Vive Charlie Issue 26 | Page 12

I drew a picture of Maryam Namazie. Maryam had recently been protesting in the nude and had made a bizarre appearance in a Sam Harris podcast. I won’t go into her views, they’re actually irrelevant to the story. What is relevant is that I drew her naked and I drew her as obese. Some readers and contributors were furious/upset that I’d drawn her as “repulsive”, “grotesque”, “hideous” and a number of other ugly adjectives. Maryam herself accused me of “body shaming” and “misogyny”. I forget who it was but someone else accused me of “hate art”.

I’m a caricaturist. I draw caricatures. I look at a person’s facial and bodily characteristics and I exaggerate them. Unlike most caricaturists I don’t generally exaggerate features to the point of physical impossibility. Big noses become huge noses but those noses don’t become bigger than the person’s house! Where I’m able to I try to maintain a semblance of realistic possibility to the character. There are always exceptions to the rule but with the Maryam character I drew a woman that could exist in the ‘real’ world. Maryam the person isn’t slim, nor is she morbidly obese, she’s a normal woman carrying some weight. The body I drew didn’t actually look like Maryam’s body and the face I drew was actually more attractive than

Maryam the person. No-one commented on how complimentary her facial caricature was. No, instead these ‘Maryamites’ saw a body that repulsed THEM. Each one of those Maryamites was disgusted by an overweight body. The body I drew isn’t ugly. The drawing is actually structurally pleasing. Maryam and her Maryamites are fattist and believe that fat is ugly, repulsive, grotesque and hideous. I don’t. I just see people’s shapes that can be drawn and exaggerated.

The Maryamites are also hypocrites. They purport to defend Freedom of Speech and the Freedom of Expression to draw Mohammed and other ‘forbidden’ subjects but if Maryam had been a prophet her Maryamites would’ve been calling for my execution. They weren’t upset when I drew Russell Brand with a micro penis; Sepp Blatter as obese; Katie Hopkins as obese; Chloe Madeley’s body as distorted; or Jeremy Clarkson with moobs. For some reason it was perfectly acceptable to ‘body shame’ anyone in the previous 24 issues of Vive Charlie, including my own caricature, but not Maryam.

I’ll repeat, hypocrites, every last one of them.

Shameful Bodies

@noisykafir vivecharliemag.com

By Noisykafir

Co-founder/Illustrator at @ViveCharlieMag

He draws, he knits, he writes, he shits.