Posts from the “Women” Category

Girls on Film: Michele Quan X Guzman X Geoffrey Beene

Posted on December 1, 2015

Michele Quan, photo by Guzman

Fashion designer Geoffrey Beene was an American pioneer, challenging the industry at every turn. He had his own way of doing things, breaking and rewriting the rules. He created new seasons, Summer/Winter, and designed brilliantly crafted pieces accordingly. “Design is a revelation to me. It’s like taking something that is not alive and giving it form, shape, substance, and life,” Mr. Beene observed.

While his clothes reflected his intuitive understanding for women’s desire to be comfortable and glamorous at the same time, Mr. Beene also understood the power of the photograph to communicate this understanding to consumers. Mr. Beene observed, “Clothes should look as if a woman was born into them. It is a form of possession, this belonging to another.” And if the clothes belong to the woman, the photograph is the perfect invitation to the viewer to participate.

From 1988–1995, Mr. Beene partnered with Guzman, the husband/wife photography team of Russell Peacock and Connie Hanson, to produce a series of photographs of Michele Quan modeling the clothes. As Guzman recalls, “Mr. Beene introduced us to Michele. She was a good choice for his designs during that period. Both were elegantly streamline! Mr. Beene always played with contrasts. He would juxtapose an androgynous jumpsuit with a provocative layer of sheer lace. He would mix refined fabrics with quotidian materials like cashmere with metallic lame. He was thinking about the approaching millennium (2000) and what women should wear. For the modern woman comfort and simplicity were essential. Michele represented the modern woman in that not to distant future. Her personality matched his objectives. Elegant yet understated, feminine but powerful.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Michele Quan, photo by Guzman

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Fashion, Photography, Women

Girls on Film: 70s Punk Legends by Jim Jocoy

Posted on October 7, 2015

Photo: Debbie Harry by Jim Jocoy

Picture it: San Francisco, late 1970s. The punk scene was in full swing and Do It Yourself was in the air. It was a time of youthful ingenuity and rebelliousness that was one part F the system and one part self-indulgence. It was at this time that photographer Jim Jocoy came upon an ingenious plan that resulted in some of the most iconic photographs taken at the time.

The 1970s was a time of Quaaludes. Inhibitions slipped and bold actions were taken without thought to consequence. Jocoy made regular trips to the 7-11 for Kodak color slide film. He loaded his camera, then headed on out to the clubs where he photographed everyone from Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, and Patti Smith to Darby Crash, Exene Cervenka, and Sid Vicious. He also photographed the habitués of the scene, the young men and women that shined brighter than life, each radiating with some much pure and wild energy.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Muriel Cervenka, photographed by Jim Jocoy

Categories: 1970s, Art, Crave, Music, Photography, Women

Arlene Gottfried: Mommie

Posted on July 3, 2015

Photograph by Arlene Gottfried

Photographs by Arlene Gottfried

Last summer I had the great pleasure of speaking with Arlene Gottfried at length, well, listening mostly, listening and asking questions and then listening again as Arlene spoke of her life behind the camera. A second generation New Yorker, Arlene has born witness to the people that have made this city one of the greatest places on earth. Her photographs never fail to delight and astound with their distinctive blend of compassion, style, and grace, with a knowing nod, a giggle, and a wink. This is New York, after all.

Arlene is unassuming yet powerful. The intensity of her presence can best be felt when looking at her photograph or listening to her sing gospel. I remember hearing her in church on several occasions, overwhelmed and overjoyed by the spirit she channels. It is this spirit, this very soul, that makes Arlene one of the most compelling artists I know. And so it was with great honor that last summer I interviewed Arlene about her life, her family, and her work for her forthcoming book, Mommie (powerHouse Books).

I remember seeing the mock up for Mommie at powerHouse years ago, once again overwhelmed by the depth and profundity of her work. To be honest, I was not ready for this level of truth, this intense bond between generations of women, all flowers from the same root. Mommie is Arlene’s fourth book with powerHouse, and perhaps the most personal of an incredibly intimate body of work.

