Created over 12 years, Abbie Trayler-Smith’s debut monograph offers a deeper understanding of a subject often shrouded in shame
It was around the time of her 11th birthday that Abbie Trayler-Smith first began to feel something was wrong. As a child she had never given much thought to her body – it was merely the vessel that carried her joyfully through the world. But, as she approached her teens, she started to question whether her body was really all it was supposed to be.
“I remember my family saying ‘Oh, it’s puppy fat’,” she recalls. “And then suddenly it wasn’t puppy fat, it was a problem.” By the time Trayler-Smith reached secondary school, she was scrawling the word “Fat” onto the covers of her workbooks. On a page of her diary, a list of reasons to lose weight included: “No more hassle from mum + dad, they would be proud of me instead of being ashamed [sic].”
This feeling of shame followed Trayler-Smith into her adult years – right up until the day she met Shannon. The photographer was attending a health services event for young people and saw Shannon read a poem on behalf of her weight management class, pleading to the professionals in the room for understanding rather than judgement. Trayler-Smith was floored by her eloquence and confidence. “She was the brave teenager I had never been able to be,” she says.
From this time, Trayler-Smith and Shannon embarked on a photographic partnership that would last for more than a decade. Part of the photographer’s long-term series, The Big O, which examines the issue of obesity in school age children and young adults, the images have now been collected into Trayler-Smith’s first monograph. Kiss it! explores the life of an ordinary young woman as she attempts to navigate a world determined to judge her not for who she is, but for how much she weighs.
Simple, striking portraits of Shannon follow her as she transitions from teenager to adult, and as she navigates friendships, family, first boyfriends, prom nights, holidays and jobs. The images overflow with colour and with personality – Shannon’s sense of self is infectious, seeming to emanate from each of the volume’s pages. However, this fierceness is offset by moments of cruelty – one image shows a text which reads: “ya so fat no one wants you ahah and your a fat face aswell ya fat slag [sic]”.
