I don't care what anyone says, soft tummies are cute as fuck.

Not really a fan of Bridgerton, but I am a fan of Nicola Coughlan's response to everyone shitting on her for being "too big" to play a love interest

What makes me so happy about this is that she isn’t telling you you must love your body or that you are obligated to. She saying you have permission to. And that’s important, because there are a lot of reasons why people have trouble with self-love.  But the idea that you aren’t supposed to love your body, that you aren’t allowed to for whatever reason, needs to be crushed. If you can’t love you body right now, if your body causes you pain or disphoria or distress, you aren’t required to love it. But you are ALLOWED to. You are entitled to the chance to make peace with your body, if you ever reach a point where you are ready to. No one else should be trying to stop you.

Sometimes I see or read things, and I didn’t realize that I needed them until they are two GIFs of Nicki Minaj and some amazing commentary that come across my dash and I instantly burst in to tears and feel a weight lifted off my chest.

This is so important.

do you ever see a picture of someone with a body like yours and you’re momentarily comforted like they look pretty good…i probably look good too

hey for everyone reblogging this you should check out http://www.mybodygallery.com/ ! you can do this ALL THE TIME whenever you feel bad and get really specific! please love yourselves! you deserve it.

Wow. This is all kinds of awesome.

I just looked up people my height, my pants size, and about my weight. And all I could think of was that they look beautiful.

I cannot stress how much I needed this. Thank you.

HI. HAVING THOUGHTS. i have stretchmarks. i know its hard to believe because im like, the human equivalent to a twig. but i have them. and i LOOOVE them. so you know what?

shoutout to selfshippers with stretchmarks!!!

to those who got them via fluctuating weight change like me! its not very fun constantly being a weight rollercoaster, whether it was at one point in your life or you still do, but you came out with amazing tiger stripes regardless!!

to those who's stretchmarks are a sign that they got bigger! whether its because youre recovering, you had a sudden weight gain, you've always been big, or youre bigger bodied for some other reason, your stretchies are so cute!!

to those who have them because they got thinner. whether the subject is more sensitive like an ED, or an illness, or you personally really wanted to lose weight, your stretchmarks are awesome!!

to those who's stretchmarks predominately are on their lower halves(also like me), yours are fucking awesome!! whether its on the tummy, the waist, the ass, the thighs(inner and outer!!), the calves, the shins, the knees— your stretchmarks rock!!

to those who's dominate the upper half of their body, fuck yeah your stretchmarks are so amazing!! whether its on the shoulders, the chest area, your actual tits/pectorals/chest area, your upoer arms, your elbows, your forearms— your stretchmarks are stunning!!

i don't know if there are any selfshippers who fit this, but if you're in the community and you've given birth or you've been pregnant, your stretchmarks are such an incredible show of strength!!

to the selfshippers who's stretchmarks are faint!! to the selfshippers who's stretchmarks are vibrant!! to the selfshippers who's stretchmarks are new!! to the selfshippers who's stretchmarks are old!! your stretchies are fucking fantabulous!!

to the selfshippers who are confident and love their stretchmarks and dont mind them!! you fucking go!!

to the selfshippers who aren't as confident and just can't see the beauty in your stretchmarks!! i get it, but that won't fucking stop me from calling you cute!!!! i can only hope you'll see the beauty in them one day :((

to the selfshippers who show them off!! to the selfshippers who don't!! to the selfshippers who honestly dont give a shit!! you're so valid!!

your f/o(s) would LOVE your stretchmarks they are OBSESSED with them!! they may find them cute, they may find them attractive, they may find them hot, they may find them as a sign of strength or growth for you!! they love your stretchmarks so much!! they love to kiss them, they love to feel them, they love to admire them!! your f/os love your stretchmarks!!!

sorry i love stretchmarks so much and they make my world go round. ehehehehe

my tip for drawing plus sized bodies is: You need to make it wider. That's not wide enough. If you think it looks fine, stop and make them wider. A lot of the times people just put a belly on skinny characters and call that good, and yeah some people do look like that, but you have GOT to look at and reference actual fat people to get better at drawing bigger bodies.

anyway i looked up the post about seeing your grandma's boobs and tumblr has deleted the screenshot of the story where the finnish dude says that americans are "like that" because they haven't seen their grandma's tits

good job tumblr 👍

there it is!

my comments on that post were (sorry for shamelessly copy-pasting them):

terfs and radfems not-so-kindly fuck off

Just a reminder about fatphotoref.com—it exists!! I'll be updating with new photos next week and hopefully more regularly after that. Request access by going to bit.ly/fpraccess 💙🧜‍♀️ happy mer may!

i’ll forgive a fat girl for so many annoying things simply because i know how fucking miserable it is to be a fat girl. like. you dont get to exist freely and with any joy until you go through a decades long soul search full of extreme emotional pain OR you nearly kill yourself to become something society might accept. or you toughen up after years of bullying forced you to be more confident. literally there is no painless route to being a fat girl in your 20 somethings. so like. fat girls can be annoying as a treat. you have all been annoying our whole lives

this goes quadruple for fat black girls and fat trans girls btw. literally do not try to tell me anything they do is cringe cuz i’ll demolish you with my giant ass

lizzo truly is a blessing

cast fat people in normal roles that do not revolve around being fat/ridiculed, I dare you

apparently i have so much Gay Love for girls that it broke clean through the other side and became self love.

dismantle the idea that you should love your body because "it works". bodies that don't work deserve love too. disabled and chronically ill bodies are just as deserving of love as abled bodies.

"But NORMAL People's Bodies Didn't Look Like That!" ...right?

Some of you may have seen my post about Baroque artists and their realistic depictions of human bodies as having skin and fat.