As I listened to Arlene speak, I realized she was a woman who has kept a great many private matters just so, and with Mommie she was sharing more than her memories, she was baring witness as the family historian. As time passes, we come to terms with the eternal circle of life and death and birth once more. With Mommie, we quietly observe, we feel, and we think; Arlene’s photographs have the cumulative effect of softly sinking into your body and changing the very nature of your being.

In that same way, the book is an object unto itself, an object to be held, much like a family album. powerHouse would like to use real upholstery fabric to wrap the book’s boards (the front cover, spine, and back cover) and has decided to create a Indie GoGo account to support the production costs. In order to share Arlene’s story, they asked me to interview her a couple of months ago, and this time, Arlene sang “Amazing Grace,” a moment that be stilled my soul.

The video is now live, and the Indie GoGo campaign has begun. We invite you to visit the campaign at MOMMIE, and support the project. Among the rewards offered are Arlene’s first three powerHouse Books: Bacalaitos & Fireworks, Midnight, and Sometimes Overwhelming, each one a treasury of New York City history, street photography, and style, each one a love letter from the bottom of her heart.

Photograph by Arlene Gottfried

Photograph by Arlene Gottfried

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Manhattan, Photography, Women

Rania Matar: A Girl and Her Room

Posted on February 11, 2014

Who we are is how we are. How we live, love, hate, fear. How we are when we are alone, by ourselves, in our own room. In our space, in a place that we can truly call our own, when no one is watching and we are finally free, at peace, as one. Who we are is always in a state of flux, a state of evolution towards a truer or falser self, a being that we both expose and protect, that we exist as and exist with, throughout our lives. And perhaps one of our earliest declarations of self is how we live when we grow up, in our parents’ home, defining ourselves.

Photographer Rania Matar has just released A Girl and Her Room (Umbrage Editions), a collection of portraits of teenage girls from the United States and Lebanon photographed in their rooms and the affect is stunning in its simplicity. The girls share more in common with each other than not, even though the externals—wealth, religion, culture, fashion, and culture of femininity differ remarkably. Perhaps this is because external differences can only go so deep and once they are identified, we need to look beneath. Into the eyes of each girl to feel her energy, her pride and prejudice, her power and strength, her fear and discomfort, her love and grandeur, her sense of self as she understands it.

Matar has done the remarkable in creating continuity so that at first glance the very obvious differences between lives disappears. The unpainted, unplastered walls of a girl’s room in a Palestinian refugee camp melt away as we look at how Miriam, who lives there, has inhabited her space. She carefully hangs a few things, photographs, a prayer rug, a scarf and purse, from the window gate above her bed, in as much as a thin mattress on the floor serves as her nest. She sits on the mattress with eyes that tell of an awareness of self and of life beyond the walls of her room. We cannot begin to imagine what she has seen and known in her short time on earth but we feel from this image that she holds together, centered deep inside herself.

Opposite this image, something far more American, a girl named Sidonie lies across her bed with her head flipped over the edge, her hair tumbling down to the ground. Her bed is luxurious comfort compared to Miriam’s thin mattress, and her room is decorated with care. She hangs ten purses around her bed, along with the names of her favorite brands cut out from advertisements and hung to the walls. The contrast is remarkable in as much as we see how much some have and how little we need, and how comfort goes far beyond the physical world into a state of being. Sidonie, hanging her head so that we cannot see her face, is hiding from Matar, from this project, from herself.

