On the Fat Girl Finds Love Podcast, I’m talking with Briana Cavanaugh about fategories, luck and privilege in relationships, finding a doctor you trust, and scars in photography. Give it a listen to learn more about my story as we celebrate the unique beauty of bodies that fall outside conventional “beauty” standards.
Today we talked about:
- Live Journal and Fatshionista
- Coming up in Fat Fashion
- “The higher up including size as you go, the harder it’s going to be to access the same level of style.”
- The magic of fashion
- People not understanding sizes and not being able to think above a size XL.
- There are lots of sizes of people. Many more than on tv or in the media. Representation matters!
- The importance of being in diet talk free spaces.
- The importance of telling our stories and being seen.
- Lots of deeply personal stories about being photographed and being seen.
You can listen to the full podcast, or read the transcript, over at Fat Girl Finds Love.
Excerpt from the Episode Transcript
What we assume culturally is that we hear these numbers that are thrown out there as like, Oh, well as long as you’re not 400 pounds. Or, you know, okay, but you know, what about somebody who weighs 300 pounds? It’s like the limits of our imagination about bodies.
[00:11:58] And so when we need somebody who weighs 300 pounds or four pounds or 500 pounds, we don’t know. We don’t know what that looks like, but that also, it also varies really, really, really, really, really widely. Among bodies. So we also really hard to tell. Uh, I weigh 270 pounds because I don’t dye it. My weight is very stable.
[00:12:16] I haven’t been weighed in three years, and I can, I can tell you that it’s 270 pounds because it doesn’t change. And I wear a size 26 28. I have a friend who wears a size 26 28 who weighs a hundred 125 pounds more than I do. Uh, in a Facebook group yesterday in a discussion, I happened to see somebody who weighs 270 pounds and wears a size 14, 16.
[00:12:42] And so these are the, yeah, the range is really, wow. Just dependent on your body shape and how you carry your weight. And also, I don’t know, we, we joke, we joke about my friend and I who wear the this clothing size, but we’re a hundred 125 pounds apart. We joke about one of us being very fluffy and one of us be very dense.
[00:13:00] Because otherwise, how does that work? How does that work?
[00:13:03] Briana Cavanaugh: [00:13:03] When have you as a feather? One of eco rock?
[00:13:07] Lindley Ashline: [00:13:07] Yeah, the feather in the bag of feathers in a bag. So yeah, so you just, you know, human, human bodies are wild and variable and you, and you can’t, you cannot tell what somebody’s ways by looking at them clearly.
[00:13:21] But also it means that when we do encounter somebody. Two ways. One of these numbers that we assigned to the four, this limits of our imagination about bodies. We’re like, Oh, that’s an actual body that exists. Oh, Oh, that’s what that looks like, because we don’t have any frame of reference. Right. It’s just sort of this boogeyman number.
[00:13:41] Yeah.
[00:13:42] Briana Cavanaugh: [00:13:42] Right. Because we don’t, we don’t actually talk about numbers and size, and that’s why I wanted to start with numbers and size is like people don’t have really any idea what, you know, what’s out there in the world.
[00:13:54] Lindley Ashline: [00:13:54] Right, right. And you know, and now they, now that you have that number, you know, 270 pounds, size 26 28 you can go look at my website and you can see my body.
[00:14:04] And you can see what that looks like, but it’s only one data point. You know? That’s not right. Lindley’s body is not the only representation of what 270 pounds looks like.
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Hi there! I'm Lindley. I create artwork that celebrates the unique beauty of bodies that fall outside conventional "beauty" standards at Body Liberation Photography. I'm also the creator of Body Liberation Stock and the Body Love Shop, a curated central resource for body-friendly artwork and products. Find all my work here at bodyliberationphotos.com.