For Lillie Mae, storytelling has never been simply about entertainment. It is about visibility, purpose, and creating space for people whose stories have too often been overlooked.
Originally from Danville, Virginia, and now based in Atlanta, Georgia, Lillie Mae has built a career at the intersection of media, entertainment, strategy, and culture. A storyteller, strategist, and cultural architect, she is the Founder of Lillie Mae – The Collective, LLC, Senior Media Relations Coordinator at Corporate Compositions, LLC, and Executive Producer at Back 2 The Basics Production Management Group.
Across each of her roles, one mission remains consistent: elevate stories that matter and make sure no voice goes unheard.
That mission is especially evident in Full Figured Flings, a film rooted in questions of beauty, body image, colorism, self-worth, love, and representation. For Lillie Mae, the story began long before there was a screenplay. It began with an emotion.
“Full Figured Flings was born from a mix of emotions including outrage, determination, love, strength, and ultimately liberation,” she explains.
At its heart, the film explores the complicated experience of carrying beauty, brilliance, humor, ambition, and vulnerability while rarely seeing those qualities reflected back in mainstream media. It confronts the quiet ache of feeling overlooked because of body size or skin tone while celebrating the transformative moment when a woman realizes she has never needed society’s permission to be enough.
From the beginning of production, Lillie Mae and her team were guided by a simple but powerful principle: purpose over popularity.
Rather than allowing trends or industry expectations to dictate the creative process, the team focused on telling an honest story with integrity. Casting, wardrobe, dialogue, performances, and every other creative choice were approached with the intention of honoring the characters and their experiences.
The goal was never simply to make audiences laugh, cry, or escape for a couple of hours. It was to create something that reflected real experiences while reminding viewers that everyone deserves to feel valued, desired, and worthy of love.
Black beauty has never been one-dimensional, but mainstream media has often treated it that way. Full Figured Flings pushes against those limitations by presenting Black women in all of their complexity.
The film celebrates differences in body types, skin tones, personalities, dreams, vulnerabilities, and life experiences. Its characters are allowed to be romantic and ambitious, confident and uncertain, funny and flawed, resilient and deeply human.
Most importantly, plus-size Black women are not relegated to supporting roles or used as background characters in someone else’s story. They are at the center.
For Lillie Mae, that distinction matters.
The film challenges the idea that beauty, love, or value can be determined by a woman’s size or complexion. Instead, it allows Black women to define beauty for themselves.
“Creating a film where Black women define beauty on their own terms is an act of empowerment,” she says.
That empowerment is particularly significant in a culture where women have historically been encouraged to shrink themselves, alter themselves, or seek external validation in order to feel worthy of acceptance. Full Figured Flings rejects that premise.
Its women do not have to become smaller, lighter, or more conventionally acceptable to earn the right to be loved.
They simply have to exist.
Representation is often reduced to the idea of seeing someone who looks like you on television or in a movie. But Lillie Mae believes representation must go deeper than physical visibility.
It should also mean feeling understood.
Full Figured Flings seeks to capture the emotional realities that many women carry quietly: the desire to be chosen without conditions, the pressure to make themselves smaller, the struggle to build confidence, and the complicated journey toward embracing their own worth.
The film’s characters are not presented as idealized versions of womanhood. They navigate careers, relationships, family dynamics, insecurity, confidence, and self-discovery.
That emotional honesty creates a different kind of recognition. Audiences aren’t simply invited to see themselves on screen. They are invited to feel seen.
The film also opens the door to conversations that can be uncomfortable but necessary within the Black community, particularly around colorism, body image, beauty standards, and self-worth.
For Lillie Mae, storytelling is a powerful catalyst because it can reach people emotionally before asking them to process something intellectually.
A character can make someone recognize a personal experience. A storyline can expose an unconscious bias. A moment on screen can remind someone of a conversation they avoided having in real life.
That is the power of authentic storytelling.
Rather than approaching these subjects as lectures, Full Figured Flings allows audiences to encounter them through people, relationships, humor, vulnerability, and lived experiences. In doing so, the film creates room for empathy and reflection.
The hope is that viewers walk away not only entertained, but willing to question the standards they have inherited and consider how those standards have shaped the way they see themselves and others.
Lillie Mae also hopes the film sparks meaningful conversations among brands, agencies, filmmakers, and media companies about what authentic inclusion really looks like.
Representation, she argues, cannot simply be a marketing strategy or a temporary response to cultural pressure. It has to extend into the creative decision-making process, including who gets hired, whose stories receive funding, and whose perspectives are considered valuable enough to bring to the screen.
There is a difference between performative diversity and genuine representation.
Full Figured Flings challenges the industry to recognize that stories featuring women of different sizes, shades, and backgrounds aren’t niche simply because they haven’t always received mainstream investment.
They are human stories.
And authentic representation isn’t only socially meaningful. It is also good storytelling and good business. When audiences see themselves portrayed with dignity and complexity, that connection can build trust, loyalty, and a desire to support the stories that finally reflect their realities.
Ultimately, Full Figured Flings represents the larger philosophy behind Lillie Mae’s work.
Grounded in the principles of Faith, Charity, and Love, she has built Lillie Mae – The Collective as more than a brand. It is an ecosystem designed to amplify authentic voices, champion culture, and create opportunities for connection, creativity, and community.
That same spirit is woven throughout Full Figured Flings.
The film asks audiences to reconsider who gets to be the romantic lead, who gets to be considered beautiful, whose experiences deserve to be centered, and what happens when women stop waiting for permission to define themselves.
For audiences who want to support the film, Lillie Mae encourages them to do more than simply watch. Share it. Review it. Talk about it. Host a watch party. Recommend it to family and friends. Engage with it on social media.
Every conversation creates another opportunity for the film to reach someone who may have spent years believing their story wasn’t worthy of being told.
And perhaps that is the greatest message behind Full Figured Flings: beauty doesn’t need permission, representation shouldn’t be conditional, and no woman should have to become someone else to finally feel seen.
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