Art by Trinity Sutterfield: Dances With Fat

Monday, October 28, 2013

Dances With Fat

One of the other website that provides me with endless information and inspiration is a blog run by the wonderful Ragen Chastain. DWF daily discusses and argues that you can be both fat AND healthy. Chastain is considered to be 'super obese' yet she is considered extremely healthy and named her blog because she is an incredible dancer. I love reading her articles and seeing pictures of her doing standing toe touches, but my favorite part is her 'read my hate mail' section. She actually posts the hurtful comments and ignorance driven hate mail that she receives. She take these terrible comments and advertises on the page so that her hate mail actually pays her, which is wonderful because it is, in a sense, a proverbial slap in the face to the people who sent them originally.

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Trinity Sutterfield

Feminist Activist Artist from Cincinnati. I currently live in the bustling metropolis of Hebron Kentucky, but spend most of my time at The University of Cincinnati- DAAP (Design, Architecture, Art and Planning).

For many years now I have been interested in the societal beauty demands that women are faced with. My artwork takes a critical view of social and cultural issues. In my work, I explore themes like body positivity and feminism, feminism and the effects of societal beauty standards on women through many mediums including drawing, painting, photography and digital editing/painting. My work is influenced by artists as diverse as Ewan Uglow, Jenny Saville, Sandro Botticelli and William Bouguereau. I am also influenced by many writers, including blogs such as Adipositivity and Dances with Fat. Daily, women are faced with thousands of images and articles telling them that are not good enough, simply because they are not small enough. I do not believe this is true. My work celebrates the plus size body, often showing the attributes that society deems ugly or undesirable as the ideal. I aim to cause social change. It is for this reason that I call myself a feminist activist artist. As a whole my work is typically positive, celebrating the body and teaching my audience to love theirs; however it also tends to demonize society’s thin obsession. I have been focusing on this theme for nearly four years and I still hold the same fervor and passion for it that I did when I first started working with it; however my concept has matured beyond just showing that big women are beautiful to showing that all bodies are beautiful no matter their size. I tend focus on bigger women because there is more of an element of rebellion there in portraying beauty in a figure that society deems ugly or undesirable, rather than in portraying a figure that is slightly more socially acceptable because it is smaller. With my work, I aim to show the world that all bodies are beautiful not only in spite of their size but also because of their size.