Throughout the book the images contrast and complement until one is constantly checking the captions to see where each girl is from. The distinctions of décor and dress somehow fade away at first glance as the body language, gesture and expression of each girl becomes the thing that becomes most telling. And that’s the thing that is most remarkable. The less a girl has the more powerful her image feels. She has but herself and she knows this well. She does not rely on things to define who she is. On the other side are girls who appear to have it all but one look in their eyes shows they are no happier for it. Chances are likely they didn’t work for most of it; that which they own is given by others until it becomes something of a prison. A weight around each of their neck, a vision of the feminine that they try to live into by purchasing it. They paint their face and do their nails and pose underneath photographs of half naked models. They aspire to look like others, rather than themselves, so caught are they in the American Dream.

Return to Lebanon and we see girls with a different set of concerns yet all the same, they have more in common than they do not. They have the same issues facing their lives, their final years at home before they venture out into the world. On whose terms, it cannot be known, but as we look at Matar’s portraits we understand that each has her own destiny to uphold.

tells-story-features-female-photographers-middle-east-4

Categories: Art, Books, Photography, Women

Martin Guggisberg: MISS

Posted on May 30, 2013

Shiny. Glossy. Fresh. Young. Competition to see who wins. The prize? A title, a crown, finishing big in a pageant of hopefuls, teenage girls who traipse about in evening gowns, bikinis, full hair and make up, heels and the commitment to win. Photographer Martin Guggisberg captures the all the awkwardness, the surreal and the banal, the tarnished innocence and the plastic naïveté, the thrill of exhibitionism, adoring the attention, the chance to shine bright in the spotlight as they walk across the stage. It takes a certain kind of Miss to win titles like these: Miss Bikini. Miss Wildwest. Miss Asia. Miss Do-It-Yourself. Miss Handicap. Miss Italy Switzerland. Miss Polefitness. Miss Pit Stop Day.

Guggisberg’s photographs are glossy double page spreads, recalling nothing so much as the glossy pages of a men’s magazine. The difference is that here they are unposed, unaware of the camera, going about the daily business of the pageant circuit, their bodies, faces, hair an industry unto themselves. This is the business of self-exploitation, of a kind of beauty that is not very pretty but it is not without its appeal. Gone is the grace of the feminine and in its place is the crass vulgarity of mass appeal. It is a kind of appearance, a physical poise, a way of beholding oneself that makes the pageant contender a spectacle to behold.

Presence, appearance, the ability to embody a feminine ideal, one that is both virgin and whore at the same time, to be seductive and alluring but unavailable at the same time. A tease, a tempt, a twirl, nothing wrong in that it is not indecent so much as in poor taste, like the original reality show contest, only this one is live and it happens just once a year. There is a tradition of this, of judging the fresh new picks, like the old school country fairs of yesterday when the prize pig was awarded the bright blue ribbon for having the sweetest flesh. In exchange for money and honors, these young women happily, and sometimes unhappily, compete for Best in Show.

It’s easy to be a hater. The photographs aren’t flattering. They’re not rude either, they are just terribly unglamorous. Nothing kills so much as familiarity. Once the mystery is gone the allure begins to fade and on women this young that’s a sad reality. Start early before the looks begin to ebb, and what will be there for these girls but a distant past. These are the glory days. That’s what makes Guggisberg’s photographs poignant. They do not mock or exalt, but rather show us those times the mask has been lowered.

The effect is one of vulnerability, which is in distinct contrast to the large format, glossy pages that turn effortlessly. Yet stop on any image and something changes, no longer are these just quiet moments but a kinf od desperation is felt. Consider the woman whose arm is missing, the Cerrulean blue of her gown quietly falling over her shoulder, her eyes wide set with worry, concern, her lower lip bitten with a visible tension that strains through her seams. It is all or nothing and she wants it bad. What will happen? Turn the page.

Bikinis. Yellow. Red. Blue. Puple. Black and White. Shiny stilettos, silver, gold, white patent leather. Strippers without the implants or the drug habit. Aligned backstage before the parade begins. Casual calm but only just so. As one girl looks off into the distance, her eyes focused on a thought that has her concerned. Turn the page.

