Stylish Doesn't Mean Skinny: Meet The Fatshionistas

Anna Wintour was busy fat-shaming Minnesotans on 60 minutes, the ladies of Fatshionista were uploading pictures of themselves in awesome outfits. Guess what? You don’t have to be skinny to enjoy getting dressed.

Fatshionista, the “fabulous fat girl fashion and size acceptance community,” has almost 1,000 members on Flickr, a LiveJournal community and a blog, where the mission is to “discuss the ins and outs of fat fashions, seriously and stupidly — but above all — standing tall, and with panache. We fatshionistas are self-accepting despite The Man’s Saipan-made boot at our chubby, elegant throats. We are silly, and serious, and want shit to fit.” Right on!

To be honest, while scrolling through the images, it was startling, at first, to see picture after picture of “fat,” plus-sized, or heavy women. Not because of their bodies, or their clothes — they look fantastic — but because I just wasn’t used to it. Street fashion sites like The Sartorialist, Street Peeper and FaceHunter feature people who love getting dressed up, playing with fashion and making their own clothes, but even though they are “real” people and not models, they are, 99% of the time, slender. On “reality” TV, we see people with size 0 bodies in fake situations; even the Dove Campaign For Real Beauty had a Photshop scandal regarding its ads. The world of magazines, TV and movies so often excludes women who are above a size 12 that even though you see these people everyday — at work, on the street, in your family, in the mirror — it still seems odd to see them grouped together, looking stylish on a website. But while it was shocking to see these women, posing and proud, it was also refreshing — you’ve got to love a woman in a pretty dress with a cupcake tattooed on her shoulder. While part of me wonders what Anna Wintour would think of the Fatshionistas, the other part of me is so glad they don’t care.