obsession generates dissatisfaction”, say the authors of The Adonis Complex, a book that elaborates on body image and men’ s obsession with their physics. Even though women are more exposed and prone to elaborate on their body image, this discontent is gender neutral. In fact, it comes from a very early age. Riya Foxter, writer for XoJane, an online community for women’ s empowerment, explains in one of her articles why she hated fat women since being a little girl, and why she stopped. In her own words, Foxter goes into explaining that, growing up in a working-class family in Ukraine, being fat was reserved as a luxury to the wealthy. Moving to the US introduced even more new standards of beauty in Foxter’ s life, as being skinny was perpetuated as being accepted and popular. Being a feminist, it took a while for Foxter to realize that fat-shaming was as much of an equality issue as unequal pay or sexual assault, and taking a stand against fat women was not only unfair but misogynistic.“ Fat women threaten the paradigm of beauty simply by existing. Fat shaming, like all aspects of the Beauty Standard, is built on a premise that women don’ t own their bodies. It’ s also why strangers feel entitled to give you advice on what you should wear, how you should smile, whom and how often you could fuck, where you should be at what hours of the night and how short you could cut your hair if you want to retain your status as an appropriate penis receptacle”. The columnist takes a strong stand against the need for society to control women’ s body in every way possible, and for her, women’ s individual power is withdrawn from them in this vicious beauty standard.“ A successful and a happy fat woman signals other women that they don’ t have to starve themselves or be perpetually unhappy with their bodies to achieve professional and personal fulfilment. That threatens diet regimens everywhere, the advertising industry itself and millions of erections. Confident women are patriarchy’ s greatest enemies, but fat women already knew that”. What’ s size got to do with it? Anna Scholtz is the designer behind her plus size homonymous brand, a business she started based on the idea of giving attractive clothing options to the plus size costumer. Anna’ s ethos towards body size is“ celebratory rather than apologetic”, since
51