Now we see them from the back. The girl in purple has a Chinese tattoo running down her back. She’s also pulling at the bottom of her bathing suit, while a girl in red is content to let it ride all the way up. There are barely any faces, but those that are shown are edgy with anticipation. We’re headed up the stairs on to the stage. This is what it all comes down to, isn’t it?

We don’t know, we won’t know, who will win. It doesn’t matter to anyone, really, except the girls in the photographs. And they are without name, the photographs without caption. Because it is not who they are that drives this industry but our desire to tell stories about them to ourselves.

Categories: Art, Books, Fashion, Photography, Women

Cindy Sherman: The Early Works

Posted on December 14, 2012

Cindy Sherman: The Early Works 1975-1977

Chaka Khan most famously sang, “I’m every woman” and no artist embodies this quite as brilliantly as Cindy Sherman. She has been remaking herself in the image of others throughout her career, giving a spellbinding performance of gender roles assigned to (mostly) Caucasian women as they are created and lived by countless females. Her ability to transform reveal the plasticity of identity as it is defined by appearance and affect, by the way in which we unconsciously communicate our fears and dreams through non-verbal cues.

The photograph is the ideal medium for Sherman’s experiments and discoveries, the still image being a soundless, wordless, motionless space for eternal contemplation. Sherman’s uncanny ability to play a role, to construct an entire narrative into a single frame is nothing short of remarkable. What is perhaps shocking is that she has been doing this for close to forty years, and her earliest work is just as profound and compelling as that of her later years.

These works are collected together for the first time in Cindy Sherman: The Early Works 1975–1977 Catalogue Raisonné(Hatje Cantz). This volume is simply magnificent, a breathtaking tour-de-force that unfolds with image after image of the artist who would come to embody an iconography all her own, a kind of storytelling that has no precedent on this scale in the medium.

What makes The Early Works compelling is the simplicity of the work and the way in which this is mirrored in the production of the book. It is understood this book will be grand from the very opening of the front cover, as a bright orange matte jacket flap rest against silver endpapers. That and the book is 376 pages. It is substantial, and statuesque as gatefold after gatefold reveal themselves. The works inside are pure pleasure, presented against a vast expanse of white space. They sit there, one after another, variations on a theme, repetitions to derive an effect, a kind of very clever inside joke with yourself. Sherman’s ease into the odd characters she creates are clearly a kind of genius that is perfectly suited to the medium of photography. The pleasure of this book is seeing her brilliance in its earliest stage, and the way in which she was always born to stand before a camera in order to create the image in her mind.

As Sherman notes in the beginning of Gabriele Schor’s essay, “Even though I’ve never actively thought of my work as feminist or as a political statement, certainly everything was drawn from my observations as a woman in this culture. And a part of that is a love/hate thing—being infatuated with makeup and glamour and detesting it at the same time. It comes from trying to look like a proper young lady or look as sexy or as beautiful as you can make yourself, and also feeling like a prisoner of that structure.”

Indeed, that structure forms the basis of her iconography, and the sense of imprisonment is palpable in some of her more emotionally tense scenes, Her explorations extend far beyond the frame of femininity, giving us a sense of a certain femaleness that every woman is confronted with as she reaches maturity. The Early Works offers a larger context in which to place this new frame, particularly with the facsimile of Script Notes for “A Play of Selves” written in 1976.

Here Sherman puts into words what she has been saying with imagery, a cast of characters that include A Broken Woman, The Vanity, The Madness, The Agony, The Desire, The Actual Main Character, and The Character As Others See Her, among others. We are then given four acts and a finale, each outlined with scenes, and with these pages we are given a concrete look at the structure of Sherman’s mind during the process of creation as she maps idea into actuality. Following the acts, we are given two pages that tell us about the order of characters photographed, which are then illustrated in the actual works themselves.

