body positivity

My wrinkles are filled by plump instead of poison. As my svelte friends talk Botox, I can simply smile and not only because my face still allows it. Cosmetic surgery is ubiquitous with my fashion-forward skinny friends.

So you’re on a diet, and you’re really pumped about it. You truly, honestly believe that you’re—say—“getting your body back” post-partum (that’s a harmful concept) or improving your fitness a la the latest technological tracking device (that’s also a harmful concept). And while I think we need to throw a lot of these ideas in the trash, I’m also understanding of how diet culture makes you believe that these are good things – things, in fact, to brag about.

Fat shaming is the worst. Shaming pretty much anything is the worst, really, but some people seem to think that fatness is exempt from that idea.

"Because diet culture is so ingrained in our society, and therefore our psyches, a common misconception about eating disorders – and particularly those of the restricting and purging varieties – is that they’re choices that people make with the end goal of losing weight."

Something powerful shifted for me when I turned 30. I decided to stop caring about my weight as a means to measure my success, beauty and worth as a woman. I gave myself permission to care for my body, and to care for the woman inside that body first.

This is fancy talk for “holy shit, I cannot make peace with my body today or ever, because this body is telling the world I’m a woman when I’m actually not.”

When I got boobs, I also got a body. A body that was (and is) not skinny.

There are more fat women out there than just Tess Holliday