Ju Romano: “My belly exists, it’s great and it’s fat”

fatphobia is the term used to define the prejudice suffered by fat people within a society that overestimates thinness and a restricted standard of beauty. Discrimination operates on the belief that people above a “standard weight” are sloppywith lack of self control and self love🇧🇷 When internalized, these perceptions profoundly affect the self esteem and welfare of the victims, generating stress, anxiety and depression🇧🇷

Recently, the movement of women who fight against this oppression and seek to encourage the empowerment of other people considered “overweight” standard has been expanded. Aware of the importance of expanding discussions on the subject, CLAUDIA has prepared a special that will be published throughout the month of March.

Read too: Fatphobia affects the career, health and happiness of fat people

Our first interviewee is paulista Juliana Romano, 27 years old, journalist, blogger and, in her words, “well resolved, happy and in a good mood”. Getting to this stage was the result of several processes, which include daily self-acceptanceself love and valuing one’s own freedom and autonomy.

She has already worked in magazines and websites aimed at the female audience and, since 2009, runs a blog aimed at “all girls and women who do not fit the “standards” and want to get rid of these rules that limit our creativity, freedom and expression. ”, as she herself describes.

The journalist also shares the Youtube channel A Gorda e o Gay with journalist friend Lucas Castilho, in addition, she has already been on the cover of ELLE, has posed for Playboy and intends to continue occupying all possible spaces, leading to voice🇧🇷 beauty and competence gives fat woman🇧🇷

Read too: Jesz Ipólito: “It is not always evident why they are discriminating against me”

CLAUDIA: When did you have a turning point and decide to love and accept yourself?
Juliana Romano: In the first place, there was the key, of course, but loving and accepting yourself is a daily process🇧🇷 I had an abusive relationship when I was 18, 19 years old, and this boy destroyed my self-esteem. She was already kind of bad and he made everything worse, left me a mess. Then I went to therapy, because I couldn’t get rid of him, I felt very unhappy, but I couldn’t identify that I had a problem with self-esteem. In the sessions, we worked on various aspects of my personality, until we reached self-esteem.

Sometimes you can’t touch yourself alone, you can even talk about it, but you don’t realize that there’s a problem with you wanting to meet others’ expectations🇧🇷 When I noticed this and started working in therapy, I began to realize that it’s no use wanting to satisfy others, when sometimes it’s okay for us. I noticed that I wanted everyone to see me the way I saw myself. I had to learn to put my expectations first. It was in this change that I started to realize that I don’t need to please everyone, I can’t, it’s not possible please everyone. So, since that’s not possible, let’s please the most important person in my life, which in this case is me.

That’s how I started to realize that I didn’t need to have a specific body, I didn’t need to have a specific type of behavior, I didn’t need to have a specific career, that I could actually do what I wanted to do, which left me happy, not others – I was not responsible for the happiness and satisfaction of others. Everyone is responsible for their own happiness and satisfaction., so if someone feels unhappy with my body, with my lifestyle, it’s not my problem. Discovering this is what gave me the self-confidence to accept myself, to love myself, and to be myself.

CLAUDIA: Do you consider that fashion and beauty are good ways to reinforce self-acceptance and self-love?
Juliana Romano: I’ve always seen fashion as a form of personal expression. Of course, before this key turn of mine, I felt very pressured to have a certain body type to be part of fashion and beauty as well. But after I understood that I didn’t need to please people, fashion became a very key factor in my life, because it was through my clothes that I was able to express🇧🇷

I’ve done this before, just wanting people’s approval or wanting to show my rebellion. Then I started using fashion as personal expression same. You can clearly see this change in my style. When I was younger, I had a very aggressive look, and that’s how I felt about people: aggressive. I felt like I was one war🇧🇷 After I started to accept and love myself, I started to actually use fashion as an expression of my mood, my personality, so I always wear fun, happy, colorful things. My style has changed a lot over the years, and it’s normal: you change over the years.

In beauty, I think it’s very important too, because Every woman, fat or thin, has the right to feel beautiful.🇧🇷 Makeup is super democratic: the same black eyeliner goes for fat, thin, white, black, tall, short. Of course, being able to use the same product as any woman is something that makes you feel part of it too. It’s bad when people put rules, both in fashion and in beauty. But the love movements for curls curls within beauty, for example, are excellent, because they encourage women to accept their natural hair, accept their roots, their beauty. This is beautiful. Of course we always have the counterpoint, so it’s worth a lot for women to look at the positive side of beauty and fashion for them to use it as a tool to love themselves and feel more beautiful every day.

