Curiosity Journal #2: Zine Planning

Okay, fair warning this post is gonna be hella rant-y and angry and it might take a little while to get to the actual art part so just hang in there. If you really want to, you can skip down to where the next section of bolded text is to get to the actual art discussion.

So in my last curiosity journal, I asked how I could translate what I'm passionate about into art. It's important for me to care deeply about what I'm making, otherwise I won't do it and will most likely forget about it. One of the many benefits of having the attention span of a goldfish.

While I was writing that journal entry, I mentioned zines as a potential way for me to translate my love of social issues into art. In fact, at the end of that entry, I mentioned that I was already following through with that idea and that I was making a zine about a topic very close to me: body confidence and self-acceptance.

It's something that I have personally struggled with and have wanted to talk about for quite a while now, so I thought why not take advantage of the opportunity when it presented itself. Body confidence is always something I've always had problems with, ever since about Grade 2. I don't think I'm alone in saying that television and magazines didn't exactly help with said problems. In the last few years, however, I've not only accepted the way I am, but I happen to think that I look pretty damn fabulous.

I mean, just look at me. Stunning, amirite?

Now, I'm fat. I already know that I'm fat. And I'm not just saying that because I saw some magazine with a skinny model on it, compared it to myself and thought 'oh wow, in comparison to what these magazines are saying is beautiful, I'm fat'. Because no. When I say I'm fat I mean I am actively aware of the fact that I weigh quite a bit more than what a BMI calculator says I should weigh. Don't worry, I don't have bad self-esteem. (I think I'm pretty great. I'm the bomb dot com. In fact, I might have too much self-esteem.)

So yeah, I don't have bad self-esteem; I just the have the radical notion that just because I'm fat doesn't mean that people should be able to erase my humanity and treat me differently because of it. Cause that's what a lot of people do to fat people. Especially fat girls. Especially on the internet. They bully and harass us with the excuse that they're doing it because they care about our health. Which is a bunch of B.S because:

1) No one has that much "concern" over the health of another person on the internet that they don't even know. And
2) If this was really about health, they wouldn't be such hypocrites. When a skinny girl on Tumblr posts a pic of her eating a whole pizza, it's funny and cute and relatable. But when I do it, I'm disgusting and what's wrong with the world. The folks who are telling me about my terrible eating habits are also the ones who picked up Taco Bell or McDonald's on their way home from their kid's soccer practice not once, but twice this week. You think I don't see you? Careful hon, you're hypocrisy is showing. And
3) When companies like Nike come out with plus size exercise wear, these same people that were just yelling at to me get off the couch and go for a run then dogpile on this company for promoting an "unhealthy lifestyle". Tell me, how exactly am I supposed to become healthy and exercise more if I don't have any clothes to exercise in? Quite the riddle, I know. I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't.

If you're still here, thank you for sitting through a rant of such magnitude. I promise I'll get to the art stuff now.

Anyway, so I wanted to create a zine that would be the exact opposite of what fat girls experience online. I wanted it to be full of positivity and happiness and rainbows. I planned the majority of the zine over a two-day period during March Break, and I've been periodically working on the actual zine since then. It's a lot different from the first one I made, partially because it's a lot better produced and also because it doesn't have the same gritty, punk kinda thing that the other one had going on. This ones gonna have a lot more pastel colours and general cuteness than the last. It's going to be all uplifting messages, positive looks at bodies, and adorableness.

Here's just an overview of all the planning I've done so far.

While it will be larger than the four page zine I did last year, it will still be small, confined only to around eight pages. I've plotted everything out and now it's just a matter of making the thing. This zine will be a little more text heavy than the other, but I do plan to try to balance it out a bit. I've already got a title, which I mentioned in my last curiosity journal post, "Thique". I would go into the symbolism behind the title and my decision to use it but this post is already wayyyyy to long and we've both probably got other stuff to do, so I'll leave you with some pics of my plans and such:

Here are my really rough drafts.
This was mostly from the stage that I was just writing down all my ideas.

And here's a rough plan of what each panel/page is going to look like.
Though they are subject to a little bit of change.