"When I was 14, I spent an entire Saturday studying a double-issue of Vogue magazine. It was the 90’s, and 70’s hip-hugger bell-bottoms were back in fashion, and ‘heroin-chic’ was an actual trend. Within those pages, models hip bones poked out over their pants, and their ribs were visibly countable. I compared my 5’3”, 135 pound self to these women. I had no idea that they averaged 6’ tall. I had no idea that no matter how much I starved myself, my athletic frame would never look like those models. But this was the standard of ‘beauty’ that we were being taught to believe. Other magazines, television shows, movies or media sources provided no relief from the subliminal message that my body was WRONG.
If you haven’t noticed, the women of my generation have begun to Clap BACK at the disordered culture that we grew up with. There’s been an uprising of body positivity and you guys, I am SO HERE for it. It’s been hard for me to find the proper words at times, to chime in on this conversation, mostly because it is SO raw and real for me. I had to literally claw my way out of the death-grips of disordered thinking and eating and not eating and overexercising and bingeing and purging and self-loathing and All. Of. The. Things. that WAY too many of us have had to overcome.
What if that 14-year-old girl had flipped open a magazine that afternoon, only to find body DIVERSITY within its pages. How might that have changed the trajectory of her thinking--of her life? She desperately needed and deserved that. I am choked up knowing that there are ENTIRE companies like @ThirdLove taking a STAND for that little girl--for all of the little girls out there.
Never could I have found the courage to post a photo like this without the steps so many other women have taken to normalize NORMAL." 👏🏿 👏🏾👏🏽👏🏼 @chasingmcallisters