colored the little comic, since i felt like it. more doodles too. sorry that they’re in a different art style in each image. i don’t know what happened.
i’m trying to work out dialogue and how each of them talk, so sorry if it’s a bit clunky. keep in mind, though, that they aren’t supposed to be EXACTLY like the trolls’. i’m trying to make them a bit different.
It's honestly such a shame that we've made such a huge thing out of swimming and swimsuits and looking good in swimsuits and fat people not looking good in swimsuits. Swimming is actually the perfect exercise for fat people because it puts zero pressure on the joints, which is a much bigger concern for us than it is for skinny people, and lets you exercise basically every muscle group without straining too much and risking injury. Yet somehow this is one of the least accessible exercises to fat people due to nothing more than a culture of body shaming. The work to unlearn all the shame to be comfortable in a bathing suit in front of strangers is huge even for conventionally attractive people, but I could probably count on one hand the number of fat people I've met who were confident enough to get in a bathing suit and go swimming in public.
And what is the exercise that somehow everyone thinks they should do instead? Jogging. It's more accessible, sure, it's easy and costs nothing to go outside and run. But I need you to understand telling a fat person to go running is basically telling them to go destroy their knees. Not to mention it's probably one of the most physically uncomfortable exercises to do when you have a body that jiggles even with compression garments.
Imagine a world where everyone had the ability and equal access to whatever exercise fit them best and helped them be happy and healthiest. Imagine a world where fat people go swimming.
Before any of the zero reading comprehension bitches get a hold of this post and do to it what they did to my other swimsuit post by saying the most annoying things on the planet: I go swimming. I am not self conscious in a bathing suit. I also don't shave my legs. I'm always the weirdest and most off-putting thing in the pool. I go swimming anyway, because I love it. Telling me "there's nothing stopping you from going swimming, just do it" would be completely missing the point. My point is I would like for it to be easier for others to get where I am, because I know how hard it was to get here.
hi im not even fat just trans and before i went skinny dipping at a PRIVATE arts festival where all-gender nudity was encouraged, i hadn't been swimming in about eight years. this summer was the first summer i got back in the water but you can't have tits and a beard and show both of them near children without risking serious consequences.
this is not to one-up a post on fatphobia but to add to it. our culture is so deeply hostile to people with un-beautiful bodies that it bars a huge percentage of people from living in a way where their inadequacies are not concealed or apologized for. it enacts punishments. we should all be free to go swimming but the body in this culture is a product for everyone else's consumption and by god they'll complain to the manager if they find you distasteful.
I think she has eight gold medals now? Yeah.
It still fucks me up that capybaras are semi-aquatic. They don't look like they should be.
These beasts are so good at swimming
THEY'RE WHAT NOW?????
Yeah they're water animals, they love swimming so much and they are so so good at it
Six of Swords
If you've ever wondered if my swimming tegu gets in the water voluntarily: yes and good luck keeping her out of it.
Sea monster mode activated.
Another sketch brought to you by #Paleostream
Zhuchengtyrannus, swimming with some rays. Note that this piece was done months before the first Prehistoric Planet trailers came out.
It feels somehow unfair that you need a really big volume of hydrogen to lift a human, let alone a building, etc. Oh to live in a world where physics makes it easy to fly..
birds
under water
which makes me feel like not flying is fine, if it’s that or “the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began,” as the moby dick guy put it
You should SCUBA sometime, they do guided dives for uncertified people I think. I dove with my parents as a kid, and learning to move smoothly without flailing or wasting effort + controlling your elevation through depth changes via breath and your prosthetic swim bladder (BCD vest) was like… idk really cool? Swimming is like oh okay you’re swimming, do whatever so you don’t die, your priority is keeping your head within reach of your next breath (JUST LIKE IN MY VIDEO GAMES). Diving is way more like flying, but then you don’t have to constantly stress about going super way fast for lift and then necessarily doing everything over fundamentally-somewhat-unnatural-to-humans long distances. It’s just… a whole different way of locomotion, of being in control of yourself and where you are in space relative to whatever’s holding your interest. Obviously everything else down there is much better at it than you, but you can get as good as it’s possible for a human encased in clunky equipment to be. And you’re not limited by being stuck to the floor jockeying for position with everybody else all on the same plane. It’s generally unpleasant to fully tip upside down without minding your head and doin’ the full brisk somersault, because you get a little seawater in your mask usually and it’ll come threaten your sinuses if you FULLY pretend gravity doesn’t exist, but it’s like… IMMEDIATELY USEFUL TO YOU SOCIALLY to have this extra freedom of being able to float around in 3D at more angles while looking at things. And then when you slog up out of the water and are all heavy again it’s like ‘damn’
lmao
this is crazy
Yeah that’s her.