For this project, Sherman cut out full-body portraits so that they appear as paper dolls, each posed in specific stances to communicate meaning through gesture, emotion, and juxtaposition with one another. The facsimile pages let us know exactly what we are looking at, creating a sense of silent film as the pages unfold. And it is just this silence that makes the photograph so profound, the way in which we are invited to fill in the blanks by creating meaning through the implications of Sherman’s work.

The Early Works is a deeply fulfilling experience, not only because of its dedication to detailing this period of the artist’s work, but also because of Sherman herself. Her clarity of vision and the proliferation of her ideas present Sherman as something of an Athena, springing fully armed from the mind of Zeus himself. There is something of the warrior in Sherman’s work throughout her career, a tireless champion whose commitment to the medium has forever transformed our ideas about photography, the female gaze, and the construction of identity itself.

Cindy Sherman: The Early Works 1975-1977

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Photography, Women

JR: Women Are Heroes

Posted on December 12, 2012

Since its inception in the late 60s, graffiti has been the most public of public arts, the ultimate statement of self, a mark of existence that enlivens the streets. Since it began with tags, it has since expanded in all manners including beyond its original letterform. As it shifted into an image-based lexicon, it took on new forms, and was dubbed Street Art as a way to differentiate itself. And while many have succeeded in any number of mediums, there is only one photograffeur: JR.

JR has taken photography to new heights. By employing the ideals of graffiti—scale, placement, and proliferation—JR’s work creates its own expectations. The 2011 winner of the TED Prize, he works on a global scale using art to effect a change in the world. Women Are Heroes: A Global Project by JR (Abrams) showcases one his most noble efforts, a tribute to women on a massive scale, with public art works produced in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, Kenya, Brazil, India, and Cambodia. Mural size photographs of everyday women were created on monumental scale from simple black and white portraits that are at once intimate and outlandish, evocative and emotional, provocative and profound. The cumulative effect of JR’s work allows for a new understanding in the representation of women, as well as in the discourse of public art.

Public art, such as it exists, has been a tool for the establishment to reinforce itself. Whether it is the monumental sponsored work of the church and state, or more recently, the art world’s ever-present self-veneration masquerading as a “profitable investment” most public works have been imposed by external forces upon the community it claims to serve. Graffiti and street art also impose, but they do so by way of the anonymous insider making his or her presence known. Here, JR takes the insider to the furthest possible reach, making heroes out of the people themselves, effectively saying, “In you, beauty exists.”

JR’s installations serve the people by becoming part of the whole, by transforming the landscape by fusing the internal and external at the same time. The placement of the works are as telling as the choice of subjects themselves, for the art of Women Are Heroes exists only in lands of extreme poverty throughout the world, in lands where people are marginalized in ways we of the first world all too often forget.

But JR won’t let us forget, and he takes us deeper into the abyss by granting access to the personal side of his subjects in “As Told To” narratives throughout the book. As Chantha Dol of Cambodia reveals, “I agreed to have my photograph put up so that the men in power in Cambodia would open their eyes and take a look at our condition. The reason my eyes are so wide open is to show my anger. Words are no longer enough. I want people to ask themselves why these photograph of women were put on the walls of their houses.”

But Ms. Dol might not know that when she agreed to be photographed, the question she wanted people to ask themselves would be a question to travel around the world. JR’s continued success allows the work he is doing to reach new audiences that go far beyond the traditional realms of photography and street art. As his audiences expand in both size and prominence, the questions his work raises gain power and strength, inspiring us as individuals and as societies to look at ourselves with fresh eyes.

Women Are Heroes is a sumptuously produced tome that pleasingly combines the grand scale of the public works with the directness of the photographs and stories being told. It provides context at every turn, allowing for a more complete experience of the installations themselves. This book is equally provocative and pleasurable, as each turn of the page reveals an unexpected angle on the power of photography to tell stories and touch hearts. Imagine eyes softly shut, black eyelashes lain thick, now imagine this image pasted to the side of a garbage truck at a dump in Cambodia. JR reminds us women are worthy of a veneration that goes deeper than the flesh, that celebrates an inner beauty in every being that only art can truly make manifest.

