This is a great site with collections and descriptions for various online art and photography sites which include that of plus-sized women. Some of the links are broken, but it’s worth visiting!
Les Toil! May 23, 2007
If you’re not familiar with Les Toil, you should be! Allene “Danger” Rohrera is a wonderful artist celebrating the beauty larger women possess in “pin-up” style. His gallery includes portraits of REAL women and expresses not only their physical characteristics, but also their personality, their fantasies, and who they are.
And you can be a Toil Girl too! You submit several photos to the artist (incuding face shots and body shots from different angles) and you are to conceive the theme for the art since it is supposed to reflect your “body and soul”, fantasies, desires, and interests.
The fee ranges from $395-$495, and you receive the original pen & ink artwork signed by Mr. Toil himself, an 8 1/2″ x 11″ reproduced portrait, a CD including a .jpg version of your portrait, and official certification.
NO woman has regretted becoming a Toil Girl. I’ve been wanting to be one for a few years now, and still hope to be one in the near future when funds will finally allow for it.
Photography May 23, 2007
The following links provide galleries of beautiful photography surrounding the plus-sized woman. They’re very artistic, but some may be interpreted as erotic.
is a German website with many beautiful galleries, and is on the erotic side.
A gallery by photographer Laurie Toby Edison (and includes nudes). The 41 pictures gallery is available in print. The book also includes text by Debbie Notkin and discusses issues of fat opression and fat celebration.
In case you haven’t heard yet, the famed Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy is also a photographer. He admits to having a particular love for larger women and has put together a gallery of beautiful nudes.
Photography by Les Delano…an interesting collection of photos in which every model displays their body measurements on a white tank top. The women vary in height and weight, and express their acceptance of themselves.
BBW Singles May 20, 2007
BBW singles is yet another dating site for Big Beautiful Women, and Big Handsome Men, and those who admire either group.
When you sign up, I strongly urge you to take advantage of their 24 hour free trial, complete your profile as soon as you can, and begin searching for matches. They don’t have the largest amount of members, so it’s ideal to check out if there are a decent amount of members you may find interest in.
Once the free trial is over (of only one day, which isn’t the best free trial out there, but they do NOT require a credit card which is a plus), you can not access the features of the site at all, unless you subscribe. Seems like a big push into signing up, but the good news is, they have more affordable subscription rates than several other bbw sites.
$14.95 month-to-month
$29.99 for 3 months
Bombshell Magazine May 20, 2007
Bombshell Magazine- The Curvy Chick Magazine
Bombshell Magazine is an online and print magazine for the plus-sized woman. They have articles on Health & Beauty, Style & Fashion, Love & Romance, Home & Living, and People & Entertainment. Their new issues come out once every 2 months, (like most plus-size magazines seem to…that needs to change).
They also offer “Bombshell Girl” for younger curvy chicks, and even have a “Bombshell Bride” issue.
I’ve been able to find Bombshell in Books-A-Million, and one particular grocery store, so it may not be too hard to come by, so keep an eye out for it. You can of course also obtained a subscription on the site.
Curvy Chick Community May 20, 2007
Curvy Chick, started out as a resource for aspiring Plus-Size models, but to my surprise, it’s grown into much more than that…
Curvy chick is similar to that of a myspace community, and you are required to register to benefit from the site.
You create your own profile page, add photos, write blogs, add friends, receive/write messages, leave comments, etc. You can join groups, including for mothers, fashion, cooking, living healthy, by location, and many more.
They also have some extras myspace doesn’t have. Including a “Marketplace” where you can sell items to other members. There’s a Blog link, in which you see the most recently posted blogs from anyone’s profile…so it seems it’s a very OPEN community, lol.
Check it out, and have fun!
Fit and Fat? May 19, 2007
Fit and Fat?
For the past couple years, the headlines have been screaming about an American obesity “epidemic.” According to some studies, fully one-third of the U.S. population is clinically obese. And, at any given time, anywhere from 15 to 35 % of Americans are trying to lose weight.
Do they need to be?