We live in a good moment, in which advertising campaigns, although using the acceptance movement to gain money and popularity, have started to spread this movement. For the consumer, it will always be better to see an advertisement that has fat, thin, black, white, short, than one that only has thin, blonde and tall.

CLAUDIA: What are your criticisms of the plus size segment in Brazil and in the world today?
Roman Ju: The plus size segment has existed for many years, before we called plus size fashion, XL fashion🇧🇷 This market was built on top of a lot of prejudice. Shop owners and manufacturers come from the same culture as us, so it’s obvious that they too have been shaped by discrimination.

When you go to a store that only sells wholesale, sometimes the brand has beautiful, incredible, wonderful things. But when the shopkeeper goes to buy these pieces to resell in his store, he chooses a black dress, he chooses the sleeved T-shirt, because the shopkeeper thinks that the fat woman will not wear a tank top, she will not wear a white dress. He Do you think the fat woman always wants to hide?🇧🇷

Another problem that we talk about a lot in the middle is the choice of models🇧🇷 Many brands when they go to campaign choose women size 44, 46. I don’t think it’s wrong, because these models represent a portion of the plus size population – which can range from 44, 46, to 64, 66. But what I think is wrong is just choose this “skinny” plus size model, because it seems that even selling clothes to those who don’t fit the patternthe brand is trying to put a standard on fat.

For example, I love ashley graham, who is a super famous plus size model, but she is a model who has a standard body. She has a thin waist, no belly, and a thigh with a shape that is common to the pattern. I think it has to have Ashley Graham, but it also has to have Tess Holidaywhich is a model who wears a size 56. Because since we are talking about representativenessto show this woman that she can have her body, why do we have to keep reaffirming old patterns🇧🇷

Another barrier is fabric. It’s super hard for us to see clothes with flat fabric – which doesn’t stretch –, for example. I love jackets, pants… But we see a lot of soft fabric, knitwear, because they think the fat won’t fit in flat fabric. There are brands that do good things, which keep up, but unfortunately most still don’t. Plus size fashion has a bad habit of not keeping up with world trends🇧🇷 We see a lot of cool stuff on the runway, but the plus size world insists on doing what she did last season, just changing the print, or just the colors. It seems that we live in a big looping. They did a pattern ten years ago and only renew this piece with color and print. This I think is a big problem, because we end up not being able to keep up with world trends as traditional size girls do.

CLAUDIA: You defend the idea that when you wear an outfit about which there is a legend that it would not look good on fat people, like stripes, the world does not change at all. Is it liberating to embrace this?
Juliana Romano: It’s very freeing! I think it’s funny, because most fashion rules were based on the idea that women needed to look thinner, or taller, wanting to make them not look like what they are. Denying a fashion rule is accepting that you don’t want to be different than you are., that my body is fine and I’m going to wear what I want, what I think is beautiful. It’s liberating in the sense of saying: look, I don’t need to look thinner, I don’t need to look taller. I’m fat at 1.57 m, I’m going to wear a stripe and if that gives the impression that I look fat, it’s because in fact I’m fat, I don’t have to look thin or tall.

Another cool thing in addition to stripes, because I think everyone has accepted stripes – “okay, everyone is going to wear stripes” –, is the cropped🇧🇷 Here’s the thing, guys: my belly exists, it’s great and it’s fat🇧🇷 If you didn’t like it, turn away. I am not obliged to keep hiding it because you have a prejudice, an aversion, a fatphobia with outside fat. I’m sorry, that’s your problem🇧🇷 The body is mine, the clothes are mine, I pay my bills, I buy my clothes, and I’ll wear whatever I want. It’s very liberating because you take ownership of your body and say: man, it’s mine, you have no rights over it. The body can change. People can lose weight, they can gain weight, but today, it’s your body, so use what you want, wear what you want, what you think is beautiful🇧🇷

CLAUDIA: Do you see a relationship between sexism and fatphobia?
Juliana Romano: I see a lot, machismo is one of the factors that feed fatphobia. It is a very feminist act, even when you say “woman, take your body for yourself”, you are giving her independence, autonomy, strength, and that takes away male power. Want to give, give; want to use the belly outside, use it; want to wear a short skirt, use🇧🇷 The more power you give to women, the more it bothers male chauvinists.

I see this happen a lot, especially when something more scandalous comes out, like when I appeared in ELLE and Playboy, and, until now with the cover of VEJA São Paulo[[The issue for the week of March 11th of the magazine features several highlights from the plus siz market, including…