Fierce Fatty

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Historically, Actual Fat Bodies Were Not Idolized In Western Society!

We have this myth that keeps getting perpetuated about how fat bodies used to be idolized throughout history in Western Society. That's not really true. 

Chubby bodies at some periods within our history have been represented as an idea of beauty. The idea of a “Rubenesque body”.

If you look at an artwork from hundreds of years ago, these bodies that we claim to be fat bodies are not actually fat. 

They're pretty thin and pretty white. They might have a little bit of cellulite and they’re size 8 or size 10 in the UK. They're pretty small. They're definitely not fat. 

We're like, “Oh, we remember before when fat bodies were celebrated?!”. That's never been the case. There's not much evidence to support that. 

Historically, fat bodies were never really celebrated and I'm talking about fat not slightly curvy people.

Some people ask about The Venus of Willendorf and similar figurines as an exception to this...well The Venus of Willendorf is around 30,000 years old, so well before modern culture. 

And also we don’t know what the figurine actually represents. Some scholars suggest it’s a fertility statue and some suggest it’s a self-portrait a woman at the time created. There is little suggestion that it’s celebrating fat bodies as beautiful - but we could be wrong! 

Personally, I like to think of The Venus of Willendorf as a celebration of fat bodies and wear my Venus necklace with pride.

But also understand that there was never really a magical time period where actual FAT fat bodies were consistently celebrated. Fatphobia is alive today as it always has been.

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