This Plus-Sized Woman Turns Body-Shaming Comments Into Empowering Art
this is what retaliation looks like.A post shared by Laura (@lauradelarato) on Mar 7, 2017 at [...]
Laura Delarato sure knows how to turn a bad day into a good one. For about a year, the 30-year-old Refinery 29 video producer has been taking the hurtful comments she receives on dating apps and turning them into empowering works of art through her kickass photo series The Comments Project.
"The whole project started as a way to uncover the messages I would get on dating sites, as I couldn't just be a woman looking to date," Delarato told Allure. "I was constantly reduced to a fetish because I'm plus-size. As I kept making more wide-spread projects in my professional life, the comments and trolling amplified across social media."
Delarato took those body-shaming comments and applied them over her gorgeous, NSFW portraits, resulting in powerful images that highlight everything that's wrong with how plus-size women are treated.
"The point of comments like these is to make me feel small and uncomfortable and like an object," she told Refinery29. "That's how we control women."
"I didn't want other people to think this is allowed," she continued. "So I refuse to let this go unnoticed."
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In addition to her photo series, Delarato also pioneered a similar video campaign in which she created sexy images of plus-size women and blasted them onto buildings in New York City.
"Studies suggest that seeing body diversity more often can actually make people more likely to consider larger bodies more aspirational and attractive," she wrote about the video. "So I created a photo project to show New Yorkers how sexy plus-size women can be — by presenting them with steamy, intimate scenarios featuring one sexy plus-size woman: me. The project was dedicated to tackling misconceptions around fat bodies and sex, like fat people only have sex with other fat people, plus-size women don't look good in lingerie, and the idea that fat is a derogatory word."
While many people praised Delarato for the project, others still responded with sexism, fetishism and body shaming — so she simply incorporated those negative comments into her photo series.
"I'm a human, and that's the point of the whole project," she says. "Go ahead and say what you want to say — but I'm a person that you're saying this to. Not a computer screen."
Check out some of her empowering images below.
not today, misogyny. (click link 👆in bio) #silentrapeculture
A post shared by Laura (@lauradelarato) on
[H/T Instagram / @lauradelarato]
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