Poignant Pics no. 94: On Lynn Bianchi's “Keep Your Fat Under the Table”
“Live loud and proud like you deserve and reject their bullshit definition of what a woman should look like.”
Keep your Fat Under The Table
I just adore this image; I love that it is like a mad convergence of The Last Supper and a female-gazed, body-positive Dove Real Women ad. The women sitting at the table appear utterly self-absorbed and unselfconscious as they gorge and play. Perhaps the passage of time has made it possible for me to see it like this now. I’ve lived through the eras before positivity, just as the woman under the table has. Would I have seen the same in this if I had seen it when it was first made? Likely not.
The genesis was the opposite of body positivity, as one might discern from the title alone, “Keep Your Fat Under the Table.” It was inspired by body-consciousness. And it sprang forth from frustration: a family member commenting unkindly on Bianchi’s weight while urging her to eat sweet treats the person made for her. We can’t change our genes and our body chemistries, nor can we control how the media portrays ideals of women’s beauty. How many of us have lived with this eternal paradox of enjoyment vs. health vs. “beauty”? Likely, most of us of the female gender can relate.
Bianchi said, “It focuses on self-criticism and identity. At the same time, it both references and challenges classical and contemporary concepts of beauty and form. The process, driven by spontaneity, parody, and conceptuality, produced a collective sense of liberation for all the women who worked with me on the series. They are not trying to impress or perform. They are playing and eating with relish, celebrating their bodies without trying to be something other than what they are.”
The entire series, Heavy in White, is provocative and beautifully made. I urge you to visit Bianchi’s website to view or re-view the work. Bravo, Lynn!
Artist Bio
Lynn Bianchi is a fine art photographer and multimedia artist who has shown her work in over thirty solo exhibitions and in museums worldwide, including the Brooklyn Museum, Yale Art Gallery, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Musée de l’Elysée in Switzerland, and Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Her art has been featured in over forty publications, including The Huffington Post and Juxtapoz Magazine. Her work also resides in numerous private collections and museum collections.
See more of her work here.
Author Bio
Diana Nicholette Jeon is an award-winning artist based in Honolulu, HI, who works primarily with lens-based media. Her work has been seen both internationally and nationally in solo and group exhibitions. Jeon holds an MFA from UMBC and a BA from the University of Hawai’i.