of writing papers and essays–that near simultaneous combination of, “Ugghh, I hate writing” and “Woohoo, I love writing!” Other times it’s just about describing what I wore and when I wore it, and that’s ok too. This blog isn’t meant to be a showcase of my best writing; it’s more like a snapshot of my life, including both the eloquent moments and the times when I just want to look at pretty things.

That’s one of the reasons why, a few months ago, I changed my tagline to a famous line from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” I might change it again at some point. I might even change the name of my blog to better represent the variety of things I write about, although I really do like the name Tutus and Tiny Hats. And of course, I still love actual tutus and tiny hats!

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this ongoing journey: my readers and commenters, the bloggers who inspire me, everyone who has engaged with my blogging and its real-world extensions in ways large and small. I am so glad to be part of a fabulous, fatshionable, world-bettering community with all of you.

Wednesday Fa(t)shion Inspirations, 6/18/14

My Foxy Fashion

The Curvy and Curly Closet

Meghan Trainor’s “All That Bass”: body-positive anthem?

I’ve been seeing a lot of hype for this song as the “body-positive anthem of the summer,” and my feelings about it are pretty mixed. First off, the song is fun and catchy, and I love the pastel outfits and set design. So many flower crowns! So much tulle! It’s incredibly aesthetically appealing.

I think it’s great that there’s a fat guy dancing, even doing a split near the end of the video–hell yes for fat athleticism!–but I wish there was even one genuinely fat woman featured. The singer and her backup dancers are only slightly larger than the media ideal, maybe in-betweenies at most. It’s just one of many, many “body-positive” projects that focus on smaller fat or not-even-fat women, and I’m so over that.

I’m also so over the song’s heteronormative focus on appealing to men, with lines like, “Yeah, my momma she told me don’t worry about your size/She says, boys they like a little more booty to hold at night.” Really? In 2014, we’re still supposed to base our self-esteem on what men (supposedly) like?  And the reference to “skinny bitches,” sigh.

Personally, my body-positive anthem will always be GabiFresh’s #everyBODYisflawless.

Sunday links, 6/15/14

Maple bacon donut = HEAVEN.

Fa(t)shion
-Leah is organizing a challenge called Outfit August, which is like Fatshion February but focused on re-using and re-purposing items you already have. I will be participating, although I’m not sure yet to what extent–it depends on how much time/energy I have, and how much the hot muggy August weather takes away any desire I have to be fashionable.
–Scarlett & Jo uses bloggers ad models for their new collection, and other brands should probably follow suit.
-Good news: Wet Seal will be extending its plus size line to a bunch of stores this summer, including two in the Boston area.
-Re/Dress is now carrying exclusive items from Chubby Cartwheels, including two pastel lace skirts that I’m in love with.
-This fat babe sweatshirt is so cute. And would go really well with either of the aforementioned lace skirts!
-Georgina of Cupcake’s Clothes is selling hand-made clothes. Huzzah!
–This high schooler turned her prom dress into a work of art.

Fat Acceptance
–I’m cute, fat, and living.
–Can we please stop body-shaming ourselves and each other as a form of female bonding?
-A comic about dealing with street sizeism.
–Seriously, weight loss doesn’t work.
–Why isn’t obesity research better known?
-Help fathlete Kelly Leo Gneiting swim the Anacapa Channel.

Climate and Sustainability
–Welcome to West Port Arthur, Texas, ground zero in the fight for climate justice.
-Two great responses to Ezra Klein’s privileged pessimism on climate change: Three reasons you shouldn’t lose hope on climate change and Why it’s still not “game over” for global warming.
–A new environmentalism for an unfractured future.
–Cowboy and Indian Alliance plant sacred Ponca corn in the path of the Keystone XL pipeline.
–Protesting coal with cupcakes = my kind of activism.
–Yes, black people talk about climate change.
–Rite of passage: a father and son explore a changing landscape.
–Kid play zones in parks: “Leave no trace” inhibits fun and bonding with nature.
–The real triumph of the city will be seen in Buffalo.

How We Live: A Journey Towards A Just Transition from Kontent Films on Vimeo.

Wednesday Fa(t)shion Inspirations, 6/11/14

Cid Style File

Femme Queen