White-washing, Meet Skinny-washing
When I said my character was plus-sized, I hope to goodness you just missed that statement, and not that you actually think this slightly curvy, very trim “AU” of my character that you created really counts as ‘plus-sized.’
Honestly, when I search “how to draw plus-sized characters” on YouTube the search results are kind of concerning.
They're extremely limited and/or you get drawings of women who are average weights. They’re not Barbie-thin drawings, but they’re certainly not XL or larger (then again, is there actually a consistent sizing metric for that?)
What exactly are we calling plus-sized nowadays?
As a curvy girl, I still get size-shamed for ‘stretching out’ the pairs of jeans I wear, but they aren’t structured to accommodate my body type.
The world we live in is ludicrous, but fortunately, I’m fairly used to that by now.
The truth is, though I search for plus-sized drawing tutorials occasionally, plus-sized women aren’t one of my main art struggles. I’ve been drawing them for years now and I’ve even been told I’m the “queen of drawing plus-sized characters.”
While I know that’s a stretch, learning to draw beautiful plus-sized girls has been a form of self-healing for me.
While I’m far (far) from a Barbie girl even now, when I was in my early teens I was definitely plus-sized. I hated my body, and when I drew self-portraits, I either skinny-washed myself or made myself look ridiculous and monstrous.
The saddest part is that artists are still doing things like this and posting this hurtful art online.
If this counts as “representation,” it’s some ‘dark empath’ variation that continues to scar plus-sized men and women around the world.
Drawing fat people takes just as much skill as drawing skinny people. It takes effort to be able to draw them “believably” and yet, many many people still choose to use their skills to mock plus-sized people, instead of encouraging and empowering them.
The decisions we make are so much more important than many of us are willing to acknowledge.
We can help others or we can harm them.
I choose to make my art a form of empowerment.
When I learned to draw beautiful fat people, I learned to separate my beauty from my weight. Being fat didn’t make me ugly. ‘Fat’ is just a state of being, not an insult.
While I did lose weight for health reasons (being overweight was doing a number on my hormones) I learned that beauty doesn’t have a size-restriction.
This is the message I want to share through my art, and I hope more people will continue to help me share it. I know some people take this mission every bit as seriously as I do, but often it feels like we’re drowned out by a sea of voices promoting the exact opposite. Often it feels like we’re the minority. Often it feels like people don’t even care whose feelings they batter and bruise.
A few months ago, someone drew the female lead of my WIP novel “Rigamarole” as a gift. I specified in my description of the character that she was plus-sized, but the artist made her skinny. Very skinny.
I don’t know if he simply misread that part of the description (I’m guilty of “skimming” paragraphs, too.) But I can’t help but feel like it was an intentional decision.
Maybe he didn’t feel like putting in the effort. Maybe he didn’t even know how to draw plus-sized women. Out of all his plot-central female characters, only one has even an ounce of body fat, and that might be a bad sign in and of itself.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being trim or muscular - I love working out. The thing is, even fit or “jacked” women usually still have a notable amount of body fat when they’re healthy.
The female body is DESIGNED to carry more fat than the male body. Just like it’s unsafe to have an extremely high body fat percentage, it is also often dangerous for women to have extremely low body fat. It convinces our bodies we’re in danger of starvation. We start building up stress hormones and everything becomes a mess.
Life is about balance, not extremes.
There is an overbearing emphasis in this world on thinness. We stick the words “pretty and skinny” together like they’re synonymous. We use photo editing and plastic dolls to create dysmorphic standards for how thin a woman's body “should be.”
It’s horrifying that after all this time, this still needs to be said:
Female bodies store fat for a reason.
It’s important. Body fat is beautiful. Before you try to ‘idealize’ a body, take the time to understand it. Before you draw, or photo shop, a woman, remember that we are beautifully different, and we matter far too much to have our health or individuality sacrificed in the name of “beauty.”