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Graffiti, Photography, Women

#nuderevolutionaryphoto

Posted on February 6, 2012

“Pity little girl. Why are you behaving like death will not come to you? Pity you… May God save you… Hmmmmmmmmmmm.”

This comment was submitted to my blog for approval after I posted a story on Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, the twenty-year old communications major who gained worldwide attention when she posted a naked photograph of herself on Twitter with the hash tag #nuderevolutionaryphoto in October 2011.

In the black and white photograph, she stands facing the camera, the intensity of her gaze heightened by her thigh-high stockings, red shoes, and red bow. Elmahdy told CNN, “I am not shy of being a woman in a society where women are nothing but sex objects harassed on a daily basis by men who know nothing about sex or the importance of a woman. The photo is an expression of my being and I see the human body as the best artistic representation of that. I took the photo myself using a timer on my personal camera. The powerful colors black and red inspire me.” Red, black, and white, the colors of the Egyptian flag….

Read the Full Story Here

Categories: Africa, Art, Photography, Women

Aalia Magda Elmahdy: A Rebel’s Diary

Posted on December 26, 2011

Aliaa, what a nice name, good physical features, I mean young, fresh and blossoming only with a strong and probably negative heart and ego, surely there are many ways of expressing your feelings and motives than by showing your precious body to the whole world, what now remains for you is to start moving around NAKED. I wonder what religion you are practising, bcos NO religion promotes this sort of act neither do our (African) traditions and morals. Please find another decent way of expressing yourself, though I dont know you but I feel I like you to the level of giving you a sensible advise. Thanks and I pray for good things in your life.

Hassan Aliyu Shehu left this comment today on my post to Aliaa Magda Elmahdy. I’ve been thinking about what it means. To be choose to be nude before the whole world. As a New Yorker, the body is a commodity. Maybe that’s what freedom means. At least, here and now. In the twenty-first century. We as women are free to use our bodies for any purpose we wish, and no longer is it political because that moment in America has passed. From Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party to Kim Kardashian’s sex tape. And we talk about progress like it’s a good thing. But maybe it’s more complex than that.

But Egypt is not America, and Aliaa’s act is one that is so powerful I feel overwhelmed trying to understand what it must mean. To be a woman in Egypt today, fighting for freedom, subject to virginity tests. That’s the least of what she’s up against. Mind blowing hostility, hatred, social control. Freedoms we take for granted are subject to death threats in another part of this world.

When will the body—both male and female—be seen as a work of Nature, rather than a product of Society? Can we look with love, with admiration, with respect, or will our hearts always fill with lust, with anger, with disgust? Will we celebrate or condemn, will we wrap our fears in religion and groupthink? Will we support or fight her wish for freedom on her terms?

To be naked before the whole world is a political act when there is nothing to be sold. But once that ground has broken, something is lost and something is found. I live in a world where women use their bodies for profit, as though objectification at the hands of oneself is an honorable act. Is this the future of Aliaa’s mission? Self determination. Self exploitation. Where is the line?

I suppose it depends on where you stand.

From here I see Aliaa, a vanguard of the old school using new media to speak to the world. And by old school, I mean the cult of the goddess, a time when the woman’s body was worshiped and revered. A time when the female energy was honored for its power to bring life into the world. It was not superior, nor was it inferior, to masculine energy. It was complementary. It was yin to the yang. Two Equals One. Never tear us apart.

But we have been split, torn asunder, and the result is it takes a scream to be heard. It takes a twenty-year-old woman, a twenty-year-old girl. It takes an honest look at the nude form for us to ask What’s Going On? This is the oldest war in the world, the struggle for female self determination. Because she who controls life controls the future, and that’s a frightening prospect to many.

There is no right or wrong answer because the subject of nudity, sexuality, and the female body is a political game. Ideas are currency, currency is power. Perhaps the answer is not to be found in the examination of her ideology, but in the way she triggers us to answer for our own.

