February 2012
14 posts
What materials/paper do you use for your illustrations. It kind of looks like fine liner but its so incredibly neat it seems impossible for it to simply be pen!
I just work on regular archival sketch paper with Staedler pigment liners. I’m obsessed with these pens! Here’s a closeup of the drawing I just posted so you can get a better view of the lines.
"Forever 21 needs to stop vanity sizing to make fat girls feel better. Sorry, but I'm a medium & shouldn't have to search the store for XS..." I usually don't comment on things like this and just delete the person saying it but as a long time fan of your art I feel like I have to say something. I honestly had respect for you and the person you seemed to be and to be honest, this slapped me in the face. This is an incredibly stupid and disrespectful thing to say. First of all, ... cont'd
.. it is not your place to decide what is “fat” and what’s not. There is enough body negativity aimed at girls without ignorant comments like this. Everyone has different body types and “fat” really doesn’t exist. According to the fashion industry, a size 6 is considered plus size. Who the hell are you to deem another girl “fat” or not? In my opinion, there is healthy and unhealthy. Nothing else. Period. Second, who’s to say that “fat” girls are unhappy? Whatever body type it is YOU consider fat, who are you to judge that person and say that they aren’t happy with themselves? That’s a pretty messed up assumption, that just because they don’t look like you, or whatever society considers attractive, they must be unhappy… Get real. I understand that it could be frustrating that a store’s sizes aren’t accurate or that they’re hard to find. But just say that. The negative comments about a person’s body isn’t necessary, it’s ignorant.
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Good for you for standing up for something — and I mean that sincerely. But I don’t feel what I said was ignorant (ignorant: lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact) in any manner.
1) To say that Forever 21 has been vanity sizing their clothing is a fact and a commonly noted observation. I used to wear a M-L and now I have to scrounge the store for XS-S (and most stores here carry very few XS despite this warped perception that the “fashion industry caters to stick skinny model bodies”). Even my mom has had to look for a size smaller. I’d love to believe this is due to losing weight and finally “fitting the body mold”, but the reality is, the stores are changing their sizes to accommodate the growing size of their consumers.
2) “Vanity sizing is the practice of altering a garment’s size so that a larger woman can fit into an item labeled in a smaller size.” - Fashion Law Wiki What’s the purpose of vanity sizing? To make people feel better about the sizes they’re buying.
3) I think you read way too much into my tweet and twisted my 140 characters to mean something entirely more than the passing, albeit off-colored, comment that it was. I admit that using the word “fat” was an inappropriate and insensitive choice, and for that I apologize. I’m not perfect and I say mean things sometimes.
All of that to say, I don’t condone the glorification of any body type over another. This post was never about body types, body image, or beauty standards. This was about the disgusting reality that obesity is taking over America, and rather than fighting against it, we cater to it. There’s a fine line between celebrating various body types, and endorsing unhealthy weight trends. *Don’t confuse this statement with saying that larger sizes are unhealthy — I’m very well aware that physical size and health are not always correlated and that plenty of “plus size” girls are no doubt healthier than I am. But the growing change — the fact that clothing stores are altering the “average” size and skewing the perception of what a healthy average size is rather than welcoming more sizes for other body types — is what concerns me.
