Hello hello everybody! I´m Gisela, and you can
usually find me blogging at Curvas Libres (Free Curves). I can pretty much say that life as I know it
today started last February. Till then, I was working on a regular 9 to 5 job
without much ambition of it ever changing. And then I was laid off, and found
myself with too much time in my hands and a reliable notebook, so I started
spending hours online. I found some amazing plus size bloggers who lived the
life I never knew I wanted –loving their bodies for what they were and
flaunting them around. This women and their vision of what life can be baffled
me, and so I started going deeper and deeper in the Fat Acceptance movement. It
seemed like a new world was appearing in front of me. It may seem like an
exaggeration, but that was the ways it felt for me.
Around the same time, I signed up for a 30 days
self-portrait e-course called Be Your Own Beloved. I still don´t know why I did
it, ´cause I´ve always hated seeing pictures of myself. But I guess it came at
the right time. After a month of taking self-portraits, I learned to see my
body with much more kindness and love than ever before. It was a truly
transformative experience for me. I started to feel more confident and
beautiful –more like the woman I always dreamt of being.
It was such a life changing experience for me
that I started to search for other people near me that were already living
according to the Fat Acceptance movement and the HAES principles to share our
point of view and perhaps meet sometime –the more fabulous fatties, the better.
I spent days searching the web, and then asked my BFF to search too. We
couldn´t find any blog or group in Buenos Aires, or Argentina, or even in other
Latin American countries. (If you know of anyone, please share!). It was
heartbreaking. Not just because I couldn´t get an FA buddy, but because there´s
probably many many Latin women out there that get fed with all the media BS
everyday and don´t have anyone like them to tell them that there is an
alternative. And that´s how the idea of
Curvas Libres was born. I started blogging in August and every response I´ve
got till this day is positive. I don´t try to portrait myself as any kind of
expert –not at all. I just share my experience and my point of view, and hope
to plant at least a small FA seed into someone´s mind.
So two month ago, my new life is going great, except that I was still unemployed and
without any good prospect in sight. And that´s where my mom comes in. One
evening she turns to me and says “So why don´t you start selling plus size
clothes?” I can swear the sky opened and a choir of angels started singing
Aleluya. Of course, I had to sell plus size clothes. That´s exactly what was
missing in my life. I´ve love fashion for many years and the new vision of my
body had only increased that love, but buying clothes had always been an
excruciating process for me, just like it was for every other fat woman I
know. And so Curvas Libres Indumentaria
(Free Curves Attire) was born.
September 2nd I set up a Facebook page where people can check out the clothes that are available and purchase
them directly -everything in plus sizes only, most pieces going up to 4XL (if
the online convertor is correct). Each piece is specially selected to celebrate
our body and flaunt our curves, not hide our rolls or our butt. I also set up a showroom every Saturday, so
any women that want to see the clothes in person can come. My dream is to offer
them a safe shopping experience, with no one making fun of how they look or
shaming them for their size. I have a poster on a wall that says “This is a
body hate free zone. Every body is loved and celebrated here”, and I mean
it.
I leave you a few photos of our Summer/Spring
production. Please be nice to the model –it´s me. My budget doesn´t allow me to
hire a professional model just yet.
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I hope you enjoyed today´s post. I know it´s
totally autobiographic, but I wanted to share with you how my life changed
after meeting incredible ladies like our lovely Leah. I´ll see you over at
Curvas Libres if you wanna check it out (it´s in Spanish, but there´s always
Google Translator).
-Gi-
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