Yes, say the majority of specialists. After all, being overweight has been linked to a host of illnesses from heart disease to hypertension. But a vocal fringe of nutritionists and doctors are beginning to question this conventional wisdom. According to them, it is possible to be both fat and fit.
Take Joanne Ikeda, a nutritionist at the University of California at Berkeley, “It’s not about how we can help people lose weight; it’s about how we can help them be healthier.” Despite popular diets’ one-size-fits-all claims, she says there is not one single way to be healthy.
And Paul Campos, law professor at the University of Colorado and author of The Obesity Myth, agrees. “What a healthy weight is for you as an individual has little or nothing to do with what a healthy weight is for anybody else,” he explains. “Within a very broad range, a healthy weight is the weight that a particular individual maintains while living a healthy life.”
“Fat activist” (yes, there are such folks) Marylin Wann adds, “[Even] if everyone ate nothing but boneless, skinless chicken breasts and brown rice and exercised an hour a day, people would still have different shapes and sizes.”
These chubby cheerleaders say there is solid science backing up their claims. They point to a 1999 study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which followed almost 22,000 men for an average of eight years to assess risk factors that predispose individuals to an early death.
“Lean unfit people actually had a higher risk of death than the “overfat” physically fit people,” says Dr. Andrew Jackson, professor at the University of Houston and one of the study’s authors.
Online Diet Plan and Support May 19, 2007
Most online diet plans, menus, and support, require paid subscription these days, or for free memberships you are very limited to what features you have acces to. Well here is one of the BEST sites and it’s 100% FREE!
First of all, they offer 2 different kinds of programs…weightloss, or simply healthy lifestyle. I signed up for weightloss and this is what I went through…
1.) They ask for your height/weight, and let you know how you rank on the BMI scale. You also type in your goal weight, and a date in which you’d like to acheive it by. They recommended I lose 50lbs over the course of one complete year, but you can type in whatever you’d like.
2.) You then choose your meal plan preferences (i.e. vegetarian, no eggs, low cholesrorol) and any health conditions you have (i.e. high blood pressure, depression, insomnia) in which they state they’ll offer you extra resources for improving such conditions.
3.) You then come to a page for your “Fast Break Goals” (stage 1 of the program…see number 7, for more information on stages). You are choosing small steps you’d like to take to begin your program, such as no longer drinking soda, walking 10 minutes a day, writing in a journal, etc.
4.) You can then decide to join specific groups or teams for support. Such as age groups, how much weight to lose, mothers, yoga lovers, etc.
5.) You have the option of creating a personal profile page (age, location, pictures, etc.) It’s not a requirement, and you can limit what is or is not shared to the public, or it can be made private.
6.) Considering your weight loss goal, they offer how many calories are ideal for you to consume each day, and how many calories are ideal for you to burn each week. You can change the recommended amounts if you’d like.
7.) There are 4 diet stages in this plan:
Fast Break: Weeks 1-2…. a springboard that gives more power to the other SparkDiet Stages. Just a little prep and practice give you a head start without the need for manic, life-altering changes. You’ll choose and focus on three small, simple goals that will help you get off to a good start without overwhelming you. Meanwhile, you’ll learn six strategies that will set you up
for success.Healthy Diet Habits: Weeks 3-8…Healthy Diet Habits help you chisel away at the building blocks of a healthy lifestyle. These are six simple changes you can make in your life that really add up to something special. If you pick up these six habits – and if they stick around – we can almost guarantee that you’ll reach your goals. You’ll also accelerate your weight loss during this stage by regularly using the meal planner and nutrition tracker, tools that help you build a healthy lifestyle the right way.
Lifestyle Change: Weeks 9-18…Stage 3 bridges the gap from dieting to healthy lifestyle and gets you ready to spread the “spark” to other people. The Lifestyle Change gives you a chance to learn to live with your collection of new habits. Even more importantly, it also teaches you how to stay motivated and consistent. Persistent self-motivation is the key to keeping momentum alive and making it different this time
Spread the Spark: Weeks 18+…This is the culmination of weeks of hard work. In this stage, we’ll help you max out your weight loss success and put it to good use as a positive force for your loved ones and community. You can draw on everything you’ve done up till now to reach your goals and dreams, and to help others do the same. You can do whatever you put your mind to!
