Cécile Dormeau is a French illustrator whose bright, bold drawings show women as they actually are: with bellies, stretch marks, body hair, periods, pimples, bad moods and a great deal of humour. Her work is shared widely on Instagram and is often described as body-positive, though she has said she wants body diversity to appear everywhere, not only in pictures about body positivity.
This collection brings together fifty of her illustrations. Some are tender, some are rude, and many are both. Below, they are grouped by theme, each with a short note on what it shows and the idea behind it.
Who is Cécile Dormeau?
Dormeau graduated from a design school in Paris and worked at graphic design agencies in Germany, followed by two years as a junior art director at the advertising agency Ogilvy, before turning to illustration full time. She has been profiled as living in Germany and, more recently, near Paris. Her clients have included Google, GQ, The Sunday Times and the German magazine NEON, and she is represented by Everyone Agency.
Her style is easy to recognise: thick black outlines, flat saturated colours and characters with big, rounded bodies. In a 2015 interview with IGNANT she said she is fascinated by girls with all kinds of body shapes and likes to play with their flaws and emotions through humour. Speaking at It's Nice That's Nicer Tuesdays event in 2017, she showed self-portraits from her teenage years, when she saw herself as "a monster", and explained that she wants girls to know it is normal to have flaws. She also said some clients still ask her to draw women with thinner legs. Since then she has moved into books, including the children's book Yogaraignée (Gallimard, 2023).
Bodies without apology
A woman with flowing red hair wears a crown of three guinea pigs, each with its own little gold crown. It is a pure piece of joy, and a reminder that her work is not only about struggle.
A woman curls an impossibly long tongue around a striped ice lolly. The exaggerated, rubbery body language is typical of her style: pleasure drawn as big as possible.
"How long have you been pregnant for?" asks one woman, staring at another's round belly. "10 years!" comes the cheerful reply, turning a common, intrusive question into a punchline.
In two panels a woman reaches for a carrot dangling on a string, then finds the carrot has ended up behind her, poking out at her backside, and looks crushed. It plays on the "carrot and stick" idea of chasing a reward that never quite works out.
Twisting around in white trousers, a woman shouts "Do I have a stain?" The fear of a period leak on light clothes is a recurring theme in her work, and here it is drawn as pure panic.
A woman scowls at a pimple on her chin, swearing at it, while the pimple sweetly says "Hiii". It is a conversation that many people have had with a mirror.
The sequel: the pimple has "invited friends today". The two images together are a small comic strip about the stubbornness of skin.
Four panels show a woman coming home, peeling off tight jeans and bra with a sigh, then setting them on fire and standing naked and relieved beside the flames. It is a joyful exaggeration of the moment uncomfortable clothes come off.
A small bottle labelled "tears when I'm single" stands next to a huge jug of "tears when I'm in a relationship". The joke flips the usual assumption that being single is the sadder state.
A yellow woman in football socks and boots sits hugging her knees, a single blue tear on her cheek, with visible hair on her legs. It is one of the quieter images, letting sadness exist without a joke.
A woman with hairy armpits wears a top asking whether she is surrounded by idiots or is the idiot herself (in stronger words). Self-doubt as a slogan T-shirt is a very Dormeau way of being honest.
A woman stretches with poppies blooming from her armpits. Body hair, so often hidden, is turned into flowers.
Facing a signpost with "Choice A" and "Choice B", a woman stands undecided; in the second panel she has become a skeleton, still waiting. Indecision taken to its logical end.
A woman with a hair bun shaves her very hairy leg with an electric razor, one foot raised high, looking tired. Removing body hair is shown as a chore, not a beauty ritual.
Kneeling on the floor in underwear, a woman with stretch marks on her hips holds up scissors with a determined look, black curls scattered on the floor around her. It reads like a home haircut, a moment of rebellion or crisis depending on the result.
A woman holds a deep yoga squat with her hands pressed together, under the words "Who farted?" Anyone who has taken a yoga class knows the moment.
Periods, doctors and awkward appointments
Three cartoons about a period stain on a chair: the chair leaves an accusing note, a "wanted" poster blames the culprit, and a figure carries the stained chair away to cries of "Shame. Shame. Shame." (recalling the "shame" chant from Game of Thrones). It mocks how much embarrassment surrounds a little blood.
A woman in glasses rests her chin on her hands beside the words "Some people are really stupid", with an expletive in the middle. Drawn in coloured pencil, it is one of her sketchbook-style pieces.
A woman on a dinner date raises her wine glass; across the candlelit table, her date is a vibrator sitting on a stack of books. A light-hearted take on self-love and the solo date.
At the gynaecologist, the doctor looks between a patient's legs and screams; the patient panics, and the doctor laughs: "April fool!" It plays on a very real nervousness about intimate check-ups.
A doctor examines a woman's breast, then starts kneading and spinning it like pizza dough, and finally serves a quattro stagioni. The absurd twist turns a routine breast examination into a cooking show; regular checks are still worth discussing with a doctor.
A waitress in a polka-dot dress carries drinks on a tray and dishes balanced on her chest. Large breasts as a built-in shelf is a joke many women make about themselves.
