Cupcakes that I was about to eat
Alida at The Frenemy is doing a project, and we should all help her out. She’s collecting pictures of girls eating food. The point is to combat, in visual form, the association of dainty starvation with femininity. In her words, the project is about…
“proof that there is an alternative. That there are girls out there just like you who are worried about being fat on some days but don’t forget to keep living and keep it real and truly, truly enjoy themselves… Happy girls with happy food and not always pulling their jeans out and being like ‘what can I criticize about myself today.’”
Cookie sandwich at the park... in a bathing suit no less
Corn at the WI State Fair
I love stuff like this. The “galleries” of women that we’re used to seeing are part of what form our perception of normalcy. The rapid fire delivery of celeb slide shows facilitates the comparing and contrasting of bodies. We’re overwhelmingly accustomed to galleries of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, red carpet shots of movie stars, or Athleta catalogs of sculpted women in spandex. There’s nothing wrong with these depictions individually, but collectively they create really entrenched patterns in my brain of what looks normal and what counts as beautiful.
Projects like Alida’s (or Kate’s at Eat the Damn Cake) counteract that by reminding me there are lots of ways to make galleries of ladies, and lots of ways to look awesome. Having food in your mouth is just one of them. I emailed a picture to Alida (iamthefrenemy @ gmail.com), and if you’ve got one lying around you should do the same. If you don’t… go eat something delicious, and bring your camera.
In Cadiz, Spain, eating ice cream
Related Post: I do love food… remember when I pretended to be a food blogger for a day?
Related Post: Does Kim Kardashian widen the spectrum of “acceptable” body types?
