This week saw the launch of plus size retailer Navabi’s stock image library.
The royalty-free gallery features images of plus size woman depicting moments of life from the mundane to the significant, inspired by some of the most-searched-for stock image terms: having a coffee, attending a meeting, taking a selfie with friends, eating a salad, going through a break-up.
And the images are simple and kind of cheesy. You know, traditional stock image fodder. So, why does this matter?
Consider for a moment the sort of images you usually see of plus size people.
A quick stock photo search reveals these tend to fall into two main categories: plus size people engaged in activities that are perceived to maintain or increase their weight, or battling with the body they live in and desperately trying to change it.
So in category one we see plus size people eating hamburgers the size of their head, staring longingly at buffets or sitting on sofas surrounded by junk food.
And in category two we’ll see a fat woman struggling to pull on jeans that are too small for her, a beefy man stepping onto a scale, eyes filled with dread, and plus size people staring into mirrors with disappointment or sweating over a treadmill.
Then, we have the worst ones: dehumanised cropped images of fleshy midsections, complete with big bellies and meaty thighs often straining against clothing, which have become shorthand for plus size people in general, and perceived health concerns specifically.
In these images, there is no space for the lives that many plus size people actually live.
Instead, they tell us a few key things – that every fat person has the same diet, struggles with exercise, wants to change their body and exists somewhere in the space between uncontrollable greed and the desperate desire to conform to unrealistic body standards. Rubbish!
Look, I get it – stock images are short form messaging.
They are meant to have obvious narratives and tell a story quickly, usually with the use of some pretty style-less and non-nuanced images. And so they rely on stereotypes.
Partial truths that don’t ask us to confront our prejudices but instead confirm and uphold them – and therein lies the problem.
These images are informed by societal narratives told about fat people and these stories do not leave any space for reality; that fat people, just like everyone else, have rich, interesting, nuanced lives. And really normal lives.
Just as the Navabi images depict, I (a fat woman) have attended meetings, taken selfies with my friends, been through breakups, felt jealous, been desired… controversially I’ve even eaten the odd salad!
None of these things are the strict purview of slim, young, conventionally attractive white people. They’re just the experiences of people.
With recent studies showing that more than 60 per cent of adults are said to be overweight and the average woman’s dress size is 16, why on earth is including plus size people in images novel?
This is why diversity in images (and everywhere else) is important. As Navabi said in their press release earlier this week ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’.
Growing up, every story told to me about fat women was that they were sad, that they hated their bodies and were right to do so, and that any confidence was laughable.
They were never the love interest, they were always the (sizeable) butt of the joke (couldn’t resist), and their story could only change if they first changed their bodies.
And not from a place of love or acceptance, but from one of shame and self-loathing.
Pictures like Navabi’s add to a growing catalogue of images of plus size people just living their lives.
It aims to step away from tokenism and away from the idea that plus size bodies can only tell one kind of story – and instead embrace the idea that plus size people live all kinds of lives just like everyone else. And I am here for that.
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MORE: Where are all the plus size men in magazines and adverts?
source https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/02/stock-images-depicting-plus-size-people-hungry-desperate-to-lose-weight-12155380/
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