A Rebel’s Diary

Categories: Africa, Art, Photography, Women

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy: Nude Revolutionary

Posted on November 21, 2011

I like being different. I love life, art, photography and expressing my thoughts through writing more than anything. That is why I studied media and hope to take it further to the TV world too so I can expose the truth behind the lies we endure everyday in this world. I don't believe that we must have children only through marriage. It's all about love.

I am a believer of every word I say and I am willing to live in danger under the many threats I receive in order to obtain the real freedom all Egyptian are fighting and dying for daily.

I am not shy of being a woman in a society where women are nothing but sex objects harassed on a daily basis by men who know nothing about sex or the importance of a woman. The photo is an expression of my being and I see the human body as the best artistic representation of that. I took the photo myself using a timer on my personal camera. The powerful colors black and red inspire me.

Put on trial the artists' models who posed nude for art schools until the early 70s, hide the art books and destroy the nude statues of antiquity, then undress and stand before a mirror and burn your bodies that you despise to forever rid yourselves of your sexual hangups before you direct your humiliation and chauvinism and dare to try to deny me my freedom of expression.

"From Non-Existent to Life for Aalia Magda Almahdy" by Cartoonist Kaveh Adel.

BRAVA

Read Her Exclusive Interview with CNN Here

Watch the Video of Aliaa Magda Elmahdy
Being Removed from Tahrir Square

Categories: Africa, Art, Photography, Women

April Flores: Fat Girl

Posted on May 4, 2010

I was introduced to April Flores through photographer Carlos Batts, who I have known for the better part of this decade. I had seen photos of April for years, as she was Carlos’ muse, and inspired a great many hardcore photos that made me blush to my roots.

The thing that intrigued me were the photographs of April, where she was fully dressed, as she has a style unlike anyone else I have ever met. Changing her look with the drop of a hat, April’s photographs remind me of the work of great models.

But there was one thing that made her distinct—her weight was not going to be getting her contracts with Ford any time soon. But the way in which April carries her body makes me envy her ever time I neurotically try to lose five pounds.

I have been captivated by the way in which April presents herself, and approached April and Carlos about the possibility of doing a book. FAT GIRL it was to be called, and I had shown her photos around the office. Needless to say, the response from everyone, save one (slim) woman was truly negative. I heard it all, from the usual anger directed towards overweight people, to the unexpected backlash from women against April’s sex appeal.

While the book never came into existence, I think it’s impressive that fashion magazines are finally beginning to consider the appeal of voluptuous women. With Christina Hendricks making the cover of Esquire’s Women We Love issue, it’s clear that the size zero is getting serious competition.

My thanks to April for graciously sharing her story and to Carlos for these beautiful photos.

FAT GIRL
Story by April Flores

I think the first incident that made me conscious of my body happened in the 7th grade. I overheard my crush talking to his friend and two other girls in our science class. The girls were asking the guys to rate all the other girls in the class going one by one. When they came to me, my crush said something like “she has a pretty face, but she’s too fat.” I was shocked and hurt and humiliated. First, because one of the girls was a “friend” of mine (girls can be so cruel sometimes) second, because my crush had said something negative about me. But I was mostly hurt because I had done nothing to provoke them to say anything mean about me.

From then on, I looked at myself differently in the mirror. I had always known that I wasn’t a skinny person; I was average sized. In elementary school I had friends and classmates that were much thinner and much bigger than me. I hated PE and playing sports. The fact that I wasn’t skinny wasn’t a surprise to me. The fact that people were now judging me on my weight was.

I was now aware of how I looked, and I always dressed so that my fat rolls wouldn’t show thru my clothes. I dreaded wearing the PE uniform because the inside of my thighs rubbed together, so I was always pulling them down passed my thigh area.

