Hi, I'm Lesley, and this is my website.

In December of 2004, the Fatshionista community on LiveJournal was originally founded by Amanda Piasecki, with this mandate: "Welcome, fatshionistas! Here we will discuss the ins and outs of fat fashions, seriously and stupidly -- but above all -- standing tall, and with panache. We fatshionistas are self-accepting despite The Man's Saipan-made boot at our chubby, elegant throats. We are silly, and serious, and want shit to fit."  More than that, Fatshionista is a size-positive movement fighting against body-hatred and fat phobia wherever they persist, and which argues that all bodies are worthy of respect.

Since then, the many aspects of Fatshionista have been featured in Bitch, BUST, Time Out New York, The East Bay Express, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, the Associated Press, and on ABCNews.com, as well as on numerous blogs and websites like Jezebel, Newsweek, and The Daily Beast.  Also Brazilian television, and what I am told are some fairly popular sites in China and Italy.

Lesley is the primary voice here at Fatshionista.com.  She has far more post-baccalaureate education than any sane person should require, and has been engaging with fat activism and social justice politics for over a decade. Lesley weighs something over 300 pounds, wears sizes 24 through 28, and is, among other things, 33 years old, white, married, and owned by three cats. She digs Nina Simone, tea, Victorian cemeteries, taking pictures, subverting dominant culture via a cunning mixture of activism and fabulous dresses, oversharing, and referring to herself in the third person. Having narrowly escaped her hometown in South Florida at the tender age of 18, she currently works in higher education administration in Boston, lives in a condo on a beach, and administrates the Fatshionista.com website and blog on these here internets. Lesley wants to be an astronaut and a ballerina when she grows up. 

 Lesley was recently profiled in the Boston Globe, so you can read more about her here .

The Occasional Contributors: 

etana can be found saving daily the masses from destruction and oblivion without doing much more than leaving hir house. Caught in boxes and bags and what could only be described as shoddy workmanship, ze is often forced to educate the masses on mass.  Ze is an unrepentantly fat, blind, first-generation American, poor, hyper-educated, queer cyborg and not unpleased about it. Ze contributes to Breath and Shadow, an online disability publication and co/moderates several disability-related communities on livejournal. Ze also published Restricted Zine: voices on sexuality and disability in 2005.  etana is also the primary voice on the Fatshionista Twitter feed .

stitchtowhere is a size twentysomething twentysomething who's fat in (and at) the Canadian prairies. She blogs here, and on livejournal under the same name. Recently, she joined the fabulous ranks of fatshionista mod squad and helps co-moderate the community on livejournal. She's comitted to size acceptance, HAES, thrifting, wardrobe remixing, poetry, and D, her partner of the last seven years (not necessarily in that order). Despite what the Horse People will tell you, she doesn't believe that tiny ponies are furniture but she is--owing to a particularly traumatic summer camp experience--convinced that donkeys are ten kinds of evil.

Tara is a twenty-something biracial high femme New Yorker by way of DC and Richmond, VA. She is a lover of fatshion, makeup, and figuring out ways to live fabulously on a dime. She's been blogging about fat, fatshion, race, and glamorosity for the past 7 years, she's a co-moderator of the fatshionista livejournal community, has contributed at Racialicious, and is the fatshion and beauty correspondent at FemmeCast. Her other interests include: Scrabble, foodie dilettantism, abstract collaging, books, crusading for social justice, and eating pizza in her underwear.

Other bios forthcoming.