#Fatkini

About

#Fatkini is a hashtag-based photo fad in which women take photographs of themselves in plus-size two-piece bikini suits and share them online to promote body positivity and fat acceptance.

Origin

On April 22nd, 2012, fashion blogger Gabi Gregg posted an article titled “Fatkini 2012”^[1] with several photographs of herself dressed in a striped two-piece bathing suit (shown below). In the post, she encouraged her readers not to shy away from sporting bikini suits, regardless of one’s body shape or body image.

“As always, I truly encourage you guys to get to the beach (or a pool) this summer--don’t let body shame keep you from having a good time! I don’t expect everyone to feel comfortable in a two piece, but hopefully I can inspire some of you to take the plunge.”

Spread

On June 11th, a Facebook^[4] page titled “Fatkini” was launched to highlight photographs of plus-sized women in two-piece bathing suits. In just over two years, the page has garnered at least 2,000 likes.

On June 11th, a Facebook^[4] page titled “Fatkini” was launched, which highlights photographs of plus-sized women in two-piece bathing suits.

“Fatkinis are the beautiful two-piece bathing suits that amazing fat babes wear while sunbathing, swimming, doing household chores, petting cats, eating ice cream, etc.”

On June 2nd, 2014, Redditor kubot submitted a reaction GIF to /r/TrollXChromosomes,^[6] a subreddit community dedicated to women’s humor, in a post titled “MRW I finally get the nerve to wear my ‘fatkini’ in public and I get unexpected compliments” (shown below).

On August 10th, BuzzFeed^[2] posted a compilation of #Fatkini examples taken from Instagram. The same day, Redditor freedom_tory submitted the BuzzFeed article to the /r/fatlogic^[5] subreddit, where the top comment criticized the post for referring to plus-size women as “real women.” Meanwhile, Instagram^[11] user tessmunster posted a photograph of herself wearing a bikini, which gathered upwards of 18,000 likes and 960 comments in the first 24 hours (shown below).

In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the photo trend, including The Sydney Morning Herald,^[7] Mirror,^[8]MTV^[9] and The Independent.^[10] As of August 2014, there are over 7,400 Instagram posts with the tag #fatkini.^[12]