I've had a lot of negative and frankly fatphobic comments on that post, calling the people in the paintings "fat" and "obese," mostly along the lines of this:

"It's because the artists are depicting rich people, who were fat and lazy. Normal people didn't look like that!"

The idea, of course, is that these artists wouldn't have ever drawn bodies that looked like those in the Baroque paintings, if they weren't painting super-rich people that stuffed themselves with food all day.

Supposedly. We'll see how well that holds up.

Today I was in the library looking at a collection of drawings by Albrecht Dürer, and learned that in the early 1500's, Dürer tried to put together essentially a "how-to-draw" book, showing how to draw people. His work was controversial, because of his technique of "constructing" figures using rules about proportions. (A quick and easy method of inventing realistically proportioned bodies out of thin air? Cheating!!)

However, in his "constructed" drawings, Dürer had to figure out how to handle the range of variety in bodies, and ended up breaking down how to create a variety of body types in correct proportions.

I'm showing the women, to contrast with the post on Baroque paintings. Here are some of his drawings that I thought y'all should take a look at.

These are a couple of his more "average" women—the one on the left is from his drawing book, and the one on the right is one of his drawings.

Here's a "strong woman" and "A very strong, stout woman"

This is what he refers to as a "stout woman."

Here's where it gets interesting: this is what Albrecht Dürer refers to as a "peasant-type" woman

^That. That's what a "peasant" body type looks like.

He labeled this one "A peasant woman of 7 head lengths"

in case you missed it: this figure drawing by a guy in the 1500's is literally labeled as being of a peasant woman! this is what a "peasant woman" body type looks like!

He did draw similar amounts of thinner figures, but they're not particularly emphasized over the "Strong" and "Stout" figures. Nor is there exactly a "default" figure. He's just...going over the range of variations that there are?

Here's another "stout woman," covered in notes on how to draw the proportions:

now that's too technical for me to make any sense of but

this was in the 16th century!! This body type was apparently not incredibly rare in the 16th century. This body type was important enough for you to be able to draw, as an artist, in the 16th century to be handled in detail in a 16th century artist's drawing advice

In conclusion: yes this is just what people look like, yes it's important to know how to draw fat bodies, even this dude from the early 1500's is telling you so, Die Mad About It

all of this is from "The complete drawings of Albrecht Dürer" by Walter L. Strauss

a lot of people draw fat characters as like Vaguely Round stomach, throw on stretch marks (drawn in a way that stretch marks DO NOT work) and often body hair (for some reason?? like i’m fat and have body hair but it seems like fat artwork is OBSESSED with adding it on as some sort of statement), pert boobs, maybe the glimmer of a double chin, big ol’ thighs cause they’re in vogue rn, and maybe round upper arms

and it’s like… zero acknowledgement of sag

or how you can be fat and have small boobs/ass/thighs/hips

no thick neck along with the double chin

no fat rolls

all fat people are also drawn to have looooong legs as if to apologize for the rest of the proportions

i look at a “fat” character and what i see is just a skinny character with weight added on, even though that’s not how that works

and it’s just very clear to me that some artists want credit for “diversity” but don’t want to actually look at fat bodies. they apologize with hyper feminine outfits or the implication that the fat character is athletic or something. the fat character still has the perfect figure because “well, some fat people DO still have curves like that!”

we’re thicc and thick and “chubby” and plus size.

but we’re never actually fat. even the “largest” characters i have seen drawn are just… larger chubby girls. zero acknowledgement of how fatness actually works.

Anyways! I don’t want this to be a wholly negative post with no takeaway other than “You should feel bad” (but you probably should), so here is what looks like a good resource:

Here’s a link to the tweet.

Too many people base their understanding of fat bodies on plus size models, who are photoshopped, molded with cut outs, and chosen specifically because of how they still fit conventional beauty standards. They are not indicative of how most fat bodies look.

Please take the time to look at fat bodies that aren’t marketable and appreciate them for their own worth, beauty, and fortitude. Do not let fat bodies be alien to you, do not otherize us. This should be normalized.

Fat people deserve art and media that reflect fat bodies honestly. Seeing plus size models as our only rep only ends up setting out a new, impossible goal for fat people. We’re made to feel that we aren’t fat in the right way. It sends the message that you can fail at being skinny AND fail at being fat, which is an awful thing to do. No body is a bad body. All bodies deserve to be seen and to see themselves.

Fat people deserve to be seen as fat people, not as skinny people with added weight.

May I recommend the Morpho book about fat and skin folds! For people who are looking for a source that explains/shows how all the folds and sag actually work and affect the body. I imagine the info provided in this book can work very well paired with those reference photos. The chapters of the books on any topic are always divided into 1. head/neck 2. torso. 3. upper limb. 4. lower limb ( even includes drawing babies)

Holy cow!!! There’s a reference book for artists to draw fat bodies?!?! I’m stunned! This is amazing!!!

Lainey Molnar

My favorite thing about this is that the “traditional” woman isn’t always on the left. By switching it up the artist is really committing to the idea that the right way for a woman to be is however she wants.

Just wish some of the women were plus size..

I really love how much Lainey’s art and positivity is bringing people joy and I really hope you’re checking out her insta, it’s full of so many more

It got better

Okay I haven’t reblogged this addition

this blog 100% supports chubby tummies, arms, and thighs 👀👌👀👌

every time i see people trying to normalize fatness by sexualizing it i think of that post thats like “what are you gonna tell a fucking 12 y/o? dont cry dude youre so thick? stop it” bc like. truly. not only do i personally not want my body to be sexualized lol but also its so harmful to kids like?? being fat is normal in all contexts not just when youre in lingerie with a beat face looking pouty at the camera like can we talk about the variances in human bodies without resorting to making them normal only when theyre sexy, my god

your body is good, not because it is desirable to others, but because you live in it