Feast by Miss Leni

Growing up as a fat tween during the many diet crazes of the 2000s, what I was eating was always a topic of conversation, and I routinely felt shameful when I ate. Often bringing tuna sandwiches to school for lunch, I usually fell under scrutiny and judgment by my classmates. I still ate them though–and I still do today, because they’re my favorite.

Surrounded by socio-political discourse and ever changing technology, I am often compelled to create worlds to which I can escape to. Not only is lounging around in my underwear and hanging out with fish and cats a lot more peaceful than the real world–it’s also a place where I can feel deeply connected to animals, insects, trees, and water.

Now a fat-adult-woman-girl-person, once a child who retreated to her pet cats and her grandparents’ fish for comfort and companionship, I aim to express myself in my true form within my illustrations. In these serene and sometimes confusing spaces, I like to explore my past and evoke nostalgia.

I believe it is our duty as humans to foster personal affinities to our environment. In much of my work, I depict my fat body as just another part of a symbiotic system in nature. After longing for a sense of belonging for most of my adolescence, discovering that I could find that belonging within my own work was incredibly liberating.

Me and my fat body are worthy of love, and I like to think my grandparents’ fish and my cats think so too.

Words and images by Miss Leni | @tunafishsundae