Only with Shoog: Two Photo Shoots

Content note: There are half-dressed or semi-nude photos in this post. If you’d like to see only clothed ones, contact me, and I’ll hook you up without the more revealing ones!

What follows are some photos from the shoots I did with Shooglet at FatCon Seattle. Shoog, my favorite photographer of fat people, took all the photos in this post. I’m so grateful for their work in seeing beauty where others don’t normally find it and somehow conveying that beauty through photography. It’s amazing!

I’ve seen Shoog’s photos elsewhere and loved them so much. What has struck me most about them is that Shoog sees beauty and sexiness where others see only ugliness, morbidity, or undesirability. Not only that, but Shoog can help the viewer and the subject-as-the-viewer see the beauty in fat/their own bodies. And I bet, I just bet, that there are others who’ve felt as I did at the beginning: Well, I thought, I know Shoog finds beauty in other people. Can they possibly be able to find it in me, here where I am determined to show more of my body than I have done before?

Despite my apprehension, I break one of the cardinal rules of being a fat person: I enjoy having my picture taken. I like it. I’ve always liked it. I grew up simultaneously being told not to be vain and that I’d never fit into nice clothes, yet also being photographed. It was confusing. I’ve come out of that confusion knowing that representation matters. 

Furthermore, public images of happy fat people with bellies and boobs and legs and butts and multiple chins and HEADS and FACES matter. So here I am.

What I See When I See Myself

Nevertheless, and this shoot was no exception, I find parts of myself hard to look at. Cellulitis scars and post-surgical, permanent swelling in my upper inner thigh come immediately to mind. I could go on, but suffice it to say, I am not immune to the careful, persistent training we have all received about bodies.

Happily for me, my image is usually consonant with my gender — often really confirming, in fact. Come-hither femme. The glint of Faerie in my eyes. Whatever self-expressive adornment I’ve got going on. A lot of my “woman, but not just woman” genderfae expression feels reflected.

Not always, though. Sometimes I see the “neutered” fat person. The person who is too fat to be allowed gender or sexuality. Sometimes I think, great knowing eyes of the Green Man, but my chin and my neck and my cheeks and my tiny eyes! Ugh! I can hardly stand it. 

Shoog’s photos make me happy, though I know that I may get ALL kinds of shit for posting them. Legs, belly, boobs — they’re hard for me. I’ve learned so thoroughly to hate them, especially certain parts and certain angles. I cannot bring myself to love them, not yet. But again, representation. It’s important, and some of that representation is of thick thighs — REALLY thick thighs, even swollen like mine. Some of it is about grasping my wrinkly, fat belly. And some of it is about delighted, evocative faces and environments. 

Maybe most important. I am delighted with the photos, nearly all, and I was delighted to have them taken!

So here’s your content note again — there are rated PG-13 photos in this list. The tamer ones are some of the loveliest, I think. There aren’t any that are really shocking — except inasmuch as fat bodies (with heads on bodies and smiling faces, naked butts and delighted expressions) are shocking when they’re visible at all on the Internet or in other media.

My seated body is like a soft, rolling pyramid. A mountain. Just as in the meditation my therapist taught me, “Body like a mountain.” 

Many Beautiful Things Are True

My face is mobile, evocative, expresses joy and knowledge and delight and humor. 

My breasts are all over the place. Just all over the place. 

My arms roll and curve and my upper arms look almost like wings. 

My belly is fat from being fat and wrinkly from being smaller than it was when I was puffed out from edema. When I put my hands on it, I had a moment, of Oh good Goddess, what IS this? But I did it, and it was joyful. 

The colors and drapes of the fabric are lovely.

My nails are painted and pretty. 

I felt happy and sexy and I had fun. I also was afraid and ready to be critical. I apologized for being ungraceful and lumbering across the bed where we did the shoot.

Shoog is talented, skilled, and experienced with working with fat people as subjects. They were helpful, matter-of-fact, and enthusiastic about the work (even when I was fifteen minutes early!). “Ooh,” they’d say, “We’re getting some really good ones!” And when I was worried about getting around on a bed gracelessly, they were just simply generous and helpful. When I managed to pull down some of the fabric in my skootching around, they said, “You’re the first shoot of the day. Thanks for helping me figure out how this needs to be put up!”

I share a big (I meant “bit,” but it’s too good a typo not to leave!) of what we did together last weekend. Decide for yourself what beauty, ugliness, joy, or shock is here for you.