A woman in a matching leopard-print hood, top and wide skirt poses confidently, carrying a leopard-print bag. Pure style, no apology.
A woman in black underwear lounges in a round bath or paddling pool, her rounded belly resting in the water. It shows a fuller body at ease, without any sense of being on display.
Asked why she hides behind such big glasses, a woman says nothing, but the thought bubble above her shows a raised middle finger. A neat way of drawing the reply many people wish they could say aloud.
In a bra and heart-print trousers, a woman sings into a hairbrush: "I'm just too good to be true, I can't take my eyes off me". The line twists the 1967 Frankie Valli hit "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" into a song of self-love.
Two identical faces: before kissing, neat red lipstick; after kissing, a smudged pink cloud around the mouth. A small, instantly recognisable joke.
Social life, phones and saying no
Sitting cross-legged, a woman calmly reads a book titled "How to say f*** you in a nice way". Politeness and frustration in one image.
At a party, a woman blocks an approaching man with a giant foam hand that says "NO" while her friend watches. It celebrates the simple right to turn down unwanted attention.
A woman with a half-shaved head and long black hair folds into a tight curve to paint her toenails in platform shoes. The pose shows her love of bending bodies into graphic shapes.
A smiling woman with a huge afro full of flowers and leaves sits at a table covered with combs, brushes and a spray bottle. Natural hair is drawn as a garden that takes care to grow.
"How old are you, 25?" asks one woman; "No, 23... I know I look older," answers the other, and the caption delivers a blunt two-word reaction. It is about the quiet sting of being guessed older.
A blonde woman in jeans, legs wide apart, raises her phone: "Time for another awkward childbirth position selfie." A sketchbook joke about the strange poses selfies demand.
Titled "Boobsspreading", an older woman knitting on a train takes up the middle seat with her enormous chest while two annoyed men squeeze in at the sides. It parodies "manspreading", the word for men sitting with their legs wide that became popular around 2014 and 2015.
"Antisocial roommates": four flatmates press their ears to their doors, each waiting until no one is in the kitchen before coming out. A familiar shared-flat ritual.
A confident woman with big earrings and a crop top wears a slogan that says, in strong words, that she does not care if anyone dislikes her breasts because she knows they are amazing. Body confidence as a T-shirt.
A woman sleeps on a blue sofa with a large grey cat lying on her chest and a heart floating above it. Cats appear often in her work as symbols of comfort.
Sweating, a woman reads from a written script during a phone call: "Hello, I'm calling you because..." Phone anxiety is a theme many illustrators of her generation share.
A crayon drawing of a woman in a striped top, spotted briefs and blue boots, hand on hip, with long pink hair. It shows her looser, sketchier side next to the flat-colour digital pieces.
Lying in bed, a woman laughs at her phone, "What is this new ugly filter?" before realising the camera is simply showing her own face. A gentle joke about the shock of the front camera.
A woman at her laptop glances sideways at a glass of red wine that calls out "Soooon". The end of the working day, drawn as a love story.
One person says hello, the other answers "Good, thanks. And you?" to a question that was never asked, followed by an awkward silence. Small talk going wrong in three bubbles.
Seen from behind, a woman kneels in black shorts with the word "Frustrated" printed across the seat. The body language says the rest.
Self-love and small rebellions
A smiling naked woman rides a camel on a red saddle, the curves of her body echoing the animal's humps. A playful visual rhyme rather than anything more.
A blonde woman beams beside the words "Proud of my roots!", her dark regrowth showing at the parting. A pun that turns skipped hair appointments into heritage.
A woman on a TV screen tells someone called Richard that she loves him too, but loves herself more, while a cat sleeps under the set. Self-respect delivered like a soap-opera line.
Peeking over the top of an enormous polka-dot bra, a woman flashes a peace sign. Big breasts drawn as a cheerful landscape.
A woman in high heels and lingerie folds herself into a knot of legs and arms, munching something as she looks out from the middle. A line drawing that shows her love of exaggerated, flexible bodies.
Wearing a festive jumper and reindeer antlers and holding a "Merry Xmas" sign, a woman stares glumly at a TV news headline saying nothing is going fine anywhere. Holiday cheer meets the news cycle.
Two women of different skin tones lie entwined, resting with their eyes closed. The quiet, comfortable closeness makes a calm last image after so much noise.
Why her drawings matter
Mainstream images of women still tend to show one kind of body, and illustration is no exception: Dormeau herself has described clients asking her to slim down a character. Her answer has been to keep drawing women with soft bellies, hairy legs and stretch marks doing ordinary things, from shaving and swearing at pimples to dodging flatmates and eating in bed, without making their bodies the problem.
The humour matters as much as the message. By laughing at period stains, awkward phone calls and stubborn pimples, the drawings make those experiences feel shared rather than shameful. As she put it in her 2017 talk, our personal value is more than just our appearance, and these fifty images make that point mostly by being funny.
Sources: It's Nice That: Cécile Dormeau on body diversity and defying convention, IGNANT: Illustrated interview with Cécile Dormeau, European Design Festival: Cécile Dormeau, Orion Books: Cécile Dormeau, Cécile Dormeau on Instagram.
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