Unfortunately, I'm not on dA as much as I would like, so I have made the group a bit easier for outside people to access.  People should be able to join as members freely now, and submit up to five things per day.  That way people aren't waiting for weeks or months to join members and there can be some level of autonomy.
Hello everyone!  

I'm terribly sorry if you have been here before and found yourself unable to submit a join request.

I have never run a group before, and was unaware that dA sets the group to turn off the ability to make join requests as a default.  (Why!?  Why would you do that, dA?!)  I think I have fixed it, so please feel free to join, and let me know if anything doesn't work!  Send me a note directly if you find anything amiss.

I have limited submissions to the group to 3 per day, as far as I can tell, though, and this is intentional.  The reason for this is because I have been part of several groups, and I see people flooding those groups with material that is only loosely relevant to the group- if it is indeed relevant at all- or just uploading their whole gallery into a group over the course of a single day.  While I definitely want to see more activity here, I do not want these things to occur.  I want people to post things which have really good relevance to the group, not just "eh she's kinda thin, let me submit all 50 of these mediocre photos she took of herself in the mirror with her camera phone".  

On that note, if you are a model or photographer and you believe that many of your submissions could be good for the group, and don't want to submit at a rate of three per day, send me a note, and I'll sort through the gallery.  Obviously, as founder, I can feature as many photos from your gallery as I like!  And if your work has merit and features thin models, I will probably be glad to feature most of the submissions.

Furthermore:  We definitely need more members and contributors.
Please feel free to call attention to the group in journals, or to solicit your favorite photographer or model.  I am not above asking for this.  I have asked a few people to be contributors myself, but haven't the time to go around doing it all day.  I also haven't had a strong response before, probably because the group is kind of small, and wouldn't provide much of a platform for those who use groups as a manner of gaining attention.  So please, watch, join, and contribute.  :)
In case you are unsure of whether or not the model in the photograph(s) you wish to submit are thin, this is how I personally identify a thin model.  They are easy visual tests which almost anyone can do.  This is not to say that all of them have to be true, just that at least one of them will probably be true.

1.  The model's thighs don't touch when in a normal standing position.
2.  The ribcage is showing WITHOUT the model "sucking it in", or bending in a way that presses the ribcage out.
3.  The hipbones protrude, without the model being in a particularly contorted position.  Especially true for females.
4.  A normal person could wrap their hand almost all the way around the model's upper arm.

Note that this is not a measure of aesthetics.  Merely a measure of whether the photo belongs in the group.  There is a place and time to admire all things.  Normal people, curvy people, very large people all have beautiful individuals among them.  This is the place to admire the skinny people.  :)   I hope this helps clear any confusion in arbitrary cases, or when submissions are removed.
Hello everyone, I just thought I would say a few words about the new group here.  I am an artist, who is currently studying the figure, and photographs are of great assistance to me.  Just sitting down and looking at them for a while can greatly increase my understanding.  Now, wanting to be fair in my portrayal of people, I have been collecting images of all shapes and sorts of bodies, everything from the clearly malnourished, to the very large.

Now, for the average man and woman, there are many great photography groups you can watch.  Lots of groups dedicated to body parts and body types: large breasts or butts, curves, BBW, and all kinds of things.  However, in all of my time on DA, I have not been able to find a group which focused on particularly thin models.  I searched dozens of terms, even terms which I find abhorrent, like "thinspiration", and have not found a single group.  I think this may be because it seems like a foregone conclusion that many models are going to be thin, and therefore it will not be hard to find them.  I would have drawn that exact same conclusion, assuming that a lot of nude photographers would enjoy the stereotypical glamor model figure in women, and at least some instances of the sort of thin, effeminate male you see in glamor photography as well.

This has actually not been the case, in my experience, from combing through the thousands of pictures that have been pouring into my inbox.  With a few exceptions, the vast majority of nude models are of average weight, with a good percentage of body fat, or heavy muscle tone.  As far as female models go, many photographers prefer to err on the side of larger models than smaller ones, with very pronounced curves.  There are a few exceptions, but they're the majority.  On the one hand, it's a pleasant surprise.  On the other hand, I wonder if it's not equally unfair to bias against very skinny women, since it is just as depressing to think that many photographers can't find beauty in a lanky, graceful woman any more than they can in a BBW.  Almost as though they have on horse blinders, and all the skinny women are standing to the left, and the large ones to the right.  Not that there aren't many, many photographers who break out of this box at least occasionally.  Some of them have whole galleries dedicated to it, but when I'm looking for a specific body type, there are hoards of high quality photos of average looking women, and everything outside of that narrow range is a minority.

And as far as males go, it seems a shame that so many of the photographs focus on men who are incredibly well defined.  I'm not saying that those men don't deserve recognition, because I know how hard they have to work out to get those bodies.  But as a woman, I've seen my share of naked men.  Real naked men, who I happened to be having some kind of relationship with, and not a single one of them ever looked like that.  They were all lovely in their own ways, but none of them ever looked like they could pull of  a Superman costume without looking silly.  You know what's really funny about it?  Even though women complain about what kind of image is forced on them all the time, from my experiences watching photography accounts here on DA, men actually have a MUCH more specific quality to live up to.

Anyway, this is all a lot of prattle, which I hope helps people understand why I've started this group.  I believe that there should be visibility for all body types, small, medium, large, super large, short, tall, muscular.  I will do my best to be a good administrator, and hope that any invitations to add submissions don't offend.  I have known skinny people who fought to gain, much the same as I've known overweight people who have fought to lose.  So when I send my invitations, it is not meant as a slur against any model's beauty.  It has no political or aesthetic connotations, just that they fit certain build qualities.

Oh, and last but not least, I do have the capability to make a.. logo? tag?  I'm not sure what they are called, but I need a photo or two to put into it.  If any model or photographer would allow me to use their photo in the banner thing, it would be a boon to the group.

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