This one felt more sexy than I think it looks, though I may be wrong about that. Those boobs! And I like the way my earrings look.

There was something about reaching toward the camera, feeling the way my arm was moving out along the side of my body and the fabric along the bed. I felt the damask on the fabric that was given to me by a dear, dear friend, and I pressed my fingers into it. 

My therapist and my dietitian, interestingly, both said that they thought this one reveals something to them that resonates as deeply me. Something about the look in my eyes, the shape of my hand, the off-center necklace, something. I remarked that my necklace wasn’t straight, and a lovely friend said, “Yeah, well, neither are you! And what kind of nitpicking is that, anyway?” She’s right. These photos aren’t for professional use, they are for joy and exploration.

Wow, this was a hard one. First, the more obvious hard stuff. 

Oh, my legs, my poor legs. I have scars and swelling I will probably have until I die, and it is hard for me not to hate the legs that carry them. I rarely succeed in not hating them. Not only that, but much of the wounded places are the direct result of anti-fat bias expressed in inadequate and inappropriate medical care. Bad medical care I was too ashamed to confront or challenge. When I see my legs  in mirrors, I cringe. 

I remember sitting (lying) for this photo, taking a big and slow breath, thinking, Oh Goddess, help me. I wasn’t thinking about the importance of representation. I wasn’t thinking about how the rolls of my body reflect the Pacific coastline at Bean Hollow State Park. 

But then I got to see the photo, and others like it. I thought, Holy crap, Shoog included it! And I saw the loveliness in it. Not just the peaches-and-cream of my skin. Not just the sweet position of my foot crossed over my calf. Not just the fabric in the image. I saw other things about myself. I saw softness and lusciousness.I thought about how all those rolls and curves and their unusual shapes invite touch. How there is something very touchable about me.

Some camera snapping happened, and then Shoog asked me to move to the end of the bed and sit in butterfly pose. “Body like a mountain,” the meditation begins.” “Body like a mountain,” it continues. And then it moves on, “Body like a mountain, heart like the sea, mind like the sky. Body like a mountain.” 

Yes.

After having taken photo #4, I had more strength, ease, and peace about how these photos, the ones of nearly my whole body, might turn out. 

So what do I see? Right off the bat, I see how big I am. So big. Body like a mountain.

I see that my feet are holding the fabric between them as I sit in butterfly. I couldn’t come close to sitting in butterfly when I was all puffed up with edema all over my body. Butterfly is a victory. 

The wings of my arms. The gentle way my left hand is on my leg. Not just the rolls and curves of my body, but the way my body looks like tender dough lifted between giant hands. There are so many ways to see this body, my body, that are not about hatred and criticism. So many.

I decided, seeing this photo, that I would work on more ways to see myself. 

And this one definitely gives me the opportunity to do that — to see myself in ways other than the ways I have been trained to see. 

So here’s the belly–not just any belly, but my belly–grasped firmly in my hand. When Shoog asked me to put my hand on my belly, I sort of tentatively rested it there. And then they said, “Hold onto it,” and I felt my fingers digging into the soft, warm, rising bread dough of my belly. “That’s it!” they said, delighted, “That’s it!” And here it is.

As its big, fat, fifty-year-old belly self, here it is. 

Hard to grasp in front of someone, no matter how tender and artistic that person is. Hard to be photographed. Harder yet to share here. 

But this is reality. This is part of my reality. Something I cover with dresses and bathing suits and long tunic shirts. This is something I try to keep hidden, as though it is a secret that I am fat! 

So there it is.

As much as other people have seen me in the photos where I am leaning forward under the flowers, there is something about this image I am really fond of. There’s something authentic in this picture that makes me smile. 

I really do touch my face and play with my hair like that. I really do recline on my arm like that. I rest my elbow on my hip. My hair is often intentionally messy. My eyes are always sort of almond shaped, though we rarely see them un-glassesed.

And I like the way the out-of-focus flowers fall and the way the fabric behind me plays with the merlot and black of my babydoll top. Oh, and I frequently make slightly odd expressions like the one in this photo.

I leave you now with this one. There are lots of others we could finish with — ones where my breasts are trying to escape, I’m playing with my collar, I’m laughing, you can see my necklace better. Lots of photos that invite various kinds of questions. 

I like this one, though (and again), because of the expression of my face. This face is me, looking the happy I was feeling, having fun, and thinking of the people who might see these photos. I remember it so distinctly. So here I am, thinking of you and being joyful. 

Here I am, thinking of you and being joyful.