Tow #7 "Big Women Bare All"

"Big Women Bare All" is a Newsweek article written by Abigail Jones. Jones has written quite a few articles for Newsweek about life, style and culture. In this article, Jones introduces Yossi Loloi's Full Beauty project to the audience. "The Full Beauty project" is a collection of photos of obese women in the nude designed to challenge society's views of "acceptable" female bodies, beauty, and size. Jones quotes Loloi "The women depicted are targets of societal backlash, but they are strong. They fight for acceptance in a world that doesn't approve of the slightest bulging of a love handle, let alone 'morbid obesity' or the possibility that some people find beauty in... all those things women spend thousands of dollars on every year trying to erase". Jones clearly tries to debunk the view that big women aren't beautiful by using statistics, figurative language and counterargument.

Jones first introduces her article with a vivid description of one of the project's subjects to allow her audience to develop their opinion on the subject. "Her thighs and calves are so profound that her feet appear miniscule, like dollhouse accessories". She then challenges the image of the ideal perfect, skinny woman that mainstream media offers by asking why a nude fat women is labeled a "provocation" but a thin model isn't. Jones explains that although the models are vulnerable, they are courageous enough to to appear in Loloi's project to force people to face their assumptions about women's bodies. Staring at their stretch marks and veins, suddenly we, the audience become the vulnerable ones. Our reactions say more about us than the about the women in the pictures. Jones makes her point as if to say, "Why can't big women be beautiful too?"

The argument is further supported by world wide statistics. Jones argues that the fact that one-third of American adults are obese and more women are a 16 than a size 2 and 0 combined prove that the Full beauty project isn't a confrontation but a nod to reality. Instead of discriminating a more than common appearance, why not embrace it?