Growing up in today’s world as a young, fat woman, you are expected to despise yourself. Everything from the magazines in the grocery store, proudly declaring their diet can help you “lose 15 lbs in just 3 weeks”, to television and movies only depicting fat women for comedic effect, never to be taken seriously, show the young fat girl that her body is something disgusting and laughable.

Before coming to Hamilton College, I believed the media’s propaganda. Afterall, the “perfect, thin body” was rooted in scientific fact, with the Body Mass Index providing the numbers to prove it. I started to obsess over calories, became frustrated with my body when it was not satisfied, and sank into deep depression when food restriction and anxiety turned to binging. My body’s physicality was a moral failing to be laughed at and scrutinized. If any harm came my way it was my own fault.

Through this series of paintings, I have started to unlearn these societal norms. The ideas behind what appear as objective measures like BMI are riddled with racist and eugenicist ideologies, rendering them illegitimate. These forgotten histories reveal that the right to humanity should not be tied to arbitrary notions of health and beauty.

These paintings allowed me the space to both express my anger with society while simultaneously expressing my love for fatness. Learning to love myself for my fatness and not despite it has improved my health and well-being more than any type of weightloss ever could. I am thankful to the Kirkland Endowment Advisory Committee for funding this project and allowing me to shed light on the issue of fatphobia.

Special thanks to the Kirkland Endowment Advisory Committee, Katharine Kuharic who served as my advisor, John Powell who helped every step of the way, Ruby (@fugitiverabbit on twitter) for creating and running fatphotoref.com to help supply reference images of fat people for artists, and my mom, Jeannie, for supporting me through it all.