As you can see, this site isn’t about offering you a bunch of garbage in losing 30lbs in 30 days, or helping you stick to a short-term diet for temporary weightloss, to only gain it back. It’s about LIFESTYLE changes, which is the ONLY way to lose weight and keep it off, and not be miserable!
8.) Nutrition Tracker: They offer specific meal plans (and snacks!), in which you can edit at any time with adding or removing certain foods to your liking, as well as FULL recipes for great foods! The nutrition tracker allows you to check off what you’ve consumed that day, and break it down into calories, carbs, fat, and protein. You can then see how you’re doing for the week, in consuming the right amounts of food and nutrition.
9.) Fitness Tracker: They assign you certain days for strength training and cardiovascular exercises. You enter in how much time you spent doing the exercises and it calculates how many calories you’ve burned. You can always change what days you do what exercises.
They list for you specific exercises and specific instructions how to perform these exercises. They also offer beginner and advanced categories, as well as upper-body and lower-body categories. The strength training exercises are all done on a mat, or with an exercise ball, so no expensive or heavy duty equipment is required. Of course you can do whatever exercises you’d like, and enter in named exercises and calories burned manually if you’d like.
They also offer FREE COMPLETE exercise videos on the site!
10.) Weigh-in and Measurements: You can track weight lost, and inches lost.
11.) Reports: They offer charts for calories consumed, calories burned, and weigh-ins.
12.) Planner: They offer a calendar planner for whatever you’d like…birthday reminders, journal entry, etc.
13.) SparkMail: They have an inclusive e-mail system on the site. This way other memerbs can contact you (if you allow them to) without you having to give out a personal e-mail address.
14.) Community: Many different message boards and groups, to ask questions, vent, offer advice, share stories, and seek support. They also have certified nutritionists and dr.s to ask for expert advice.
15.) Spark Points: They offer ways to earn points and “trophies” for viewing information on the site, and tracking your progress.
PLEASE, let me stress again it’s FREE, and one of the BEST sites I’ve found for support and tracking weightloss progress. The site has it all! I encourage you to join, whether you have weightloss goals, or just want to become healthy!
Jemima J: A Novel about Ugly Ducklings and Swans May 18, 2007
Jemima J: A Novel About Ugle Ducklings and Swans written by Jane Green, is about an unhappy, dissatisfied overweight woman, whose weight seems to prevent her from getting the deserving promotion, and getting the date with the man she’s crushing on. Jemima decides to join an online dating site in hopes of love, where she provides a doctored “skinny” photo (encouraged to do so by her “friend”) to hunky LA gym owner Brad. She begins on her makeover venture with strict dieting, joining a gym, becoming blonde, and meeting Brad…
The thing about this novel is that it’s chock full of stereotypes and discrimination. The novel pushes on us, that we are to be sympathetic for fat Jemima, and hate the beautiful skinny people in the book. Then, we see Jemima have a transformation outside, and now her life is all of the sudden falling into place being that she’s skinny and beautiful. Meanwhile, the transformation of her inside is severely lacking. Instead of seeing a woman who is motivated to improve her self-image and self-love, we see a woman falling victim to society’s ideal of beauty…
Anyone read this novel? What are your thoughts?
Which adjective do you prefer? May 18, 2007
So to remove oneself from the dirty 3-letter word (yes you know the one…FAT!), many adjectives have been created and used as substitution:
curvy, thick, plump, chubby, voluptuous, full-figured, plus-size, big beautiful woman(BBW), zaftig, rotund, overweight, etc…
Do they all mean the same thing? Can they be used to substitute the word fat, or is fat a completely differently defined adjective on its own?
If someone is curvy, are they automatically overweight? If someone is full-figured, are they a big beautiful woman too?
Do you think these terms are universally defined and understood in the same way?
Is being “thick” being healthy, or slightly overweight, or both?
Can these terms be categorized according to different clothing sizes or weight?
Are these terms created as a way to feel better about ourselves, or deny that we’re overweight, and instead think we’re simply “healthy”?
What do YOU think??
