Carry on Beautiful!

I’ve spoken about body positivity quite a lot, and I thought that today I’d go into why I talk about it so much and why I really think its so important. Body positivity is a big thing for me since I’ve always been ‘plus size’ but I’m also super passionate about making it about anyone with any body type. Everyone should feel good about their body and I’m not here to regurgitate the whole ‘men like meat not bones’ because first of all, fuck what men like, and secondly we’re all meat and bones anyway it doesn’t matter who has more of which?

Enough of me getting angry about dumb phrases though, lets get into why I actually find body positivity so important. In high school and college, I felt awful about my body and it impacted my confidence and esteem in such a negative way I don’t think I can even really put it into words. I spent the vast majority of my years in high school and later college entirely fixated on weight loss and food. I barely paid attention to any classes because I felt so terribly about my body that all I could focus on was things to change it or the hatred I felt towards it.

I’ve had so, so many friends who have similar stories to that and they’re of all different body types. These feelings are so common in so many people, including those that have ‘perfect’ bodies in other peoples eyes and it shouldn’t be that way. Young girls especially shouldn’t be so hyper fixated on their body considering that the way it looks is literally the least important thing in life. As a teen especially, there is so many important things that you need to be focussing on and yet so many of us are unable to do so due to how negatively we feel about ourselves.

Body positivity isn’t, in my opinion, necessarily all about loving yourself. To me, its more about accepting yourself. Of course, loving yourself is the end goal for most people but just being able to live with and be appreciative of your body is, I think, more important. I might never love my body the way I wish I could, but I can be glad that I’m healthy and proud that I’ve become stronger by going to the gym and be happy that I’m able to put on an outfit and look in the mirror and feel pretty.

I can hang out with friends without worrying about how I look to them or what they think of my body or if they’re judging me for whatever I’m eating or drinking. I can look at myself without wanting to cry. I can go to the gym and be a sweaty mess in a pair of leggings and a baggy t-shirt and still feel badass.

Thats why body positivity is important. Body positivity has, in a way, released me from my own self hatred so that I’m able to live my life more fully and happily and in the way I should have always been able to. Being healthy is the most important thing, but at the very least being able to like yourself is important too and everyone should be able to do that.

Society as a whole portrays certain body types as being the most attractive and it is really easy to get caught up in that and think that if you don’t look like that (and lets face it, even the models we see don’t really look quite like they do in magazines) you’re not pretty enough or not good enough. I really hope that as more and more people become part of the body positivity community we’ll see more diverse body types and types of people in general modelling, acting, making music etc. because I think that’ll really help people to feel more beautiful and good about themselves. It can be so amazing to see someone on TV or in a magazine with a similar body type to you, its only happened to me a few times and I’m always blown away by and gain a new perspective on myself from seeing someone who looks similar to me and thinking they look great.

To round this up before it gets too long, I think body positivity is so important because feeling negative about your own body can have such a negative and all round awful effect on your life. Feeling good about the way you look encourages so much confidence and self esteem, it lets you act more like yourself and have more fun. Body positivity can help prevent and treat eating disorders and sometimes depression (obviously not body positivity alone, but it helps!). Its so important and yet people act like its just some dumb instagram trend. Its not. Its important.

-Dana