Body Liberation Through Photos With Lindley Ashline
My guest this week is the fierce and fabulous Lindley Ashline, fat-positive photographer and body liberation activist, who has literally BANNED the weight loss industry from using her stock photos. In this glorious episode, Lindley tells how she pushed back when a diet company tried to do just that! The AUDACITY of diet companies and the weight loss industry is next level, but they were no match for Lindley! Join us for a completely fired up, inspiring conversation with a woman who takes no bullshit, AND takes staggeringly awesome photos!
Shownotes
Lindley has a stock photo website where she sells body positive, fat-positive photos. Most of her stock photos customers are health at every size oriented or anti-diet or body positivity folk who are marketing their small businesses.
People who model for these those stock photos are vulnerable. They may have multiple marginalised identities, including people of colour, and they are also people in very large bodies who experience discrimination and stigma just by living in their bodies.
Lindley points out that when you buy stock photos from her, you have to agree that you will respect to use the photos as the license specifies that you cannot use them to promote dieting or the weight loss industry.
“If I am going to set out to create body positive and fat positive stock photos and work with people in marginalized bodies to start with, I can’t allow those photos to be used in ways that will hurt people,” says Lindley.
The body positivity movement is rampant, and ripe for co-opting. Dove was the first company to monetize the body positivity movement at a grand scale.
Lindley shares her outrage when she discovered that diet company "The Whole 30" had purchased one of her images, which was in breach of the licence. She pushed back and refused to let them use it.
Body positivity movements are amazing as they are driving the increased visibility of diversity that’s happening around the planet.
Lindley reiterates that we have a generation of companies that simultaneously sell us the thin ideal and then turn around and tell us that it is our fault for not loving our bodies. That is trauma culturally and individually.
Lindley shares her history and how she came to quit her job and devote herself full time to photographing diverse bodies.
The foundation of the body positivity movement is the fat acceptance movement, which started in the 1960s.
People love the idea of diversity and allow the idea that large, small, and everyone in between can exist, says Louise. But when it comes to our own bodies, this is MUCH harder.
If Lindley & Louise were in the same room talking about weight science, weight stigma, and the need to a radical change, the possibility is that Louise's voice would listen to more, just because of weight stigma.
When marginalized people are allowed to speak, be angry, and be believed, it’s very threatening to the status quote, says Lindley.
Because of the nature of our culture, the folks who are of average size think that they are much larger, says Lindley.
Lindley says that she is always looking for the largest possible bodies to represent diversity.
Lindley is from the South in the USA. She was taught in history classes in school that slavery wasn’t all that bad because people were nice to their slaves and let them live in the house. But 'smiling oppression' is still oppression. It's not ok.
If we see ourselves represented everywhere and see other people represented everywhere, nothing looks unusual, and from here we can grow an appreciation of the beauty of diversity.
The more we see all kinds of bodies, the more normal they become, and the more you can expose yourself, the faster it will work.
Take nudes! Start small (a toe poking out of the bath) and play with the idea. Body liberation is for you, not a performance we do for the world.
Resources Mentioned
Find out more about Lindley here
Follow Lindley on Insta @bodyliberationwithlindley
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