Body Positivity: "I paint thick girls in all skin colors"

Beauty ideals change. Twenty years ago, being beautiful looked like Kate Moss. Today, like Kim Kardashian. Beauty is a social phenomenon. We as a society define it, it is in the eyes of many observers. And they are always looking more closely. On all channels.

Young women, but also men, feel pressured by these media-propagated standards. Instagram, the place where so many desperately want to show off the best version of themselves, becomes the mirror of a distorted body awareness: smooth and filtered, always happy and pretty. A source of inspiration for some, pure poison for others. Exactly this platform I chose to counter.

I draw illustrations and cartoons of women and young girls - as they are, in real life. I paint thick girls in all skin colors. In the media rare fat women are rarely seen. If they do, they are usually single, ugly and mocked. I can not remember a movie in which you are an object of desire. They are just fat women who are defined by their bodies alone.

With my drawings I want to show that human beauty shows itself in different forms and facets. And I also point out that the word "fat" should not be an insult. My illustrations are honest, empathic and full of humor.

American author Bret Easton Ellis recently lamented in an essay for Italian "Vogue" the decline of the fashion world as it once existed - exclusive and fairytale, as he described it in his novel "Glamorama" in 1999. This world had fallen victim to the millennial mentality. The "obsession" of today's society with "concepts such as inclusiveness and body positivity" has destroyed the attraction of the fashion world. He would like to know if it is a question of generations to question the ideals of beauty.

Cécile Dormeau

With images like this, Cécile Dormeau is fighting against social constraints and ideals of beauty

The philosopher and author Rebekka Reinhard puts exactly this. "The Generation Z propagates in a rebellious way a new anti-beauty ideal," she says. For boys, less perfect proportions count as edges and edges as an expression of identity and experience. For me, the development goes even further. Body positivity is not enough, body diversity has to be the next step. Acceptance for the variety of body shapes: It should not matter which origin, religious orientation and sexual orientation a person is. In addition, a new feminism plays a crucial role.

It is not just the young people who have taken the magic of the nineties fashion scene - but also former industry greats who have unpacked in recent years, with little nice details from this "exclusive world". For example, the model agent James Scully, discoverer of Kate Moss, who publicly criticized racism and abuse in this bubble. Or the models themselves, for example, the photographer Terry Richardson the sexual overreach convicted. What happened then is hardly possible today. This disenchantment, as well as the #MeToo debate and the work of women like me, are all driving the Body Positivity and Body Diversity movement forward.

My work should bring everything to light: inner complexes, the struggle for self-acceptance and self-love. I am interested in everything we do not show, what is involved with shame and taboos. I show the diversity of female bodies and openly deal with negative emotions, sexual harassment and self-hatred. I want to shake off clichés that celebrate non-perfect in a world obsessively obsessed with what one should look like. I try to defuse this complex topic with humor. The pictures I post on Instagram are meant to be like a virtual hug for people who just do not feel comfortable in their bodies.

Defining beauty is old-fashioned

We live in a time when not only a beauty ideal dominates. And maybe we will experience the beginning of an era in which beauty does not necessarily have to be "ideal" anymore. Defining beauty is old-fashioned. Clinging to the past, as Bret Easton Ellis does, is outdated. Beauty forms and transforms. To recognize this as a society is a big step towards accepting the difference. In a globalized world, precisely this recognition of diversity is a key to peace and freedom. The human body changes throughout its life. He is growing and getting old. He always belongs to us. But man is much more than his outer form.