This is one of the most important fat activists in Colombia: Adriana Convers, who created a persona she uses as Fat Pandora. I started following her after she was on a podcast with the organization I have been working with and researching, El Cuerpo que Somos. I found her work on Netflix telling her story, and it was very interesting, so I included it along with a summary of what she says.
She says that she was tired of being told that she needed to look a certain way to be accepted and that people normally believe or have a conception that fatness and fashion cannot be friends. She set the goal to show the world the opposite of this belief. She explains that seven years ago, she was tired of feeling excluded from fashion and felt like she didn’t belong. When she saw that there was going to be this new TV show of queer eye she was very excited because this was a TV show she had seen all through her teenage years, and this is a series which at times makes you laugh, but in other moments it makes you feel empathy. She loved how much attitude Jonathan had. She said he wasn’t afraid to show who he was; he wasn’t scared to laugh or speak. He walked in heels and resisted hate with humor and love. This is why he is an icon, she expressed, because he has inspired us to love ourselves as we are. This series shows the importance of tolerance and accepting and embracing each other’s differences. He doesn’t make himself look like a victim; he shows power and voice. She called her blog Fat Pandora because she isn’t afraid of the word fat; for her, it is not an insult. Through her blog and social media, she has created a community of sisterhood and brotherhood built on empathy. She thinks that depression causes more deaths than other illnesses, and she decided to surface her depression and accept herself as she is. She thinks haters are necessary because they keep you humble and grounded. Just like in real life, not everybody is going to like you in the digital world either. What she wants to accomplish with Fat Pandora is for her followers to understand that fashion is for everyone, and that through it we can express ourselves; that fat girls do not need to dress in all black to hide themselves; and that, on the surface, to be happy, you do not have to be a size 2, and if there is no space for you, create it.
Some of the messages she shares here are interesting and relate to my work because, from the research I have done and the people I have spoken to, one of the main things everyone says is that fat is not a bad word. We can’t take away the stigma from a word if we consider it an insult, and I learned this from Tigress Osborne as well. I reached out to her team but haven’t gotten a response. Still, I have learned a lot from her content and experience, especially in fashion, because I found it interesting that, even as she was growing up and had means, she was able to get clothing that was pretty. She wanted to wear it because she had it custom-made. Still, why are there not enough options in Colombia for there to be more clothing all around for different sizes? She has been trying to create new meaning around the word fat and has honestly created an amazing community.
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