I was very fortunate in the fact that I had good skin, so acne was not a problem, but my size played a huge roll in my self-esteem. I thought that happiness would come if I were thinner. I believed that I would have a boyfriend, and my life would be perfect if I was just skinny.

Not much changed through out the rest of my Junior High experience. In 8th grade I learned from the class jerk that I had big boobs. He was asking all the girls if their mothers had big boobs. When he came to me, he pointed and loudly said, “Your mom had big boobs!” I was so embarrassed.

In the 10th grade I joined the swim team with a friend. Our goal was to get a tan and get into shape. Being on the swim team was a lot of fun, and did get me into shape. I hated the swim meets because I am not a competitive person, so I could care less if I won or lost a race. But I loved watching the cute guys swim, all muscle-y, tanned and wet!

I did notice that people were treating me different in slight ways now that I was thinner. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like they were nicer to me in some strange way. This really confused me because it wasn’t just the boys at school. Family members, people of my same gender and strangers all seemed more pleased with my body size and thus with me.

In 11th grade my parents got divorced and there was a lot of turmoil in my home life. I suddenly gained about 50 pounds (putting me at 180) during my junior year of High School. It just came out of nowhere (it seemed.) I guess I had comforted myself with food… delicious fried food.

I talked to a few boys on the phone here and there, but I never had a boyfriend who went to my High School. I did get teased about my breast size. There was a group of boys who would shout out “TITTERS” every time I walked by them. This made me very uncomfortable, and made me wish I had an older brother to kick their asses.

My first “boyfriend” had really bad acne, but I was fat so I figured that was the trade off. He would be really cute if he had better skin, and I would be really cute if I lost some weight. It’s funny now.

After I graduated high school and before the fall quarter of my first year in college I was enrolled into a summer program at my college. This program was really great because we got to stay in the dorms, go to classes, and they even gave us a food stipend. It really prepared me for college life. Since I was away from home for the first time, I was now responsible for what I ate. The school’s food court was average, and I mostly ate chicken sandwiches, Jello and fruit. I started losing weight but not because I was trying. It was just coming off. I was happy about it because I wasn’t trying. (The truth is that I was only eating once a day.) I didn’t have much of an appetite. Plus I read somewhere that your metabolism is at its fastest between the ages of 18-23.

When I was 18 I left the dorms and got my own place. I never had food at my house and I was in an emotionally crazy relationship, practically fighting everyday, which also curbed my appetite. By the time I turned 21 I was at my thinnest ever, 123 lbs.

While I was losing the weight I heard many odd comments. A few people asked me if I was on drugs. A friend’s mother asked me if I was ill. However, most of the feedback I was getting was very positive. Everyone was very happy for me and if I hadn’t seen them in a while, they were especially vocal about my weight loss. I was getting a lot of attention from guys, and fitting into smaller, cuter clothes. This all made me feel very happy and confident. I was having fun, but it didn’t make my life easier in any way.

When I was about 23 I had a job as a receptionist. I was sitting for the majority of my day. My favorite dinner consisted of a hot dog, lime flavored chips and salsa. I slowly started gaining weight. I was fine with it. I was at a point in my life where I was becoming very comfortable and happy with the person that I am. I had a cute little apartment, my own little car, and I was single and loving it. Even though I had been living on my own for 5 years, this was the first time I had really embraced the freedom I had of just living my life.

People around me started to drop little comments here and there about my weight gain. It was so strange to me because it bothered them more than it bothered me. I didn’t care. I was happy, and I finally realized that happiness is a choice. Happiness won’t come in a size 6 or in a man. I was happy with myself and I wasn’t going to let anything affect that. I never wanted to go back to that insecure person that I was, letting other people’s comments get into my head.

Since then my weight has gone up and down the scale. Those are my genetics. I’m a Latina—we have curves, big hips, big arms, and bigger frames. I know if I want to lose weight I have to eat less and move more. That’s it; it’s just as easy as that.

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April Flores Website

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