A&F – Attractive & Fat

How badass is this?

Jes over at The Militant Baker has posted the most gorgeous and smoldering retort to Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries.

In her letter she challenges A&F’s fat-hating and sexist business practices,

The only thing you’ve done through your comments (about thin being beautiful and only offering XL and XXL in your stores for men) is reinforce the unoriginal concept that fat women are social failures, valueless, and undesirable.

she comments on current marketing perspectives of beauty and attraction,

Never in our culture do we see sexy photo shoots that pair short, fat, unconventional models with not short, not fat, professional models. To put it in your words: “unpopular kids” with “cool kids”. It’s socially acceptable for same to be paired with same, but never are contrasting bodies positively mixed in the world of advertisement.

and then stars in a jaw-dropping, sultry, sexy photo shoot by Liora K Photography, shot in the style of the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog and advertisements. You get one teaser here – for the rest, go visit the Militant Baker.

A&F

Jes in an embrace with model John C. Shay, giving the camera a dark glance as Shay lifts her chin towards him. This is one of many shots that shows off Jes’s tattooed, curvalicious bod. All of the displayed set is in black and white. Many of the other photos feature Jes wearing an Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt.

In the letter she explains her motivations for the project:

I didn’t take these pictures to show that the male model found me attractive, or that the photographer found me photogenic, or to prove that you’re an ostentatious dick. Rather, I was inspired by the opportunity to show that I am secure in my skin and to flaunt this by using the controversial platform that you created. I challenge the separation of attractive and fat, and I assert that they are compatible regardless of what you believe. Not only do I know that I’m sexy, but I also have the confidence to pose nude in ways you don’t dare.

To end the set, Jes gives Jeffries the bird, as so many of us have.

Hat tip to C. Brown on Facebook for the link to the Buzzfeed article about Jes’s blog.

A&F – Attractive & Fat
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Photoshopping Our Perception of Beauty

We’ve heard that celebrity/modeling photography and Photoshop go hand-in-hand, but how many of us can visualize what that actually means? Much kudos and thanks to Jason Thibeault at Lousy Canuck for his article, Teaching girls that pretty isn’t pretty enough, in which he gave some examples of the unrealistic body images and ideas of beauty that are planted in our brains by the media, and how these software-designed bodies and faces have little to do with what any of us really look like.

The website that he cites, Forever Healthy and Young, shows 60 models and celebrities before and after Photoshop. Here’s a few of the before and afters…but you gotta go read Jason’s article for the full list.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if there were more gorgeous models with freckles so that people with freckles might see them as just another physical characteristic instead of as a blemish? We could start by letting this gorgeous woman’s speckled splendor shine.

Guess what? George Clooney don’t need no Photoshop help. He’s a kick-ass actor and drop-dread sexy with the wrinkles and salt-and-pepper hair.

I found myself looking at the befores, then at the afters, then at the befores…and just felt sad. All of these beautiful people are beautiful in their own right, unadulterated. But somebody somewhere decided that a few of the hard-earned wrinkles, the little brown birthmark, the curvy hip had to be erased, blended or flattened to make a unique human being look more like the same flawless, general, standard, boring, china doll.

Make sure to check out the three links at the bottom of the Forever Healthy and Young site that Jason references in his post. They have links to stories about recent laws, proposed restrictions, and bans against Photoshopped images. Food for thought…the idea of legislating alteration of photos may be a discussion for a future post.

Photoshopping Our Perception of Beauty