I wish hippos moved like this on land
what is she doing down there
Swimming. Jeeze. Can’t a girl take a swim without being questioned about what she’s doing???
I love her 😍 Capybaras are actually very aquatic, they have webbed feet to help them swim, give birth in water for safety, and have their eyes, ears, and nares all in a straight line so they can put just those above the water. They’re the mermaids of the rodent world
Me and the Girls Going Out for a Swim
Girls night! Girls night! Girls night! Girls night! Girls night! Girls night!
THIS IS ACTUALLY FACTUAL AND NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED MORE
“Knowing that they were losing “valuable product” due to their slaves’ propensity to swim, slave owners began taking drastic steps to protect their property. One of these steps was to instill a fear of the water by dunking disobedient slaves in water until they nearly drowned and by creating fear through stories of creatures living in the water. Thus it didn’t take long to excise or destroy the West African swimming tradition from African- American culture. The Jim Crow laws that were enacted after The Civil War prohibited blacks from the popular seaside resorts in places like Atlantic City, N.J. and Revere Beach, Mass. And by the 20th Century, as the swimming pool began to gain in popularity in the United States, the color line prohibited blacks from enjoying this pleasant recreational skill.
In addition, self-segregation also played a role in limiting those of African ancestry from getting in the water. I remember my Aunt saying to stay away from the pool because, “black folk don’t swim.””
Such a long and consistent history of anti-Blackness and swimming. Long before police openly assaulted little black girls in McKinney, GoodWhitePeople™ were enforcing White Supremacy and segregating swimming pools.
Next time you hear someone ask questions like, “Why don’t black people swim?” Or “Why are so many black people afraid of dogs?” And, “Why are there do so many black people live in poverty?”…..let ‘em know that those aren’t coincidences. These things didn’t just happen naturally, all on their own. There’s a reason for it, and you don’t have to be an historian to know they’re all interconnected through slavery, endemic racism and persistently racist cultural norms.
always reblog…
ALL OF THIS THO
THIS IS ACTUALLY FACTUAL AND NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED MORE
“Knowing that they were losing “valuable product” due to their slaves’ propensity to swim, slave owners began taking drastic steps to protect their property. One of these steps was to instill a fear of the water by dunking disobedient slaves in water until they nearly drowned and by creating fear through stories of creatures living in the water. Thus it didn’t take long to excise or destroy the West African swimming tradition from African- American culture. The Jim Crow laws that were enacted after The Civil War prohibited blacks from the popular seaside resorts in places like Atlantic City, N.J. and Revere Beach, Mass. And by the 20th Century, as the swimming pool began to gain in popularity in the United States, the color line prohibited blacks from enjoying this pleasant recreational skill.
In addition, self-segregation also played a role in limiting those of African ancestry from getting in the water. I remember my Aunt saying to stay away from the pool because, “black folk don’t swim.””
Such a long and consistent history of anti-Blackness and swimming. Long before police openly assaulted little black girls in McKinney, GoodWhitePeople™ were enforcing White Supremacy and segregating swimming pools.
Next time you hear someone ask questions like, “Why don’t black people swim?” Or “Why are so many black people afraid of dogs?” And, “Why are there do so many black people live in poverty?”…..let ‘em know that those aren’t coincidences. These things didn’t just happen naturally, all on their own. There’s a reason for it, and you don’t have to be an historian to know they’re all interconnected through slavery, endemic racism and persistently racist cultural norms.
