Body Positive

Clothes can be altered. Clothes can be sold. Clothes can be swapped with friends. In the meantime, you have to get dressed every day, and you might as well love the clothes you have right now.

I feel equipped to talk about the intricacies of the body positivity movement; for with all its beauty and empowerment, there are aspects of body positivity that try to control how others view and treat their bodies. Though I understand the intention, behavior like this flies in the face of the ideals the movement is trying to create. Put simply: it's time we stop trying to police body positivity.

By the time you read this, Babecamp Jamaica will be over. My 57 mosquito bites will have just stopped itching.

Body-shaming exists, but we shouldn't accept it as just another sad and simple fact of life. Model Ashley Graham is on the front lines of this fight for body positivity.

It’s pretty easy to see why people would want to rebel against [our current standard of beauty] — it’s unattainable, and even for those who manage to reach something close to it, it’s often unsustainable. However, in rebelling against the oppressive system, we run into situations where people denigrate others who happen to more closely fit the description of what we recognize as the ideal.

I don’t want to know what it looks like. I want to know about it.

We haven’t quite escaped the influence of the Puritans yet...We still tend to regard our bodies, our eating, our desires, and anything else of this earth as “bad,” “weak,” or “sinful.”

I've said before that I accept myself as I am, even though there are things I'd love to change about my body. And that's true. But it's not like I woke up one day and thought, “Yep, I'm great. My body is great. Life is great. Everything is great.”