The Fat Positive Lounge

[LeftWriteFemme]

[Kätzchen]

(Photo Credit: Flickr)


Venus of Willendorf (Wiki-Link)


I spent some time today, reading posts here, which led me to explore the topic of Fat Positivity. My online search culminated in reading about Venus of Willendorf, an stone age female figurine, which was found back in August of 1908, at an paleolithic excavation site near Willendorf, an small village in Lower Austria, near the town of Krems. The figurine was sculpted from Oolitic Limestone, and it is estimated to belong to the time period between 28,000 BCE to 25,000 BCE; but upon later examination, archaeologists believe the core of limestone it came from dates back to 30K years before the figurine's discovery.


To me, she's beautiful. She represents a period of time when there was no mirrors to examine one's physical appearance, yet it's speculated that pools of water was the only way anyone could know what their body's looked like.


Keeping in mind, questions posed by Nycfem, in an prior post in this thread (years ago), I examined the text provided in the wiki-link article, for ideas surrounding fat shaming or phrases of thought revealing shame about the notion of being fat. It's hard to know the gender of the person who created the article on Wiki; but I thought it was an positive sign that one of the curators of the stone age sculpture was female: Catherine McCroid. McCroid hypothesized that figurines, such as this one in particular, was created as an "self portrait" made by women from that time period.


As for fat shaming rhetoric posed by either people in our lives or via things we see in print or by things we observe other's say about women who are fat? I can say that for most of my life, I've been told that I'm morbidly obese, that my fat will kill me, that I'm not beautiful, that if I were not fat, I'd be beautiful.



I say to myself that I'm beautiful. I know that I am beautiful because I choose to cultivate all the qualities and traits I possess to be as beautiful as they can be.... even if by other's standards my idea of beautiful is not beautiful to them. I think what matters the most to me is that although I will never be skinny, and although I may lose some weight, that my fat body is as beautiful as it can be, from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet and end of my toes. I'm kissable. I'm squishy. I'm loveable and valuable as an fat woman. I am the portrait of my own beauty.

Venus of Willendorf inspires me as much as all my sisters in the community.

I believe we are beautiful as we are and I celebrate being fat as a positive sign of our collective self acceptance and unconditional love for the state of existence each one of us experience in our lives every day.

Sending Femme Sister love to all,

Kätzchen

[clay]

Thank you Katzchen for posting & bringing this thread back on main page.

For me, I love BBW women. It is all those beautiful facets of them, I find so beautiful. I always have!

In the last year, I have been made aware that my very own fat (daddy belly) has made me realize just how sexy & comforting my girth, as I lie on my own BBW, is to her. And even more so, just how much a daddy belly is to a femme...... I still smile about that! Thank you all for making me aware of this....I heart you all.

To all who come into the Fat Positive Lounge, let me wrap that deliciousness all over my own self....yummm...just decadent!!

[Kätzchen]

I recently came across a bunch of Fat Positive Podcasts.... and if anyone would like to hear them, here are a few links:

Friend Of Marilyn

Friend of Marilyn (FOM) is a fat positive radio show. It provides counter programming to the normative discourses on fatness and obesity in our culture, hosting conversations in which accepted ideas and stereotypes about fatness are challenged. FOM believes that safe spaces for fat people are important, and the show is committed to providing a forum where fat people get to speak for themselves (not just have their lives thin-splained by others). FOM began in August of 2011, and is celebrating 5yrs by going on a tour around the world. According to the metrics collected by MPR, Friend of Marilyn has over 500 regular listeners, and is ranked in the top 5 programmes produced by the station.



Secret Dinosaur Cult (warning, this podcast is explicit)

A live comedy podcast by comedians Sofie Hagen and Jodie Mitchell, in which they explore identity in order to try and find out who they are - through the medium of dinosaurs. Hilarious, highly addictive and heavily dinosaur-based. SOFIE HAGEN is a stand-up comedian, author and host of 'Made of Human Podcast' and former co-host and co-creator of 'The Guilty Feminist' and a fat activist. JODIE MITCHELL is a stand-up comedian, improviser and a drag king in the drag king troupe Pecs. She is part of the radical and queer stand-up comedy collective The Lol Word.


To find more podcasts of a variety of interest, here is the main page to all types of Fat Positive podcasts:
PlayerFM LINK ( <<<<~~~ click me).