Fat girls are pretty too!

A student at my school recently did a photo project that is very fat-positive and I just wanted to share with you all. I think it's great! Apparently so did our local newspaper because the story was on the front page today.

Source

Adjusting Expectations
NIU student juxtaposes images of plus-size models and their thinner counterparts
By Dana Herra - dherra@daily-chronicle.com

With a bold headline saying “Voluptuous Women Wanted,” the posters that appeared on the campus of Northern Illinois University last month were hard to miss.

The posters went up in February, recruiting women for a photo project by NIU graduate student Kristen Lou Herout, who is determined to show there is no reason models in fashion magazines should all be stick-thin. Herout is re-creating at least 30 ads from magazines like Cosmopolitan and Elle using the same poses and the same lighting but replacing the waifs in the ads with plus-size women.

“While the country is getting heavier, models are actually getting skinnier. Miss America contestants are getting lighter,” she said. “I want them to be more realistic.”

Though she goes by “Lou,” Herout used her first name on the posters “so people wouldn't think I was a creepy guy trying to take pictures of women,” she said. In late February she began shooting the first of 10 models ranging from size 12 to 24.

“I'm a heavyset girl. Dieting has always been on my family's mind since

I was a little girl, and I always just thought it was silly,” Herout said. “I want to be happy, to be healthy, to be able to go hiking and go running and do all the fun stuff. If I can do that, I'm OK if I'm heavier than what I see in the media.”

The cultural ideal has swung so far out of whack, Herout said, that photos of even the thinnest models are digitally altered before running in magazines.

“If a supermodel can't be proud of her own body, I don't know who else can,” she said.

Advertisements can negatively affect people, according to Jean Kilbourne, author of “Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel.”

The average American is exposed to more than 3,000 advertisements a day and watches three years' worth of television ads in the course of a lifetime, according to information on Kilbourne's Web site, http://www.jeankilbourne.com/.

“Ads sell a great deal more than products,” according to the “Lectures” portion of Kilbourne's Web site. “They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy. They tell us who we are and who we should be.”

Though there has been a slow shift in recent years toward celebrating all body types, Herout feels it doesn't go far enough. Ad campaigns like the Dove Real Beauty campaign may show heavier women, but they're not photographed in the same sexy way as thinner models, she said. And though the women in those ads may be heavier than typical models, they would not be considered big by the general population, she said.

“In bridal magazines, they'll throw in a token plus-size bride who's like a size 10, and she's always smiling against a bright backdrop,” Herout said. “But the skinny brides are shot with the dark expressions and exotic makeup and complex backdrop. ... (Dove) is throwing all these big women at you, but they're not shot in the same sexy way as the thin models, and they're set apart like, ‘Look at us, we're using fat models.'”

Because the photos Herout is shooting replicate real ads, they don't focus on the women's size, she said, and in some cases a viewer can barely tell the model is a size 12 and not a 2. After the project is completed, she hopes she can show it in a gallery.

“I would absolutely love to see it displayed,” she said. “I just want big women to be represented. Just give us a fair shot and decide later on if it worked.”